Evaluation

Evaluation of preliminary 

 

Our preliminary talk was to produce a short video showing continuity, match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. The basic plot of our video was to have a character open a door, walk in a room and sit down in a chair then have brief dialogue with another character. Our idea was to have one character playing a boss and firing the other character, the employee.

 

Personally I think our filming went well as everything was put in chronological order so it makes sense to the audience, the story line is also very clear. We also stuck to the 180 degree rule which went along the side of the wall that they were sat against. Some challenges that we had to deal with were background noise of students walking past and in and out of the room we were filming in but overall there were no big problems to face.

 

To show the difference in importance we gave the boss (Mia) a larger office chair and we gave the employee (Anni) a smaller chair which made her look smaller and more powerless.

Another way we made the characters look more important or less important was by costume, the boss looked very smart and well put together whereas the employee was dressed less smart in a casual shirt. This also puts across the audience that they are different in class and also puts across an idea of why she is getting fired.

 

 We also used camera angles to make the boss look more important for example when we filmed the over shoulder shot looking at the boss in a low angle which makes her look bigger and as if she is looking down on the employee, whereas the employee was made to look less important and powerless as she had a high angle shot which created the effect of her being looked down on by the boss.

 

We used an IPhone to take our videos, we chose this because it has a clearer image and is easy to use, and the only problem was that some of the film is a bit shaky because it was handheld. Most of our shots are in focus and clear which made the video better quality. There is one shot which is out of focus, because the picture is bad quality it looks out of place with the rest of the film.

We used a range of different shot types to make the film look more interesting , are range of shots contain mid shots, close ups, tracking shots, long shots, extreme close up, two shots and panning shots.

The lighting is lit in the background but not directly over the characters, this means that it is light enough to film but not too light to shine off their face making it harder to see their features.

 The only props we used were the folders, the table and chairs, we used limited props to make the setting quite boring like a work place and also so it was easier to keep good continuity and not over exaggerate the set.

 

Most of the time you can only see one character so that you can see the reaction better instead of trying to focus on both characters, the two shots we took are of dialogue which tells the audience which character to focus on so it is less confusing.

 

We used I Movie to edit our video. The main parts we needed to edit were cutting parts out because nothing was happening or someone was speaking for example in one shot, Natasha said “go” at the beginning of the shot she was filming to tell the actors to start which we needed to cut out. We also added some transitions such as crossfade to stop the clips from jumping and make it a smoother transition although most of our transitions are straight cuts. We found the editing stage quite easy to get the hang of and complete to a god quality and continuity.

During editing we were able to check for continuity and sort parts out that didn’t fit so that it worked better and looked more developed overall.

I think overall we did a good job on continuity as there are no obvious mistakes that stand out, we tried really hard to get everything in the same place for example standing an actor in the same place for different shots and re takes so that they don’t jump spaces after the transition. We also made sure that we kept on top of match on action for example the page that the folder is open on is the same in all scenes and you can see the page clearer when there is a close up of the folder shutting in the same position and page as It was in the previous shot.

We stuck to the 180 degree rule which was going between Anni and Mia from one to another, we did this by staying on one side of the invisible line at all times and filming from the same side of a shoulder in the over shoulder shots.

 

Some of the most successful parts of our preliminary was the fact that it makes sense all put together, we also have good continuity. If I was to re take this again I would make sure that all shots were in focus and make the camera less shaky by using a dolly or a tripod. It could also help if we were in a quieter setting even though the sound of students and staff walking past gives the impression of a public place of a work place so it adds to the effect.

 

I have learned that filming and editing take a lot more time than I thought they would, we also got to practice different shots and focus a lot on continuity which has prepared us for our thriller opening task as it gives us an idea of what it will be like and what we need to look out for to get higher marks.