Final Preliminary Task

Evaluation of our preliminary task

In class our teacher set us a task as part of our preliminary exercise to help us demonstrate the use of continuity. We had to film a character opening a door. The aim of the exercise was to demonstrate all the techniques we have learnt from previous exercises and to put all skills we learnt to produce a successful preliminary task. Our main task was to understand how to use match on action, shot/reverse shot and 180 degree rule.

Discuss how your group came up with the idea for the script. How efficient was the discussion? What key decisions were made?

Our group consisted of me, Omar, Ashwin and khushel. Each person put their ideas forward on what type of thriller genre we would like our film to mirror. After hearing all ideas we made a conclusion that our film we will be a horror thus creating suspense and tension. We then decided what shots we would include in our film. At this stage we started making a storyboard of each shot and how it was all going to come together.

2) Reflect on the planning/storyboarding stages and upload these:

In my opinion I think our storyboard turned out to be good. At first we couldn’t come to an agreement to what shots, and camera angles to include. We then wrote a list of key shots that we were going to use and where we were going to use them. As we wanted to create suspense we included lots of low and high angle shots. This would also allow our film not to seem boring as there is a variation of different shot used. Below is a list of what shot were going to be used:

Shot 1- screen fades into a black backdrop saying suchi2300 presents

Shot2 - screen fades to black as the first set of titles go.

Shot 3- the titles of the main characters appear showing camera, music, and editing

Shot 4- the main title appears on a red and black background

Shot 5- high angle long shot of Omar opening the door and walking towards the camera

Shot 6- the camera remains in the same position and focuses on Omar turning his head back and fourth

Shot 7- this is another high angle shot of Omar walking in a straight line stopping to check where the noise is coming from.

Shot 8- high angle shot of Omar walking past the door moving his head from left to right, trying to figure out where the noise is coming from

Shot 9- this then moves onto a low angle long shot where you can see another character in the background and shows Omar walking towards the camera

Shot 10- high angle shot of Omar trying to open the door

Shot 11- a medium shot of Omar entering the door and Ashwin looking at him

Shot 12- a close-up of Omars face

Screen Grabs Demonstrating the Techniques Shown in the Brief

this is a shot of omar opening a door and walking. this shows the 180 degree rule. however it doesn't show match on action as we cant see him actually using his hands to open the door

here is a high angle shot of Omar. this shows evidence of again, the 180 degree rule

these two shots show match on action. in the first shot you can see Omar trying to open the door using is weights to do so. The next shot then goes straight into him going through the door. this shows good technique of using match on action

this is a median shot of the two characters. this shot was meant to convey the shot/reverse shot, but it isn't very successful in doing so.

Continuity Exercise

The aim of this activity was to practise shooting two people exchanging dialogue between one another. The main shot we had to focus on was the shot reverse shot. As many films uses this type of shot to help show communication between one another. As we were exchanging dialogue to each other, this would be a good shot to use, as it would also allow us to see how good our editing skills are. We also had to consider other shots we were going to use in order for our sequence to flow well. This activity was mainly set to help us gain certain techniques in editing and knowledge in what shot to use, for our final thriller opening we are going to create for our coursework. 

After editing our final sequence, we can see that is was quite successful as most of it flowed well take exceptions of the last shot. The camera moves very clean when it focuses on the 2 males while they are talking. Also the diegetic sound worked well when the camera moved from one male to another, allowing communication to flow well. The shot types used where mostly good, however when there was a long shot, you could see a group of people at the back therefore seen as unprofessional. I think the high angle shot was good as we were able to capture everything that was going on. Overall the shoot was efficient taking into consideration, that we had little time to produce it.

This activity taught me how to edit and further develop my skills in Final Cut Express. I also learnt what shots to be used according to the genre we are aiming our sequence for. Rather than shooting the basic close-ups and medium close-ups we could use alternative shots such as establishing and over the shoulder shots. Furthermore i also learnt that the character should remain in the same position that he was in for the subsequent shot as then editing will be much easier and will also allow the continuity to work well.

Compared to the accident i think our film in terms of continuity wasn’t as good. In the continuity exercise the position of the character wasn’t the same from the previous shot. This was a problem as then we couldn’t make the sequence flow at some stages and therefore lacking continuity. However i think we used better shots than in the accident. The shots were good as they illustrated, what was happening in the sequence.