https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIh07c_P4hc
This music video of Ordinary People by John Legend is a great model of many shots used by camera operators. The video opens with an establishing shot of just the piano in a blank or white room (ofcourse accomplished by gereenscreen) and then John Legend walks onto set. This sets up a long shot of him where we can see him from head to toe as he approches the piano to begin the song. This video also uses a crane to capture aerial views of the set as he sings and it also uses a dolly to provide the zoom view of Legend then transitions to a close up of the singer. It also uses medium shot close ups and then racks the focus of the lens to focus on the glass of water. this type of shot will be used throughout the video. By racking the focus it also allows for a sense of a forground and a background. This video has great use of panning and medium shot close ups, as well as medium long shots of the couples as they are arguing and displaying intense emotion. It also makes great use of the space, while the asian family is arguing and the mother runs to get the child theres a moment where all three depth of fields are being utilized; the father in the back ground, mother in the middle ground, and the child is in the foreground. This video captures all of the seven visual components; space, line, shape, color, tone, movement, and rythem. I just wanted to take a moment to comment on the color of this video. I think that the producers were genius to shoot this video in black and white, it adds so much emotion to the song as well as details in the shots that are visually pleasing. The camera is constantly moving the audience through to events and the feel of the song, the aerial views of the orchestras in the climax was the just the best perspective to highlight the climax of the song. This video really does display just about all of the camera shots we discussed in class aswell as provide lead room for the subjects as they move about the set. The camera uses alot of close ups that provide enough head room for the subjects placing the eyes two thirds in the shot. From seeing the video i have already mentioned that I know a crane was used for the aerial shot and a dolly was mostlikely used for the manual zoom of the camera, but I also appears that a steadicam was used. It is also possible that the camera was mounted on tracks to give the viewers the shot of a straight pan from left to right. Another way to get shots that was utilized in this video were tilts. Tilting down on the set to end in a medium close up. And one final type of shots that the video utilized are known as over the shoulder shots (dirty shots) and also clean shots of just John Legend as he is at the piano. Over all this video is great in capturing emotion and I hope that you enjoy this music video of John Legends, Ordinary People, as much as I did!
Good job John. It's worth noting that the movement is always used as a transition with the move of one shot cutting seamlessly with the same movement of the next shot. It feels very fluid. In your description above, you are talking about the foreground, middle and background planes and you refer to them as 3 depth of fields. Depth of field includes all the planes and refers to the depth of focus across those plains. Do if all 3 planes are in focus you would have deep depth of field, if only 1 plane is sharp, you have shallow depth of field.
ReplyDelete