The Clip Club

Session 1

Michelle talked about what we’re going to be doing in the next few weeks – watching clips and discussing what makes them interesting/not so interesting, going on a trip to the British Film Institute to the Mediatheque, learning about film language, making our own clips, posting on this blog…

First we listened to a clip of a soundtrack and then watched the full clip – 4 minutes of Wall-E. It’s the part where Wall-E meets Eva for the first time. We talked about the different elements of a film:

Character
Story
Setting
Sound (sound effects/music/dialogue)
Colour
Sequence (real time/flashbacks/actions happening at the same time/time lapse)
Camera (point of view/distance/movement/angle/focus)
Cutting (editing/speed)

We looked at the different shots used in the wall-E sequence and some of the reasons why these shots might be chosen:

close-up (CU) – to show feelings
extreme close-up (ECU)
medium shot (MS) – to show action / dialogue
long shot (LS) – to show setting
extreme long shot (ELS)
high angle – to make someone/something seem smaller & vulnerable
low angle – to make someone/something seem bigger & powerful

3 groups (Clara & Carla / Gman & Leonardo & Nimbus / Dual2 & Wizard23 & Jessica) went off with the Flip cameras to video a scene in 4 shots using 1 close-up, 1 medium, 1 long and 1 other type of shot. The brief was that someone was experiencing something frightening in a classroom. Michelle collected the footage and transferred it to the computer. We will look at this in the next session.