Preliminary piece evaluation
Preproduction:
My team
consisted of myself and Matt Raynor. The brief was ‘a continuity task involving
filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting
down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanged a
couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action,
reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.’
We prepared by first discussing what we wanted
to achieve within this task. We decided we wanted to keep the piece low-key and
simple as it was our first time filming. We had written down a predetermined
route which my character was going to take. The dialogue wasn’t planned exactly
but we had a rough idea of what was going to be exchanged and wanted it to be
exchanged as naturally as possible.
We then
began drawing up a storyboard and noting down ideas of possible camera shots,
angles etc... We then went to each location our story board had and took
photos. Assignment of roles came easily as I decided to take the role of the
main character. We then asked one of our friends, Patrick to be a part of our
work and take the role of the secondary character that I would exchange
dialogue with.
Production:
The filming
process took place over a few days, due to the weather changes meaning that the
filming that was planned outside could not take place, and a change in the
secondary character meant we had to re-film a large majority of the piece.
Matt was
responsible for recording of all the shots. The shots he used included;
establishing shots to set the scene for the audience, long shots, medium long
shots, medium shots and close ups of the dialogue exchanged between characters.
My role was the acting side as the main
character and within that role I had to walk into school and exchange dialogue
with a second character.
Post-production:
During the
editing process the programme used to edit the video was Adobe Premiere Pro.
Evaluation:
The piece was fairly successful
because the criteria of the brief were fulfilled. The most successful areas within the task
were the match on action used with me entering a room through each door,
reverse shot and we included a variety of shots. However the continuity of my
outfit can be criticised because in one day of filming I am wearing one outfit
and then the second day of filming when I exchange dialogue with the second
character I am wearing a noticeably different outfit. This issue could be
resolved by simply planning an outfit in future pieces to increase the
continuity within scenes.
My main area of contribution was the acting
involved but took part in some of the editing and taking photos of locations.
Our biggest success was the editing of the preliminary piece as the film flows
smoothly and there is good continuity between scenes despite the lack of
continuity of my outfit. A strength of this is that it makes the piece easier
to watch and flows naturally like a journey into school.
The biggest error would be continuity
of outfit which can be easily fixed within future pieces. Furthermore there
were a few issues with the weather when filming. The weather was unpredictable
as the filming that was planned to be conducted outside, we had to wait for the
correct weather conditions to film in.
However we made the most of the bad weather and filmed the later scenes
that took place inside first.
Overall, the
brief had been completed. However there were some small issues that can be
easily fixable in future projects to come.
