Wednesday, 30 November 2016

Research into products with computers

I was looking on different episodes of films and TV series when the computer screen was filmed. This is quite common shots as we use computer in our every day life.
I was looking on some quite old examples like "You've got mail" , "Sex and the city" and modern ones like "Cyberbully" , "Arrow", "Flash", "Mr. Robot", "The Big Bang Theory",  "The Social Network" and some others.


There is usually some common shots used to show computer work.
For example over the shoulder shots:


This allows the viewer to see what is happening on the screen, but also to have a link with the character. The importance of information is shown by the focus, how close it is and the duration of this particular shot. Looking at the examples above, it is clear that the director doesn't want us to know what is in the computer in the scene from Mr. Robot (on the bottom right) but wants on the others. 

Another quite spread form of showing the information on the screen is a close-up of the particular word, sentence or even object. This was widely used in "You've got mail" and "Sex and the city". It is the oldest examples I have been looking at, so may be in the past the quality of the image was poor so to draw an audience attention, close ups were used. However this method was also used quite common in "Cyberbully". When watching these shots, the viewer will read it subconsciously.

I found that one more well-spread method of showing computer screen is just having it on background. This allow to create needed atmosphere, like working or awareness that character is communicating with somebody.

The last subgroup that I can think of is just filming screen, from different angles without even showing the people in the scene. This image on the screen may move, show video or just show relevant information. Usually such picture followed up by sound like voice or music.






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