Brain-Game: Watch How You Watch the World Around You
An excellent way to understand how shots build scenes is by observing how you naturally watch the world around you. Pay close attention to how your eyes and brain process everyday activities. Your eyes instinctively select key visuals and filter out the rest. Every ‘shot’ provides detailed information about the person, the activity, and the environment. Your brain then ‘edits’ these distinct ‘shots’ into a seamless flow. Throughout this process, we don’t notice eye movements like zooms, pans, and tilts. Your eyes capture shots and your brain constructs scenes, which are the building blocks of stories.
Instructions:
1. Observation and Note-Taking (30-60 minutes):
a. Go out and find people engaged in an activity. (See ideas at the bottom of the page.)
b. Take the ‘Shot Types: Human Body’, ‘Shot Types: Framing’, and ‘Shot Types: Content’ graphics with you as a guide and reference.
c. Pay close attention to how your eyes observe the activity. Take note of what draws your focus.
d. Create a shot list based on how your eyes and brain perceive the person’s actions.
e. Your shot list must include two columns (see example below):
– One column for shot types, e.g., Long Shot (LS), Medium Shot (MS), Close Shot (CS).
– Another column describing what happens in each shot. What is the shot’s story?
– Use this Shot List form or create your own.
f. Complete steps “a” through “e” two more times, while watching people perform other activities.
Example Format for a Shot List (of a person making a cup of coffee):
Shot Type | Activity |
FS (Full) | A young man in pajamas walks up to the kitchen counter with a carafe of water. |
MS (Medium) | He sets the carafe down and pulls the coffee machine forward from the back of the counter, which is crowded with dirty dishes. |
MCS (Medium Close) |
While yawning, he opens the top of the coffee machine and begins to pour in the water. |
CU (Close-Up) | He’s pouring water from the carafe into the coffee machine. |
MS (Medium) | He finishes pouring water into the machine and places the carafe inside. |
LS (Long) | Seen from the sparsely furnished living room, the young man steps away from the coffee machine in the kitchen, opens the adjacent cabinet, gets a bag of coffee, and puts it on the counter. |
2. Reading Aloud and Visualizing:
Once you’ve completed your shot lists, gather together in a group and take turns reading aloud each other’s lists of shot types and activities. After each reading, a fellow student should describe how they see the scene in their mind. If the shot list is clear and well-constructed, the described scene should feel like a brief story of a person engaged in a continuous activity in a specific location.
Possible activities include:
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- Someone making a cup of tea or coffee
- Someone selling food from a cart
- Someone gardening or doing other household chores
- Two people engaged in conversation
- Construction workers on the job
- Children at play