Introduction to the camera

In week 2 of the course I was put into a group and given a Sony X70 camera to use as this is the camera we are most likely going to use for our documentaries. We were told to go and shoot some footage of whatever we chose using a range of different camera angles so that we could adapt to the camera. My group and I chose to shoot a conversation between two people and used a range of angles such as over the shoulder, mid shots, close ups and many others. At first using the settings on the camera such as the white balance setting was confusing but after trying a few buttons I seemed to adapt to the camera very quickly. We were also shown different interviewing techniques when shooting peoples answers that we then put into practice, for example, standing next to the camera and making eye contact when asking questions so that they are not distracted by the camera but still looking in the same direction. We were also given a microphone to use that was clipped to each subject interviewed so that we could hear their answers to 'What was your first day at Sussex like?'. We were also told to try left to right shooting when interviewing different subjects in the same area, this is where you have one subject standing on one side of the camera when answering and then have the following subject being on the opposite side.