Tag Archives: High Angle

Commercial Visual Review

Personally, I think that the commercial, The Force: Volkswagen is really cool and funny.

It starts from the black floor and then the camera zooms out with a dolly out and a tilt up shot, which soon we can see the main character the Darth Vader’s walking twoard us. When we can see the Dark Vader in the whole picture, the Dark Vader turns out to be a child instead of an adult which is hilarious. It is also interesting that the color of the floor matches the clothes of Darth Vader and the color of the wall contrasts the floor and the Dark Vader. Then the camera changes the shooting to the backside of the Dark Vader. In this scene, the whole hallway is highly contrasted with the next door, which seems to have more light. It looks like the Dark Vader is on walking out of the back stage to the front stage to perform. But this Dark Vader turns out to have no magic powers like the real one.

He tries to make a treadmill to run, a dog to move, washing machines to start, a doll to be alive, and a plate to move. But it all failed. By shooting the treadmill scene, the camera first uses two shoots to show the kid and the treadmill. Then it turns to be a high angle two shots that we can see the treadmill screen is not working while still seeing the child. High angle can also emphasis how small the children is, which makes the scene awkward and funny. In the dog scene, it continues to use two shots, but adds a individual shot for the dog that gives a confusing looking to the Dark Vader that present the awkwardness to us. For the washing machine shot, it is very short because it wants to connect with the doll shot that the hand motion of the two shots matches the rhythm of the music. In addition, in the doll shot, the camera gives us a symmetric shot while zooming in the camera. I think the director wants to show that the doll is not moving while the kid is performing his magic, but zooming in to the doll also gives me a creepy feeling. After this the camera moved to a scene that the kid is sitting in the dinning table he is performing magic to drag something. Then the camera switches to him and his mom that gave him a weird look and slides the dish to him.

After failures and failures, we finally see the product of this commercial, the Passat car, came into scene. After being noticed that the kid’s dad is back home from the dog bark, the little Dark Vader jumps out of the chair and runs out to the car, instead of his father. The Dark Vader still does not give up his hope of magic powers. But this time when he performs his magic, the car actually started that shocked the Dark Vader. It turns out to be his father pressing the engine start button. It shows the love of the father that makes his boy dream to come true, and how awesome the remote control is for the new Passat. The camera move for these series of scenes is outstanding. When the new Passat comes into scene, the picture has several curves, and the car drives in curves too, which makes the scene harmonious. Following the scene that the dad goes out of the car, the camera is panning to the left. This move is more like exhibiting the whole car because the panning center is on the car, which makes sure that the audience catches the whole side view of the new Passat. Then the little kid comes out with a relatively low angle. The purpose of this is to have more emphasis the body language of the kid waving to his dad and eagerly running to the car. I also think it is cool that the camera then has a shot inside the car which reminds me the shot over the shoulder, while this shot also has a purpose of demonstrating the inside design of the car. While the small Dark Vader is performing his magic again, the camera uses two shots again with unequal spacing, following up with a close up shot of the mask and hand of the child. When the car actually responded him, the camera switched to the back of the kid and facing the Passat so we can see the lights are flashing which shocks the Dark Vader. The next scene has an extreme close up of the remote control that we saw there is a button that can start the engine. After that scene, the camera shifts from a middle close up to a wide shot of the Dark Vader confused, looking at the new Passat and home. This camera move makes the audience see the car again and make them remember the car more clearly.

Overall, I think the commercial is smart and cool. It is full with humor that the story plot and the camera angle that the director chooses which makes the audience remember the commercial more clearly. I think the actors and the director did a good job to present the new Passat without just telling the story to us.

Video Review – Hermit Crab Migration

The video Hermit Crab Migration focuses on showing the audience how magnificent the migration of the hermit crabs is. In filming the video, the director of this video uses a lot of different shooting techniques like pull downs, high angles, low angles, sliding (from right to left and from up to down), close ups, filming different depth of fields etc.. By using these techniques, we can clearly see all the details of hermit crab migration: how they migrate, how difficult the migration is, how large their population is, and what the hermit crabs look like.

Before seeing this video, I have no sense about how large or small the migration is. After clicking on the play button, the video starts at the skyline and slowly maneuvers downwards until you see the beach filled with thousands of hermit crabs. To be honest, I was really surprised by the number of crabs that there was on the beach after the camera view shifted. So I can say that the pull down effect gives the audience a really good surprise.

After the set frame, the video continues with a slide from the left to the right. This gives the viewers a clear horizontal view of how large the crab population is. I think that this is a good decision to make because it lengthens the time needed to see the total population and also helps the viewer grasp at the enormity of the crowd as they are also forced to take in amount of land covered.

The video also has some close up frames of the crabs. When the camera gives the portrait of a crab, it captures most of the details of the crab’s movement and shows how difficult it is for the hermit crab to move from one place to another. This also gives a strong contrast of the previous frames of the whole landscape of crabs that will show the audience how difficult it is for the whole population to migrate from the sea to the inner land. In some close up scenes, the camera is set still to picture the rocks, and the sea. The rule of thirds is applied when shooting set frame scenes.

High angle is also used in this video, of which I think the purpose is to make the audience have the same angle that the filmmaker had while filming the scenes. Furthermore, it shows us how dense the population in his or her angle of the view.

In the ending, the shooting returns the scene back to the place where it starts. The meaning behind this, in my opinion, is that every migration will come back to its original place, which is in this situation, the sea.

This is the link for the video: ((http://vimeo.com/48466065))