I chose a scene from the film Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus to watch. This scene lasted around a minute, and while watching the video, I noted a variety of angles and viewpoints. Some of the perspectives were similar to those highlighted by Ebert.

To begin, I saw the video without sound. A flight carrying people was traveling when the spectacle began. This photo was taken from a ‘zoom out‘ viewpoint, which allowed me to see the flight as well as the clouds and how they appeared. After seeing that photo, I assumed it was going to pour or that there would be some turbulence, but that wasn’t the case. The next scene took place inside the plane, where the air hostess is addressing all of the passengers. The camera was following the air hostess, which added the angle of ‘tracking.’ Then they showed us that there was turbulence on board, and the people were terrified. They demonstrated the ‘rule of thirds‘ at this point, with the air hostess on the right end of the image and one of the passengers on the left. They zoomed out later and returned to reveal the plane, then the clouds with the sun. They then returned to the plane and showed the passenger’s face, which was shown in a ‘close-up‘ shot. This view gave me the impression that something bad was about to happen, and the next frame showed us a shark attacking the jet from ‘one point perspective‘. The jet was going to crash when the shark attacked, and the camera was ‘shaking‘, which adds another perspective. They decided to end it by crashing the jet into the sea.

Then, without viewing the video, I listened to the audio. To be honest, I think I should have done the audio first and then the video since the video takes away the suspense because I already know what’s going to happen. If I had first listened to the audio and then watched the video, I might have been more interested in finding out what would happen. Nonetheless, when I listened to the audio, I heard a lot of sounds. To begin, I heard suspenseful music, which aids in the building of audience tension. Later on, I heard airplanes, thunder, and clouds, which helped me picture where the incident was taking place. After the shark growled, I heard the voices of the passengers and air hostesses, as well as their screams. Following the attack, I heard a jumble of passengers’ voices, which led me to believe that the jet was about to crash.

There was nothing new that I hadn’t noticed before when I watched the film with audio afterwards. I noticed every aspect and perspective the first time I watched the video. I was able to get a better view of the scene by watching the video with audio, but I didn’t notice anything new.

Finally, as Ebert said in the article, there were several rules of thumb in the video. The ‘rule of thirds‘ was demonstrated in a shot with an air hostess and a passenger. A ‘lower-angle‘ shot depicted the shark as a massive animal, heightening the anxiety in the film. The first shot was taken from a ‘zoom out’ viewpoint, giving us a great glimpse of the plane’s location. These were the few perspectives that I noticed and that Ebert noted in his article. For the first assignment, I’ve also seen a video called Camera Angles and Techniques. They talked about ‘moving the camera’ with the character, ‘shaking the frame’ to indicate chaos, and using a ‘close-up’ shot to convey the expressions on a character’s face in that film. These three perspectives were stated in the video and were included in the video I watched for this project.