The holiday known as “Kodomo No Hi” in Japan, or “Children’s Day”, is one of the public holidays included in Golden Week. This day is meant to celebrate children and their happiness. This holiday takes place on May 5th.
I wanted to do a quick capture of some of the things inside our home that were representative of Children’s Day. For example, the koi fish flags, kabuto helmet, as well as some of my son’s drawings and toys.
My main focus in this project was to practice fill-the-frame transitions, one of my favorite types of transitions. This is a completely “in camera” transition. This basically means that little to no editing is required to do it — the entire transition is dependent on the camera movement and object that is used to “wipe” the entire frame.
I first learned about this technique through Jesse Driftwood’s “In Camera Transitions” video. It’s an excellent tutorial and I highly recommend watching it if you want to learn more. He explains his entire thought process behind this method.
It’s a really fun way to exercise your creativity because you essentially don’t need to worry about the editing aspect so much. You can start with a single planned shot, then branch off from there by linking the next shot with a fill-the-frame transition.
You’ll want to make sure that the color of the filled frame matches up with the beginning of the next shot for a real smooth transition. You’ll also want to make sure that you are shooting in manual focus, so as to prevent the camera from focus hunting when the it’s being whipped or panned into the next shot. And finally, it’s also best to keep the exposure in check as well.
SHOT #1: Similar to how Jesse started out his sequence in his tutorial example, I also started out by pulling back from a central subject (in this case the koi nobori flags on the table) and then pan right to fill the frame with the wall.
SHOT #2: I come into the next shot with a reveal from left to right out of another wall to establish the next subject, which is the kabuto helmet.
SHOT#3: Since I still want to get another shot of the helmet, I do a hard cut and shoot the helmet from top to bottom. I use the shelf to wipe the frame down.
SHOT#4: Following the same downward movement, this shot comes out to reveal the small chair my son always uses when sitting at his table to write/draw. I also specifically positioned the chair in front of the table so that when the shot is revealed you would see the table in the background through the little bars of the chair.
SHOT#5: Hard cut to a closeup of the table top. I focus my son’s doodles here while panning to the left, and end by pulling the camera down past the table to wipe the frame.
SHOT #6: In this final shot, I’m again following the leftward movement. Here I highlight some of my son’s toys and end by simply pushing the camera into the nearby blinds.
I had a lot of fun doing this one and pushing my mind to think which objects I could use to enter & exit in & out of a shot. Again, I did not really plan this out and just went with flow from one shot to the next.
This is content is part of an ongoing self-challenge to create b-roll for 30 days. I must emphasize the absence of the phrase “consecutive days”. If this were the case, then I would have already failed this challenge. But I am committed to seeing this through! If you’re interested, follow my tag #30DaysOfBRoll on my blog here.
I also have a YouTube channel, which is where I will be uploading my videos respectively. If you wanted to have a sneak peak at what I might be publishing next on the blog…
Thanks for reading! I’ll catch you in the next one.
The Sapporo Nomad 
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