Language of the screen!

So week three has us researching the 'Language of the screen'. Yeah, there are clues to this research embellished in the very first line of instructions for today's blog. Piece of cake!

To unearth the meanings of the terms ECU, WS and MS I headed to google and searched 'film and screen analysis ECU WS MS' and was rewarded with tasteful and straight to the point results.This very first site Film Directing and Film Making Tips for the Independent Filmmaker did the task justice and ergo I have come up with the following definitions..

ECU - Extreme Close Up (focus on the eye)

WS - Wide Shot (figure is shown in relationship to their surroundings)

LS - Long Shot (subject is shown in a small scale)

Heres a few examples of these types of shots. They are all from some of my personal favs!  

The Extreme Close Up (ECU). Damn hard to find a film still! Instead heres an example in full swing. The first thing that came to mind was a close-up of an eye and in the movie Requiem for a dream there are heaps of ECU sequences.

The Wide Shot (WS). 

The Long Shot (LS). 

Apparently we are to find an explanation for a few more of these film terms. I researched them quick smart at Digvidflynn's Blog and Ken Stone's Final Cut Pro Web Site, but they are actually pretty easy to guess.

MLS - Medium Long Shot

MS - Mid Shot

MCU - Medium Close Up

CU - Close Up

BCU - Big Close Up

I don't know whether having our tute before the lecture is beneficial or an absolute pain in the butt! We do get an insight into what the following day's lecture will unearth but at the same time we are forced to edit our blogs time and time again to make sure we know what is going on. Anyway misery aside, I found Josh's lecture (week 3) about 'cine speak' a somewhat time warp back into high school. We studied film composition in terms of shots, camera angles and technical aesthetics so the lecture was helpful to polish all that language of the film that has been softly stored away..

Bibliography

Digvidflynn's Blog, Revision for digital video, viewed 12 August 2009 <http://digvidflynn.wordpress.com/>

Film Directing and Film Making Tips for the Independent Filmmaker, Understanding camera techniques - shot size, viewed 12 August 2009 <http://filmdirectingtips.com/archives/165>

Integrative Arts 10, Film terminology, viewed 12 August 2009  <http://www.psu.edu/dept/inart10_110/inart10/film.html>

Ken Stone's Final Cut Pro Web Site, The language of film by Michael Wohl, viewed 14 August 2009 <http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/language_of_film.html>