Camera Workshop: Coverage

In television and film, coverage is the area that the camera(s) can see (that is covered). Usually, if more coverage is obtained by cameras during a shoot, the wider range of shots and footage the editor has when cutting everything together in post-production. To practice coverage, we did two exercises, one on character movement, and one on camera movement using the process of:

Block action

Determine shots needed

Plan/Test

Schedule

Shoot

Review.

For the character movement piece, a short sketch was performed from a script by two actors pretending to be two detectives walking down a short hallway.

To make sure the dialogue was clear, a shotgun mic was mounted on top of the camera (shown above), instead of a clip mic which was used instead only when one person was speaking in front of the camera. 

I decided to film this script in three long takes, one framed as a medium shot to show both the characters and some of their surroundings and two as close-ups, each one focusing on a single character to show their facial expressions and gestures in more detail. 

This short film is the first piece of editing I have done and I used Adobe Premiere Pro. When I began editing I found that the problem with shooting in long takes was that it made the narrative look broken up and not continuous as often the actors were not in the same position or the lighting had changed between takes. To solve this, I probably would do more planning before filming, maybe by writing in the types of shot I want to use in pencil on the script or, if I had more time, by creating a shot list, so that I knew which lines I wanted to be filmed as close-ups so I could position the actors more accurately and improve the continuity of the piece. 

Also, when cutting together the footage, I learnt that the editing looks cleaner if it is more rhythmic and uniform instead of jumpy. Therefore, I would probably take out the very short close-up shot of one of the actor's faces as it is too fast and doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the footage, but instead disrupts the flow of the narrative.   

I found the exercise on camera movement went better as the setup was simpler. For this scene, I directed the actor to walk to a chair, sit down, and flick through a book before throwing it over his shoulder. 

This short film was shot in several shorter takes, many of which were filmed several times. The film was broken up into components in planning, for example, the actor closing the book and throwing it was one take, while the book hitting the floor in close-up was filmed from behind in a different take. 

The only thing I would change about this short film is the titles as it would look better if the blue background covered the whole frame and stayed stationary during the credits roll.