Journal+4-Cine

One thing I chose to study in my text was maintaining screen direction. I found this really important because there is quite some dialogue in my final film, and I wanted to practice dialogue shots for the interaction shots of Hugs and Herbert. One point of discussion was the usage of neutral shots to allow a change in the direction of shooting and an exception to the 180-degree rule, which I found interesting. In my film, I can create a neutral shot by moving the camera directly towards or away from the character, and allow the next shot to be freed up from following a strictly rigid 180-degree. Also, there was a concept of a reverse angle shot, which is when you cross the line but you have some object that help the audience realize where the camera has been rotated to. This is extremely useful, in dialogue scenes because I will be able to show interactions between Hugs and Herbert by doing a reverse angle shot, and using the lemonade stand as an object to orient the audience.

Eye Sweeps: In Lemonade stand, I can find scenes where using an eye sweep would be useful. This could be used when Hugs is looking into the distance and sees Herbert or random stranger walking around. The main issue with this is to make sure that the actor does not stare straight at the camera, as this would break the fourth wall and make the film strange (unless that was the intended reason). I also was interested with the cutaway eye line continuity technique, since there will be shots where Hugs looks to the side to see an object or someone else. I think this is important because the object he looks at has to be level and at the same height as his eyes, and can’t be unreasonable such as looking across the horizon with a next shot that is of the sky. I have to make sure that the following shot will be about the same eye level.

A final thing I looked at was the six types of cuts: this would help me with continuity and overall flow of the film as well as help the editor with the right pacing and unity of the shots. Content cuts will help emphasize thoughts or feelings of characters, like if a shot gets further away from Hugs it will make him seem much more distant and lonely. An action cut would help transition scenes and make them flow better, such as hugs walking away from his lemonade stand and up to Herbert’s stand. Cutting on action is also very important, since there is a lot of movement within our film and I can use this to get shots of Hugs standing up or reaching for something, making these shots much more fluid. The POV cut is also similar to the Kuleshav Effect, where a person looks up and sees an object and you can immediately relate the two shots. This will be useful in showing Hugs’ reactions to certain setbacks or events in Lemonade Stand. Our film does not change locations a lot, but it may be still possible to use match cuts to show the passing of time. These are just several types of cuts that can be used in our film, and this has to be done with coordination between the editor and director and cinematographer to create this type of flow.