Preliminary exercise evaluation

Preliminary exercise evaluation

In my preliminary exercise I worked with Daniel and Rohail, in our task we had to create a minimum of 30 second shot which had to include match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.

So overall I and my group were satisfied with our work there were some positives as well as some negatives. I am first going to start off with the positives. The positives were that we got used to the new video camera straight away and it was easily accessible as a result of this our filming was not a problem, we completed our filming in just under 3 periods this was a bonus as we then got more time to do editing, whilst filming we got to understand how the video camera works such as focus and zoom, with this in mind we tried numerous shots. We tried shots such as close ups, tracking shots, over the shoulder, medium shots and wide shots. All these shots were used for different purposes. The first shot was as if the camera was following the protagonist to see where he was going as he got to the door to open it, the shot switched to outside and we see him opening the door from the other side, this was our match on action shot, we believed this was the highlight of our filming as it was smooth and everything flowed. The next shot was of the character going down the stairs and has he was we done a close up whilst he was going down the stairs to keep the suspense up. It then went back to a wide shot where the next character was introduced and I personally believe this was our best shot as it shows a side shot of the new character and then the protagonist joins him to show they are some part of a team working together. The protagonist then turns around and so does the other character and they nod to show that something has happened there is then dialogue between the characters and the shot reverse shot takes place and the 180 degree rule is not broken. So we believed that was a success as when editing everything fitted and clicked together.

However we also believe there were some downsides to our filming as when we watched the film back the main problem was the audio and sound. As we filmed outside this caused a problem as you could hear winds in the background and couldn’t hear the dialogue as much, so this will help us in the future as if we were to film outside again we would pick a day where it is less windy or even just film elsewhere. We also nearly broke the 180 degree rule as at the end of the dialogue the protagonist walked off however we did edit this out so the 180 degree was not broken. So we will learn from this in the future. Also in one of the shots in the close up of the shoes going up the stairs the focus was not correct and also the camera kept on shaking so as a result the focus next time needs to be sorted out so it looks more clear and the filming needs to be more perfected.