Evaluation of preliminary task

For our preliminary (prelim) task we needed to plan film and edit a conversation that lasted 30 seconds and involved examples of match-on action, shot-reverse shot, and the 180 degree rule. We had to ensure that each member of our group had a turn at filming and editing, I feel that we managed this fairly well considering that our filming was completed as a group of four but during the last stages of editing we gained a member.

On Tuesday the 1st of November we began the initial planning stages of our task and by the end of that lesson were ready to film. (A copy of our script, storyboards and original costume designs can be found on the blogpost for the 1st of November) On the following lesson we began to film our material. Each group member took an active role in the filming process even if the section that they filmed wasn't included in the final edit. For example Connor filmed parts of the dialogue, Becky filmed the match on action, Kirstie filmed the final shot that sadly we were unable to use and I filmed the rest of the dialogue and the crossing of the room/dropping of the necklace. With the editing certain members did do more than others mainly due to a lack of confidence on the part of certain members. However we did all work out the shots that we would be using as a group and we made sure that everyone was happy when we chose which cuts to make, which transitions to use, which effects would fit best, which clip to slow-how much by and which clips to mute. 

We as a group did meet the brief to the best of our ability though we did for get to have the characters sit down to exchange the lines of dialogue and our footage lasted slightly longer than was expected and that the brief said it should. In order to prevent this in the future we will ensure that we double check with the brief more often than we actually did. But we did include examples of match-on action. For example;

We also ensured that we used examples of shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule, these elements fit together very well and we used them together. For example;

From the Prelim task I've learnt quite a lot. For example I know not to film directly opposite a window as it makes the shot a lot darker and makes it difficult to see what is actually happening in that part of the scene. The worst example of this we've not included in our final edit as it looked very out of place and didn't really help the footage to flow effectively even after we had put effects over the scene. Upon re-watching our footage I've decided that we should have also filmed the scene using a wider variety of angles and distances, low-angle long shot for example. We really needed to film for longer than we did and complete more takes of each scene.