Interesting Camera Techniques

Breaking The Fourth Wall

the fourth wall is the imaginary wall between the audience and the world of a film. The camera is what restricts the on screen images to engage with the audience.

HOWEVER!

If you break through this wall and allow the world of the film to address the audience this can add a new depth to the film. i think this would be useful to use whenever Frank gets a fabulous idea in the film. By simply winking at the camera or even just acknowledging its existence, the audience feel let in and involved in the scheme. In addition to this, as Charlie is quite clueless in the scheme making it adds a layer of knowledge to the audience. As if they are more up to speed with Franks cunning mind than Charlie is.

Breaking the fourth wall is present in the film Ferris Bueller's day off. He talks directly to the camera and invites the audience in on his plans.

This is just a quick snippet from the film and a clear example of how he directly communicates with the audience.

Interesting Camera Techniques

Another interesting camera technique that i have discovered during A2 Media is the use of graphic matches. The first recognisable example of this was in Robert Le Plage's FAR SIDE OF THE MOON. It was very cleverly shown how a model of a rocket was created by him then dissolved into a moving image of a real rocket launching.

i do not yet know where this would fit correctly in our film but i think if it could work it would make our film more advanced and really show our progression from AS to A2 level.

I think this would be a good technique to use for a transistion into another acene. I can picture Frank and Charlie sitting on a kurb down in the dumps after the cookie sales failed and to then flow into the blindman scene, we would use a graphic match of their bodie sitting on steps and with the blind fold on Charlie.

Below is the trailer of Far Side of the Moon which gave me the inspiration for this idea. Le Plage uses A LOT of very interesting techniques to make his film stand out.

Interesting Camera Techniques

In order to make our film look interesting and illustrate our development as students, i have researched existing techniques to incorporate into our film that we can hopefully use.

One of these is the use of split screen. We could use this for our cookie selling scene to save time and make the scene more interesting to watch. We would have three or four different doors and show Frank and Charlie walking up to them and then getting the doors slammed in their faces. So we do not have to show this procedure over and over again i think it would be useful to incorporate split screen.



Here is an existing example of numerous phone calls presented through split screening. This was taken from the film "Mean Girls" and i feel it is an efficient way to give the audience clear information in an original way.