CAMERA WORKSHOP with Fergus Moloney

Today we had a camera workshop with Fergus and Sam. This consisted of learning a bit about the cameras and a few of the operations that can be performed on them.

The equipment we used:
- SONY PMW and the SONY XR cameras
- Manfrotto tripod
- Rode microphone and microphone boom

We learnt about the acronym SWEFF which stands for sound design - white balance - exposure - focus - framing

Sound
Sound is a very important part of production. It makes up 50% of the piece, therefore it is important to make sure the quality of this is as good as the quality of the footage. In order to get good sound quality we experimented with use the Rode microphone which is a directional microphone. We also learnt about the importance of using a boom and windshield in outdoor conditions.

White Balance
White balance is important as it affects the whole colour of your footage. In order to set the white balance, zoom in and focus on a white piece of paper and then set the white balance from this. This tells the camera what colour is white in this environment.

Exposure
The exposure can be adjusted to let more or less light into the shot. The exposure needs to be correct to avoid the footage being too bright or too dim.

Focus
We spent a lot of time working on the focus in this workshop. We discovered how important it is to get the focus right so that the shots were sharp and crisp. The focus can also be adjusted to provide different effects (e.g. when an over the shoulder shot is used, you can adjust the focus onto either the person's shoulder or the other person facing them).

Framing
We also spent a large amount of time working on the framing. Like focus, this can be adjusted to produce different effects (e.g. framing can be used to create an over the shoulder shot by having one person over to the left of the frame and another person further away on the right of the frame).

We experimented with adjusting the focus and framing whilst shooting a moving object / person. This proved difficult as you had to adjust both the focus and zoom at the same time in order to keep the person in shot and in focus. I finally got the hang of it but it took a few tries.

Here's a clip from the workshop: