singel camera production.
there is two types of camera production.
multi camera production
single camera production.
their differences are : multi camera production doesn't use the post production phase, it is mixed live, examples of a multi camera production are Tv shows like the x factor, celebrity juice and many more.
on the other hand, a single camera production uses the post production phase, it has the pre production phase, production and post production. it used on films, music videos, documentary and more, the reason is because its less pricy and provides the flexibility a film maker may need when filming on location that requires just one camera, David o Russell used one camera shoot Bradley cooper and Jennifer Lawrence dinner scene in silver linings playbook.
other aspects of a single camera production are its crew, a single camera production doesn't necessary need a huge amount of crew members aposed to a multi camera production, Gareth evens went to mexico to shot monsters with just two members of crew: his actor and his sound mixer.
there are different formats that applies to both types of productions, for instance :
serial format is usually a drama which is a prolonged story that only has up to 4 episodes, BBC's america latest serial show " fleming the man who would be bond" only lasted for 4 episodes. they are made by a single camera production as they are shot on different locations and are edited before airing.
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SERIES format, series are tv shows that lasts for a couple of episodes per season, and they often have numerous seasons. the tv CW hit tv show "arrow" has 23 episodes per season. they can be shot by either multi camera production or single, but it depends on what kind of show it is,a show like coronation street is shot with a multi camera production because its shot in a studio and airs 4 times a week therefore a multi camera production is the right choice because it saves them a huge amount of time. however, shows like arrow or how i met your mother are shot by a single camera production because they only air once a week and are shot in different locations throughout their episodes so a single camera production is their right choice as it makes great to use on location and not to mention the fact that their on once a week means they follow the post production phase.
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ONE OFF format is usually films or music videos because they're shot just once. a film like american hustle is a one off because it took 32 days to film and after it was edited it was distributed throughout cinemas and that was its process. one offs are shot by a single camera production and not multi camera because they have a post production phase.
Genre: there is many genres such as dramas, comedy,action,horror and many more.
an the genre "
action" is given to a production when there is fight sequences in it or a lot of stunts and many more, most action productions are always single camera productions and never multi camera production because; in order for the fight sequences to look as impressive as they do in films or the stunts, they all have to be edited which is a process thats only used in a single camera production.
dramas cane be both multi camera productions or single camera production, dramas such as eastenders or coronation street are dramas that are shot with a multi camera production because the producers have a set built for them.
but dramas aren't shot only by a multi camera production, films too can be dramas that are shot by a single camera production, the film silver linings the playbook is a drama directed by david o Russel, it was shot on location (philadehia) and then edited before it was distributed in cinemas.
comedy is another genre that is also shot by both milti and single camera production, saturday night live is one of the biggest tv show in america and its a comedy too. its show with by a multi camera production and aired live hince the name "saturday night live". nbc has built a studio for the show as its been running for 39 seasons. a film is classed as a comedy when it contains alot of humour and makes its audience laugh. there is also drak comedies and light comedies, dark comedies are full of dark humour; the wolf of wall street was filled with a lot of dark humour. at the start of act 2 jordan and danny as sat down in a dinner having a conversation about how danny married his cousin and how he'd disown his child if it was born with a mental disability he would disown it. thats a dark thing to say about a child but we find our selves laughing when he says it, which is dark comedy.
just like dramas, comedies are shot by single camera production aswell, movies like the hangover, tropic thunder or ted are classed as comedies and were all shot on different locations by single camera productions.
Narrative structure
there is various narrative structures such as linear,non linear, flashback, realist, anti-real, ending;it can be an open ending or a closed ending.
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Linear narrative style follows a straight story line, linear story lines starts from the begining of a story and ends at the end of those stories. films such as think like a man or 21 jumpstreet follow and linear story line. think like a man follows a group of friends as they go through relationship ware with their girlfriends and wife. the pursuit of happiness starts with a two young boys in highschool graduating,they join the police academy and gets assigned an assignment to go after highschool drug supliers. both stories starts from the begining to end with no flash back or stories that dont apply to the timeline of the film. the reason behind making a linear film is because the producers of the film always want big films such as 21 jumpstreet or the purchase of happiness with a huge mainstream audience to be easily received and understood, a linear storyline is very easy and not difficult to understand which is why films with a wide target audience are usual linear.
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Non linear narrative style doesn't follow a straight time line, it doesnt starts from the begining to end, it bends the rules abit, films such as american hustle is a non linear film simpy because its opening scene is a scene when all christian bale,bradley cooper and amy adams characters are attending a meeting with the city's mayor polito, which is a scene that happens to be in the middle of the film in act 2. flash backs are also seen in non linear narratives films, spiderman 3 features a scene when sandman has a flashback of the night of which him and his friend killed peter parker's uncle. the reason why filmmakers chose to use non linear narrative structures is usually because they want to make a much more artistic and creative film. all great directors and great filmmakers always use non linear storylines because its takes a talented storyteller to make a non linear film.
Flashback are used in films to help fill in gaps in the story, remind the audience of an event that may have accured in the characters past or even let the audience see for themselves into the characters past. we learn more about oliver queen's past in the tv show arrow everytime he has a flashback of the time he spent on the deserted island in the seas of china. flash backs are never used in linear story lines, they are always used in non linear movies because they take people back in time rather than keep em on a straight time line. most sequel films use flash backs as away to connect with the prequel, iron man 2 uses a flashback of the ending scene of the first iron man which is a scene when tony start reveals that he is infact iron man, the lets people who had no idea that its a sequel notice its connection to the first one.
realist films are set in the real world, they're not based on a mythalogy or fantasy, they follow the rules of the real world. a good realist film is 12 years a slave by steve mcqueen. it's set in new orleans and follows the real life story of salomon N. the film was an adaption of his novel 12 years a slave. film makers chose to make realist films because people are always fascinated with reall life stories. the film the wolf of wallstreet is also a realist as it is based on jordan belfort and the events that accured in a period of his life, its producers made it because his story was a fascinating one and people were curious to see his life on the big screen, a life of lots of money, drugs, women and deep corruption, it almost seems unreal which makes it more interesting to watch. most realist films are based on autobiographies or real life events. the film zero dark thirty is based on the capture of osama binladen, the worlds most feared terrorist, EVERYONE was excited to see it.
Ending: every film needs an ending,but there is two types of endings; an opening ending or a closed one. an opened ending is an ending that leaves the viewers with unanswered questions, cliff hangers... the film the amazing spiderman ends with alot of unanswered questions; it ends as the harry osborn/ green gobling is planing to create a team of supervillain aswell as chosing which vilain is going to be in his villain boyband. and the very last shot on the film is at the very start or a fight scene between spiderman and the mentally disturbed villain rhino. that leaves the audience with a lot of questions, most of the times film makers chose to end the film with an open ending is because they are setting up a sequel of a big franchise or because they want the audience to sort of filled the missing gaps with their immagination.
closed endings are when a film ends with a solution, the goodie won the battle between him and the bad guy, the girl has found her true love, the cat has killed the annpyiong little clothes nibbling mouse. closed ending leaves the audience satisfied and at ease, which is different from an open ending because open endings leaves the audience dying to know what happens next or wanting explanations to certain plot details. we walk out frozen satisfied with the ending because both the sisters are reunited and the bad guy has be cought but walking out of captain america 2 is stressfull because all we think of is, where is nick furry going, whats captain america and falcon going to do now , or where is black widown going after that court hearing... , these are all questions that the producers wants us to have so we can build excitement and grown restless untill we watch the sequel that comes out two years later.
Technical storytelling.
film makers use technical storytelling to create meaning throught technical codes; some of those codes are camera shots, camera movement, editing, sound, mese en scene or enigma codes. all these things are used to communicate to the audience and tell them something without the use to dialogue.
the hit tv show arrow is an action tv show, it has amazing stunts and fight choreagraphies, but besides that the directors use more than the stunts and choreopgraphies to impress the audience. in episode 22 of the second season ( the assassination of brother blood). the scene starts off as the camera slowly shows a few bodies around his office floor with him standinf by the window sipping on his champagne.
the camera is a low angle looking up towards him, as the audience we immediatetly get the feeling that he's powerful, the bodies lying around his office and the calm look on his face also aplies that he's the one who took their lives. the camera then zooms in slowly from the feet up of the next character (raveger), the slow movement of the camera and its choice of low angle is the directors way of telling us that she's also a powerful character. the use of soundtrack in her introduction does imply that shes evil and dangerous as its a very dark soundtrack.
which sets the scene up well becasue the minute he sees her, the camera zooms into his face and we can see from his facial expressions that he is afraid of her. the whole scene is lit very darkly, the only light that's in the scenes is always behind the characters or away from them, by keeping them away from the light and in the dark, its a way of telling us that they are infact dark characters that aren't reedemable. the camera pans around giving us a glimps of brother bloods table, we see his scary and famous head mask. the cobversation between raveger and brother blood proceeds as he has his back towards her, the light then shines on his eyes but keeps raveger at the back in the dark, that tells the audience that despite how eveil brother blood is, he isn't as evil as raveger, there is still som good in him. the music the changes the an even darker tone which lets the audience know that somethin is about to happen, raveger moves closer to him and puts two blades through his chest. the light then has moved from blood's face and is not shining in ravegers menacing eyes, that let's us see how brutal she is and noweveil she is but also the light going out on blood is a representation of life being taken from him. she pushes him on his table and his mask falls on the floor,the camera zooms in on the mask as it lays there on the floor, which is a representation of the fall of brother blood as he is now dead. the use of sound, light and camera movements in this scenes comunicates with the audience very clearly to the point where dialogue isn't even needed to understand what's happening. through out the show the use of dark light is essential because it the colour black represents bad and the show is about the city starling city,filed with crime and villains. the shows hero is green arrown, he's outfit is dark green so are his arrows, so green and black are colours that are used alot in the show to represent the cities hero and its villains.
american hustle directed by david o russle does also use technical story telling wisely, like the tv show arrow it uses mese en scene as a way of showing the audience the tone of the scene. unlike arrow american hustle uses bright colours, at the beging of act 2 there is a sequence that shows lady edeith and irving's relationship, which is a happy, joyful and even intimate relationship. as they run around in street smiling and gignling, the light is very bright and the set if filled with green trees and moving cars. that show us that they are carefree and happy when theyre together. the scene then cuts to them two in a dancehall dancing with each other, he camera makes 360 movements around them but keeps the paste very slow and stays in time with their dancing rythm.
the camera immitatates their movements as away of giving us the same feelings that they are feeling in that moment, the slow movements of the camera implies that they are very relaxed and the bright colours in the mises en scene implies that they are very happy. the scene then cuts to another scene when they're in a bed room undressing, the soundtrack in the background is a slow,calm and seductive which sets the mood perfetly for the scene, but more importantly...the lighting is dim, its a very dim yellow intimate light, that directly lets us know as they audience that theyre about to get intimate.
technical storytelling is used also to hint ideas into the audience's mind, stirring up our thoughts and letting our immagination run wild. in the new amazing spiderman 2 movie after electors death, as spiderman walks off having defeated the villain electro, he camera pans down to electros head piece and shows that it can regenerate itself. therefore without saying anything, the director gives us a clue that electro isn't really dead, he is made of eectricity and electricity can't truly be distroyed.
the narrative structure follows the 3 act structure
the three act structure is made by 3 acts: act 1, act 2 and act 3.
during act one is when we are introduced to both the antagonist (villain of the story) and protagonist (hero of the story) , its also when we get to know what the film is about, in silver lining the playbook during the first scene we meet the protagonist of the story "pat" in a mental institution,directly we know that the film is based on mentally unstable characters. later on in act 1 we findout that he has bipolar. act 1 always finishes with the ionciting incident; the incident that will set both the tone and storyline of the whole movie. frozen the inciting incident is when elsa freezes her sister, which sets the story for the whole film her parents then trys to hide her magic and seperates her from her sister for hers and her sisters safety. i silver lining the playbook the inciting incident is when pat falls out with tiff when she invites him to her room but he refuses and offends her.
act 2 usually starts off with the protagonists first obsticles and also his first solution, pat's obsticle is the restraining order that was filled against him and the fact that his parents and doctors wont let him speak to his wife. but he finds a solution to these obsticles when tiff offers to get a letter to his wife even though she will be breaking the low. during act two the obsticles increases as the story goes along, pat's obsticles increased when tiff had a change of her and said to him that she will not get the letter to his wife unless he does a favour for her too, she needed a partner for her dance competition but dancing wasn't patts thing. the obsticles increases as the story goes along amd the end of act two we see the protagonist at the lowest ebb, when all the odds are against him and he is down. pat's lowest ebb accures at the end of act two when he finds out that tiff lied to him and never gave the letter to his wife and also his father took a bet on his dance competition and bet all his money on it. pat didnt want the bet because it puts pressure on him and he didnt want his dad to lose everything if he failed at his dance competition wit tiff.
act 3 starts with the solution to the big obsticle, in thor the dark world, thor finds the solution when he figures out a way to kill the leader of the dark elves, which is to destroy the mystical energy that gave them their power. pat finds his solution when he realies that his ex wife is going to be at the dance competition so he prepares for it. and then come the climax, the climax is when the protagonist overcomes his obsticle, when thor finally destroy the leader of the dark elves and saves all nine wrelms from eternal darkness. but also in act three in much more complicated narratives, you get plot twists. things that catches you by surprised and shockes you, the reveal of the villain in frozen, or when pat is finally reunited with his wife after his won the contest but choses to go for tiff which he truly loves.
