Week 1: Introduction & Cinema Grammar

Smartphone Camera Fundamentals

• Resolution & Frame‑Rate: 720p or 1080p @ 30fps or 24fps
• Focus: tap‑hold to lock; use AF only for rack‑focus practice or when moving with camera.
• Allow at least 10 secs of recording total, with a few seconds before and after "action"
• Hold camera steady on shot
• Move in closer rather that using Zoom
• Shoot horizontal or landscape mode. Not vertical/portrait.
• Pay attention to lighting on subject. Don't shoot in direct sunlight or with backlighting.

In-Class Mini-Assignment (groups of 3–4) · 5-Shot Silent Story (5%)

Goal: Tell a legible visual story in exactly five shots, under 30 seconds. No dialogue, no music, no titles — everything the viewer needs comes from framing, depth, and the cut.

Across your five shots, show us:

• Off-screen space — someone or something enters or exits the frame, or a character looks at something we can't see yet (POV)
• Depth — at least one shot with a clear foreground, middle ground, and background
• Continuity of movement — an action, exit, or entrance that carries across a cut
• Framing variety — change shot scale (wide / medium / close) to release information in order

Story starters — pick one or invent your own. Small transactions with objects work best; they generate off-screen space and depth without any dialogue:

• A pickpocket — the lift, the walk away, the moment of discovery
• Someone drops an item; a stranger picks it up and returns it
• Someone drops an item; a stranger picks it up and doesn't return it
• A practical joke set up, performed, and reacted to
• Two identical bags or notebooks — the wrong one gets picked up
• A note or object left for someone who finds it after the leaver has gone
• Someone follows someone else and loses them or confronts them.

Keep the cast to the people in your group and the props to what's in your pockets/bags.

Shooting rules:

• Plan your shots carefully. Discuss options with your group. You can shoot many angles and experiment with different compositions, but you will be selecting five shots in the editing.
• Static shots only — phone on a monopod or braced. No pans, zooms, or handheld drift.
• Shoot horizontal, 720p/1080p. The same camera/phone for all five shots.
• Roll 2–3 seconds before and after each action — you need handles to cut on. Each shot should be at least 10 seconds total with the opening and closing handles.
• Record sound in camera, but mute the track in the timeline.
• Rotate roles: one operates, one directs, the others perform.

Workflow — this is the workflow every project in this course will use:

1. Shoot your planned and improvised setups.
2. Share — dump the clips into one of your group's OneDrive folders and share so everyone has the media.
3. Edit in Premiere: new project, import, select and lay the five shots in order, trim, mute the audio track. No effects, no transitions — cuts only.
4. Export edited timeline to H.264, YouTube or Vimeo preset, 1080p (720p acceptable).
5. Upload to Vimeo or YouTube. Set to unlisted. Write a description: title, one sentence on the story.
6. Submit the URL — Canvas for graded projects, the Slack channel for ungraded ones. This one goes in Slack.