Last week, Belinda and I continued to work on our CAS project about the promo video for the varsity basketball season. I contacted the President of the Athletic Council earlier to possibly get a date of the official team photoshoot, so I can arrange my filming on the same day as that. Unfortunately, since the new jerseys haven’t arrived yet, the date is unconfirmed. As an alternative, Belinda and I decided to experiment with different angles and distances of shooting to see which of it would achieve the most desirable effect and using the selected videos as samples during the actual filming process to reduce the needs of retakes. For this sample shooting, we simply used our phones to film and also omitted the editing (e.g. filters, background music, effects, etc.) that’s supposed to go into the actual footage, as these are only sample videos after all.

The first two scenes of the video are a zoom-in shot of a person tapping the ball in between her hands and doing a between-the-legs crossover. We tried a really close-up shot and also a mid-range shot. Unexpectedly, when I was planning out each of the individual scenes in my video, I originally thought that the more closed-up the shot is, the more powerful it will turn out. I was proven wrong. Instead of conveying a really powerful and mysterious atmosphere as I initially planned it to be, the overly closed-up shot produced a really crowded and confined feeling. It also amplified the distance between the foreground and the background and made the ball disproportionally big compared to the person, which was weird.

Therefore, we decided to take a few steps back and retake the shot in a further distance. It turned out so much nicer, and it perfectly conveyed the atmosphere that I wanted. It revealed only the person’s chin, creating a mysterious feeling (again, the video is unedited, so it may not appear so, but it matches the image in my head). The newly-adopted shooting distance allowed a balance between the foreground (the ball) and the background (the person) to form, making the ball the subject while not completely covering the person’s body parts. As my teammates are going to be shooting in their jerseys during the actual filming process, this distance would allow details on the jersey, such as the dragons sign and their numbers, to be partially revealed as she taps the ball back and forth, which can set a really mysterious mood on the video along with the effects and lightings that will be added later on. I decided to adopt it as my sample video. After finishing this shot, we quickly moved onto the second scene where Belinda films a close-up shot of me dribbling beneath the legs.

 

For this second scene, instead of focusing on finding the optimal distance, we focused more on trying out different angles to see which can achieve a more desirable effect. We first tried shooting from approximately 15 degrees left of the person in a pretty close distance, then we found out that it didn’t turn out as well as we expected it to be, due to the inability to capture the entirety of the ball’s relatively larger motion and the insufficiency to set up a distinct foreground and background. Therefore, we tried shooting from the right with a larger angle (45 degrees ish?) with a further distance from the person, and it turned out way better. With a further distance and a larger angle, the video frame now composes of a more distinct foreground (front leg) and background (back leg) with the ball right in the center, indicating it as the highlight. The ball, as well as the arm’s swinging motion, are able to be captured entirely, giving off a not crowded feeling. As a result, clearly, I adopted the second shot as my sample video.

 

This wraps up another preparation session for my CAS project! Now I look forward to actually shooting it even more!! :))