Professional Project Review

Director: Ryan Coogler 

    My knowledge of different directors of big time movies is rather slim (more like nonexistent if I'm being honest), so I decided that I should start to look up who directs certain movies that I have seen and loved or seen trailers for and in return wanted to see the movie. Recently I saw the trailer for the movie Creed. What first caught my eye about this movie was I recognized the main actor, Michael B. Jordan, from a TV show that I loved. Creed seems to be an action packed, empowering, and motivating film and more often than not I find movies like that to be extremely intriguing. Creed hits theaters in a few days so I decided to check out who the director is since I've been feeling like I need to gain more knowledge of those who play such a big part in constructing a movie.

    After checking IMDb I found out that the director of Creed is Ryan Coogler, and since Creed has yet to hit theatres I looked at what other movies Coogler has directed to see if I had happened to have watched any of them. I had not seen or heard of any of his movies, because there was only a few short films and one fairly new movie titled Fruitvale Station that he had directed. I decided to watch Fruitvale Station and to my surprise Michael  B. Jordan is the main actor in that movie as well as Creed. Fruitvale Station is inspired by a crime that occurred on New Years several years ago involving a 22 year-old black man,  his friends, family, and ultimately his enemies. The film is right up my alley, because there is action that leaves you feeling empowered and motivated to take a stand and to overcome what ever it is that you are battling. 

    I have a feeling Ryan Coogler is going to be a director whose films I thoroughly enjoy. Rotten Tomatoes rated Creed very well and I have read a lot of comments from critics comparing it to Rocky. I look forward to seeing how this movie compares to Coogler's work with Fruitvale Station, especially since Michael B. Jordan is the main actor in both of his recent works.

Professional Article Review

The article Understanding Focal Length can be found here if you are wanting to learn what focal length is or just have a better understanding of it like I did. The article also discusses a bit about prime and zoom lenses.

What I learned: I learned that the focal length tells us the angle view or how much of the scene will be captured. The article has multiple examples of pictures using different focal lengths to show you how drastically different a shot can look based upon the focal length of a camera. Focal length is usually shown in millimeters (mm) and is actually not the measurement of the actual lens, but is a calculation of the distance from where light rays form a sharp image of an object. If you have a longer focal length you will have a more narrow angle of view. If your focal length is shorter your angle of view will be shorter and the magnification will be lower.

Here you can see an example of what different focal lengths might look like using the same subject. 

Student Tutorial: Telephoto Lens

• What is a telephoto lens?

-A telephoto lens is a lens with a longer focal length than standard, giving a narrow field of view and a magnified image. A narrow angle of field will create an image that makes near and far objects seem to be the same size. 

• Why are they useful?

-These lenses are good for giving a flattering perspective, isolating the subject from the background, and bringing distant objects closer.  If you are trying to create a shot that emphasizes the number of people or objects in the shot then a telephoto lens would be the one to use, because it will make the distance between objects seem compressed enhancing the appearance of congestion. 

-The most common use for a telephoto lens is to bring small and or distant objects closer allowing you to see more detail.