Post 15: Media Language: The Five C's of Cinematography

I decided to read an article by Joseph V. Mascelli to help my understanding of The 5 C’s of Cinematography and see how it could help us in planning and shooting our film. In the article he gives a short summary of the entire book and explains what the 5 C’s are and how they affect a film.

 

 

 

 

1.      Camera Angles

‘Camera placement is determined by narrative significance’

This will be helpful when it comes to filming out short film because it will remind my group that we can move the camera to give certain shots a greater effect. We could tilt the camera up (low angled shot) at the groomer to show his power over the young girl and have a high angled shot looking down on Sophie to show her vulnerability.

2.      Continuity

‘Good continuity encourages the viewer to become absorbed in the story- telling, without bothersome distractions’

If we don’t have continuity throughout our film it will look unprofessional, we will have to make sure the props are in the same place each take and that the actors are in the same positions.  We also have to make sure that the action happening on screen has continuity, this is done through the use of shot-reverse-shot and match on action. If the continuity is not constant throughout it will not only reduce the quality of our film but it can also distract the audience from our storyline.

3.      Cutting

‘It is possible to cut away to anything happening anywhere at any time’

We don’t have to have the story of our film told in a liner timeline, we can jump backward and forward, we can switch from one event that’s happening to another. This will be useful for our montages; we can cut from one shot to another so the audience can see more than if we stuck to one thing.

4.      Close-ups

‘The stronger the motive for using a close-up, the more the close-up can help make the story-telling truly effective’

Close-ups in our film will be to show the emotions of the characters and to show the importance of them to the audience. We will have to make sure that we only use close ups when we feel it is necessary so that when we do they have a greater effect.

5.      Composition

‘Good composition is the arrangement of pictorial elements to form a unified harmonious whole’

We will make sure each shot looks good and has good composition to encourage the audience’s eyes to concentrate on the important elements on the screen. Each shot should also work well with the shot before and after to give a better overall composition.

We want to ensure our film is as good as possible and to do that we have researched lots of different aspects of film making. I think that the 5 C’s will help strengthen and improve the quality of our film.