This assignment is designed to:
• help you gain familiarity with the camera's knobs and buttons,
• practice your cinematography skills,
• devise and execute a sequence of shots,
• explore the construction of space and time
• explore continuity and discontinuity
• devise methods for collaboration (democractic, hierarchical…)

CONSTRAINTS:
•"in-camera" edits only;
•10 shots minimum; 15 shots maximum;
• must include a Wide Shot, a Close UP, a Tracking Shot, and a match on action edit across 2 shots

THE STORY:
Must include:
• object
• action
• obstacle

• These will be given to you in-class

Make a video that is one long shot. A shot begins when you start recording and ends when you stop. Think visually.

Be expressive with your framing and camera movements. Make sure that your camera movements are motivated.

Think about color and light and the space of the story, objects and/or people in the frame.

Create a transformation/s over the duration of the shot, e.g. start in a dark space and end in a bright space, interior to exterior, CU to WS, one genre to another, one character to another, etc. How do the character's change over the course of the shot? Is there a conceptual shift or transformation. How does the shot begin and end?

Script, shoot, and edit a short narrative piece that is based on a true story (yours or someone close to you). We will spend one day in class workshopping a piece of prose writing drawn from an actual memory that will inform and inspire your script. Remember that the more specific visual and aural detail you provide about characters, places, textures, sensations, light, objects, gestures, and sounds the more evocative and compelling your piece will be.

CONSTRAINTS:
• No sync sound dialogue
• No more than 3 actors
• No student filmmaking clichés (list to be made in class; includes guns, violence, alarm clocks, unmotivated oceans)
• Your story must be in sequential time
• Your story must take place during one day
• Your story must be based on an actual memory -- why is this memory important, and how can you use visual language to give it emotional weight?

Shoot and edit a short nonfiction piece.

You may choose to work in one of two modes:
Personal:
Make a piece that addresses something about you. This can be: a self-portrait; an account of an event in your life; a memory of something. You may use sync sound, but do not address the camera directly or use sync interviews. You may use voiceover. Think imaginatively about sound / image relationships. What do we see and what do we hear? Remember that your audience is larger than you, your group of friends, or family.

OR
Observational:
Choose a subject that interests you that you are interesting in spending some time observing. It can be a place, a person (portrait), or a process (something visual that has a beginning and end; e.g. a cobbler fixing shoes, a workday on a farm). Choose a subject that is not familiar to you (i.e. do not film your roommates, friends, or coworkers). When shooting, do not direct your subject, but rather respond with the camera to what is happening. Do not interview your subject or attempt to make conversation. Simply observe and film. Do not include voice over or direct address to camera.