42. Cinematography Issues

The main problem I had were the camera angles for the film. 

I felt that for the characters to look decent, their whole head had to be in the frame. I would constantly go out of my way to ensure this happened. In reality, it's not the worst if their heads are slightly cut off, in the right circumstance. For my film, it created extremely large frames to keep the character inside the frame, instead of an 'intimate' moment for just one character and the audience. 

I haven't filmed the scene in the bathroom when writing this, so I will try to incorporate moments for just the audience and character.

I also did a bit of research on what cinematography techniques look bad. 

• There was a ton of distracting items in the background, of my room, which I am going to remove when filming the next time. 
• I also had tons of extra, empty space, mainly due to wanting the whole head in frame and I will bring the camera forwards in hope of erasing some of it. 
• Some of the clip's background was slanted, from the angle changes, and if this is to happen again, I can fix it in editing.

These are the links I used for research.

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/common-framing-errors-in-cinematography/ 

https://nofilmschool.com/2018/04/watch-5-mistakes-noob-cinematographers-make 

I had talked to Andrew again about how my film looked and he gave me a few tips. 

One was the shot of LI in the hallway. It was poorly lit to show off her uncertain emotions, but I failed to realize that the two walls are now extremely bright and become the main focus of the shot, rather than the character. He suggested I turn the light on in the bathroom and I was against this at first, but he was saying that I would need it (for my skin tone) and if the lighting was orange it would be okay. This would change the bathroom scene all together, as well, since the light will be on the whole time, losing a bit of the uneasy, nervous symbolism it would have had with the light off. 

The shot in the hallway. The red arrows go to what your eyes would focus on, instead of the middle (blue circle).

He showed me his film and how he did a similar shot. He's absolutely right with the lighting and I will be implementing it into my film.