By Charlie Karumi
Today on #teknikoTuesdays we’re talking about the Eff words… but unlike the ones you’re used to, these are the kind you’re actually allowed to say in public.
That’s because today, our spotlight falls on the glorious letter F… F for Film! I’m getting goosebumps just from writing that. Phenomenal Film: from whence innumerable lives and stories and culture and lifestyles have sprouted and thrived on. And it is no surprise what vocab we feature first on our segment today.
- Film- Film can mean a lot of things.
Film is an action. As in ‘to film’ or ‘filming’. When you pick up your video camera, camcorder or camera phone and point and shoot a scene, you are said to be filming!
Film is a noun. After you’re done pointing and shooting a scene as we described above, what you’ll have as an end product is a film.
And finally, film can mean a dark brown strip of plastic coated on one side with a light-sensitive chemical compound that is used to create images through light exposure. For those of you born before the 2000’s, you’ll know it as that small cylinder that was stuffed in the back of old cameras to allow you to take pictures. Thank heavens for digital photography!
(Top) Filming, the verb; (Middle) A film i.e. end product of filming; (Bottom) Camera Film
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Focus- this term refers to the degree of sharpness or distinctness of an image or certain element in the image. Lets me explain focus by using the most technologically advanced camera ever invented- your eye!
Try hold up you finger about a foot from your eye and stare at it. See how clearly you can see your finger while everything else appears fuzzy? That’s because the lens in your eye is focussed on your finger and in doing so has put everything else out of focus and thus the fuzzy appearance.
(Top) Finger in focus; (Bottom) Finger out of focus
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F-stop- the basic concept of photography is that light enters the lens and forms an image on the sensor/film to take the picture. An iris is the structure that controls the amount of light that passes through the lens. Thus the bigger the iris, the more the light and the brighter the picture. Makes sense?
F-stop is the measurement of how wide the iris is opened up at a particular point in time. It usually ranges from f/4 all the way to f/22 (the range depends on the lens). But it gets a bit confusing in that a small F-stop value, indicates a bigger the iris. Its goes inverse! So for a lens whose range is f/4 to f/22, f/4 is the F-stop value when the iris is at its widest while at f/22, the iris is at its narrowest. Feel free to read that again, I also got confused at first. This picture below might be of some help.
F Stop
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Fourth wall- a very old, very theatrical term. The fourth wall is an imaginary “wall” through which the film viewer or audience is thought to look through toward the action. Imagine your screen as a window you’re peeping through to watch all your favorite characters are living out their lives… that window is the fourth wall!
And you know those random times when a character on screen goes all crazy and turns to the audience and starts speaking to you in the audience, that’s what is known as ‘breaking’ the 4th wall.
Leonardo Di’Caprio breaks the 4th wall in “The Wolf of Wall Street“
Well, there you have it. Four Fun inFormative Effs! See you next week, same place and time for some more #teknikoTuesday.
Have a filmy week everyone!