Preliminary Task Evaluation

Preliminary Task Evaluation
1. I think there are many points in our film where continuity could have been improved:
• When the establishing shot of the ‘bar’ is shown, a group of people are sitting around a table talking, in the next shot they have gone.
• Laura had been sitting at the back table in the previous shot, in the shot where I walk in she is standing by the wall and can been partially seen in the shot.
• When I walk in the scene cuts from standing up to sitting down straight away- I couldn’t have sat down that quick…
A point where we did demonstrate continuity well was when the shot cuts from a medium shot of taking the cup to a close up of me drinking from it (match on action) and the cup stays in the same place between shots and flows properly.
2. Match on Action- When I take the cup and the camera cuts to a close up of me drinking from it with the cup in the same position. This is used to make the scene as true to life as possible so objects and movements don’t jump between scenes.
Shot reverse shot- As the characters talk, the camera cuts between close ups of their faces. This makes the conversation seem realistic and allows the audience to clearly see characters facial expressions.
180-degree rule- We made sure when we were filming that the cameras stayed in the same positions throughout the scene and didn’t go behind the characters at any point. This was relatively easy as the characters stayed in the same position throughout their conversation. Had we have been moving this would have been more difficult to control. This rule is used so that the audience doesn’t get disorientated with characters switching sides during the scene.

3. I think during the filming process we worked pretty well as a group although some people seemed to contribute more than others. People helped each other if they were unsure of where to put the camera etc. When it came to editing the film some members of the group were reluctant to input their ideas or use the program (although this could have been because they were unsure how to use it).When it came to finding music for the piece, group members who had not contributed much before shared their views- perhaps they felt this was their forte within the editing process. Next time we would draw on this and use people for the sections they feel they perform best in filming, editing etc.

4. If we were to film this piece again we would definitely work on improving continuity. To do this we would make sure we had enough takes of the scene to use if there were problems with any of the shots. The issue that we had this time was that we did one take of some shots and once we uploaded them to the computer, found that people were in the wrong place or cameras could been seen in the shot and we didn’t have time to film it again.

5. I think if we had planned our film better we would have made less continuity errors. We didn’t consult our storyboards at all during the filming process so that would definitely be something to improve on next time as they are a vital part of filming a scene.

6. We attempted to use transitions within our film but as the program kept freezing and wouldn’t show the scenes we wanted to put transition between, this proved difficult and we decided to leave them out.

7. I had never used editing software before this project so I learnt a lot about the basics of film editing such as cutting and using different tracks for each camera which I ‘m sure will prove fundamental during the course.

8. Through making this film I have come to realise how the technology we have today has vastly improved the quality and efficiency in which we create media. If we were creating this short film 50 years ago, it would have been a much more lengthy process and definitely wouldn’t be a project that we could undertake within school. Technology has made it easier for everyday people to create their own media.