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.
As mentioned previously we, as part of our Preliminary task, needed to plan, film and edit a scene in which we included examples of match on action, 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot.
So last Thursday my group did the filming of our Preliminary task and began to edit the work which we finished today, above you have the final result of our work. We, during the editing process, noticed that we've made mistakes which we will expand on in our evaluation and take into account when filming our main task.
Our Preliminary work was difficult in theory as we were going to film identical twins without actually using identical twins. As such we thought it best to have two girls with similar hair colours and physiques. This meant that we would be able to use one as the face of the twins and one as the body double, so long as we changed their costumes around as was necessary. We managed to do this quite well in my opinion and now have quite a successful piece of preliminary work that we have learnt from and will be able to use as a reference when completing our main task.
So today we started working on our preliminary task, our brief was to plan and film a face to face conversation between two characters. It involves filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing the room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a few lines of dialogue.
My group then wrote this script for the task.
Twin1: [Walks through door and crosses the room hitting the other persons should as she passes]
Twin2: [Drops a locket] "Hey! Watch where you're going!"
Twin1: [Sarcastic] "Oh, sorry..."
Twin2: [Picks up locket and dusts it off]
Twin1: "Uh, what's that?"
Twin2: "This? It's my locket, why?"
Twin1: [Silently takes off her own locket showing it to the other]
Twin2: [Looks up] "It's the same?"
Twin1: "So what does that mean?"
Twin2: [Thinks] "So you know you said your birthday is the 13th of January?..."
Twin1: "No! no, no, no! I know where you're going with this! We're not..."
Twin2: "Twins!!"
