Evaluation

For part of our A2 course we created a short film which had to show match on action, shot reverse shot and 180 degree rule. We also had to include a person/character walking through a door, sitting on a chair and exchanging dialogue with another character. For this my group decide to have the genre be a drama and the title ‘bruised’. We decided to choose as the only place we could shoot the film was at school.

I think our film demonstrates continuity well as the storyline is a real life situation and is not made up or hard to believe, the shots flow very well and you can always see where the characters are at all time and is very much easy to follow. The only short scene which did not flow as well as others was the flashback, but to show that it was something that had already occurred we used the ‘dream transition’.

Match on action is a technique used in film editing, is a cut that connects two different views of the same action at the same moment in the film. This was very easy for us to accomplish as we had two cameras which showed each of the characters at the same time so when editing all we had to do was the cut out the unnecessary parts.

This is an example of the match on action in our shots.

                                                       

An 180 rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. This was very easy to follow as most of the time our filming occurred in the room and the two cameras didn't move and would always stay on one side.

The last editing techniques we used was shot reverse shot, shot reverse shot is where the camera switches from one character to the other to show the emotion on there face and who they are looking at, this was very easy to create as we had both views of each characters as we used two cameras so all we had to do was edit and cut out unessential parts.

I feel that our group worked very well together, we all cooperated and each helped to put ideas towards the planning, filming and editing. During the planning process we all took on rolls which were, writing the script, producing the storyboard, choosing actors and finding suitable filming locations. Doing this made it much faster to get the planning completed, after that we started the filming and got this going really quickly as each of us had separate tasks and in no time at all we were shooting the scenes. We all took in turn to film the scenes, as this was happening we were all helping each other to make sure the camera was getting all the characters in shot and what each character was meant to say. When editing we had a few sessions, so two went in to edit each time, this was very pleasant experience as we knew what we wanted the film to look like so we incorporated our ideas and worked together to finally complete the film. Overall I really liked the filming and editing and I thought we all worked really well together.

If I were to film this piece again I would have first of all made sure that my legs were not in the right hand corner of some of the scenes as they were not meant to be there and are very distracting. I would also have had someone else play the character ‘Billie’s dad as we had the same actor playing the teacher as well. I think this would have been necessary as the dad does not look convincing as he is wearing leggings and ugg boots. Another thing I would have improved on was changing the sound effects which occurred in this scene:

I thought that sound effect was very unnecessary and at the time of placing it in that scene we that that it much was lower in sound and didn't realise how distracting it was. If we were to do this again I would have taken sound out completely as it creates tension. Other than the points I have made I really don't think that there are any other things we need to improve on in our film.

I thought that we planned our video very well, we assigned tasks for each of us and after that got together to look at the storyboard, script and the actors we have chosen. We then started to think about what is going to occur in our film and we blocked out the actions and where the characters were going to be placed. I do not think that we planned our mise en scene well as in the film you can clearly see bits of paper on the table which were not purposely placed there at all. Also my leg was in the shot and in a way is a distraction and has nothing to do with the storyline. After filming we planned the IMAC editing times with our teacher which helped us to plan what we were going to do in each session in order to complete the editing and overall our film.    

We used quite a lot of transitioning effects during our editing process, the first one we incorporated was a fade to black we used this just before the flashback scene and using the fade to black helped the shot to end smoothly then start the flashback. The other transition we used next was the dream transition, we used this to show the audience that this occurred in the past and was in fact a flashback from billy's memory. Using transitions in our film helps the scenes to flow well and help the audience to understand the story and not get confused or distracted. 

This is the fade to black scene in our film:

This fade in black was used to transition into the flashback and make it flow well.

 I have learnt a lot about the editing software whilst doing the preliminary task; from the IMAC I have learnt how to create a film from just having film clips from the video camera. I have learnt how to insert transitions and adjust audio and cut shots down.

The most interesting thing that I have learnt from the editing software was how to extract a sound clip from one of the scenes and place it in another. This was really helpful for our group as we had a scene where ‘Billy’ was looking at the teacher in silence and we wanted to put in an appropriate sound clip and the one of him shouting “stop it” sounded relevant. We did this by muting the audio that was playing when ‘Billy’ was looking at the teacher then extracted and duplicated the flashback audio and shortened It down and placed it in the appropriate scene.

What I have learnt about technologies throughout the process of constructing this film is that without the cameras, editing software, tracking and dolly’s the filming would not have been possible at all and there would not have been a film. I have learnt that having the editing software helps the shots that we filmed to flow well, shorten them down and fit in together to make the film complete. I have also learnt without the editing software we would not be able to duplicate audio and place it somewhere else, you would not be able to add transitions which could make the film confusing and also without the music at the end and start credits it would be very dull and lifeless.

In conclusion I have learnt from the preliminary tasks how many factors you need to think about before you film, e.g. storyboard, script, storyline and actors. I have also understood how the editing process works and how to do it myself and how to work I-MOVIE. I have also learnt from my mistakes and in future know what to do and what not to do. Overall I have really enjoyed my preliminary task.

Final Film for Preliminary Task

On this film i worked with Millie Stone, Jessica Wilding and Yasmin Young. The actors which starred in our short film was Minur Ali and Jess Foster. The three main camera shots and angles which we had to include in this film was match on action, 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot.

The film

Our group found the equipment relatively easy considering we did not have any experience with a camcorder and none of us had filmed before. There were only a few buttons to choose from so we experimented first of all and slowly started to get the gist of how to work the camcorder. We all helped each other to set up the equipment which was the dolly and the tripod, I found it a little bit difficult though to attach the camcorder on top of each of the two equipment as it had a certain way to make it fix on. But apart from that we found the equipment quite easy.

 The issues that my group faced while filming was how long we had to film it, we did the filming in two lessons which was only two hours. We only had a small time constraint as in our group a lot of us had lessons and the only time in the week where we had 2 continuous free lessons was that day and was really convenient as so were our actors. Another problem was the fact that we had to film in a continuous line so that nothing had changed and looked out of place so it would be realistic. So how to solve this we had two cameras and placed one of them in the left corner of the room and the other on the right but were opposite each other but on a diagonal, the left camera would mainly show just minurs face and the back of Jess’s head and the other camera would show a mid shot of Jess and the back of minurs head. Another problem we had was with the dolly when filming the start of our production which was Minur walking through the corridor, the problem we were faced with was the shaking of the camera when moving and the dolly moving through the door. The shaking of the camera was fixed by the person recording holding the camera really tightly so it wouldn’t shake. The other problem was with the dolly going through the door and the door had to be opened but If a person was standing there holding the door open you would see them on the film so we solved this by lodging and object underneath the door so it would stay.

Other than that we had no other problems while filming and was relatively easy.

We only changed a few things while filming, we removed a few of the shots as we felt that they were not necessary for example the close up of minurs feet walking through the corridor, we thought this dragged on too long and was really not needed. Another thing we changed was the ending, we originally were going to have the camera pan out and into the corridor and have the door slap shut but we decided not to include this as the film was already three minutes and was not considered essential.

 We did not have to re- film anything as we had filmed all the shots and got all of the footage we needed.

We prepared ourselves for filming by sorting out which one of us in the group was going to film which parts so everyone could plan themselves how they were going to film it. We also before filming looked through the storyboard a few times and practised how we were going to shoot it so we knew exactly how it was going to look. I though our group worked really well when filming as we all get along and let each other input our ideas and suggestions. We all really supported each other and always made sure we ran through each shot by one another so we knew exactly what was happening.

 What I enjoyed most when filming was using the cameras, it was really new and exciting watching the actors practise then really filming it. I also enjoyed watching the film take shape when filming. I also really enjoyed my part of filming the flashback as it only took two shots to the get the final frame.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the filming process and thought we were really successful.

  

Storyboard for Preliminary Task

Description of ideas

We intend to shoot in a classroom as there is a lot of room and a door to enter and exit out of, it also would look much like a teachers office as there is a desk and chairs already set up in the room. We knew that we were going to perform a scene in the teachers room but we did not know what the basic storyline would include so we started by interpreting our ideas, we came up with a few which was,a student becoming pregnant, murder of a teacher, suicide of a student in the bathroom. But after all of the ideas we came to the conclusion of a new student being abused by their parent. From our final idea we then started to think about the characters and how many actors we would need to star in our short film. We decided that we would need 2 male actors and one female actor. We knew that we had to include the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action. When planning the filiming we decided to try and get the 180 Degree rule by placing an imaginary line where we could not pass with the camera's to get the audience intact and to not confuse them therefore when we do film the examiner and audience will see that this has taken place.

Planning the shot reverse shot was quite easy as we knew that there were going to be a few over the shoulder shots and this would show both of the actors so the audience would know who each character is talking to. Match on action we knew was going to be the character opening the door from one side, opening and walking through it in another. We planned to film this by having one camera on one side of the door and another from the other side.