Preliminary Exercise - Evaluation

For our preliminary exercise, we were given the task of producing a continuity clip, filming and editing a character opening a door, entering a room and exchanging some lines of dialogue with another character. It had to demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you?

I worked in a group of three with Emily and Anna during the preliminary exercise. As we only need two characters, they both took up the roles and I alternated between directing, shooting and organising the lighting. When either Emily or Anna weren't in a shot, they filled in another production role alongside me. We worked well together, especially in terms of the sharing of roles. 

How did you plan your sequence? What processes did you use? What theories did you try to take into account?

We began planning our sequence by brainstorming some ideas. We thought about what genre we wanted to portray and a clear narrative that we could capture in a short amount of time. We orignally wanted to do a 'Mean Girls'-esque High School rom-com, but we realised that by doing a thriller, we could showcase our skills more effectively. We then began to script our task to ensure we included the lines of dialogues which we could shoot with the shot/reverse shot technique. After deciding on the preferred location for our piece, we made a story-board followed by a shot-list to work out the logistics of the filming. We did not create a title for our film until the editing stage. During the planning stage we didn't have any inspiration and thought that getting a narrative was more important. After watching our final product, we realised that 'Withheld' was a suitable title. Emily's character is withholding information, as well as literally being withheld in this small enclosed space.

What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it? 

We planned all of our task using lined paper and sugar paper, we found it easier when we could see all of our ideas on a page in front of us. We filmed our clip using Canon DV30s and tripods, and for the majority of the shot we needed to use a paglight. Our location was the small  and rather dark edit suite, so further lighting was needed. After capturing all the footage we needed, we edited using Adobe Premier Pro, which allowed us to cut our clips up, and sequence them. 

What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing?

When planning, shooting and editing, there were lots of things we had to take in account. For example, the locations that were available to us. Due to the fact we were shooting in school, during school-hours, we had limited setting to use: outside, or the media block. A few other groups were shooting their preliminary exercise at the same time and had the same issues, so we also had to share locations. We had a limited amount of time (1 hour each for planning, shooting and editing) so we had to take this into account too when planning how many shots we  had and the sharing of locations. We had to consider the lighting and weather, so we shot indoors and organised a paglight to help brighten the dark edit suite in our scene. 

How successful was your sequence? Please identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/ do differently?

I think we effectively included all the required processes and conveyed our genre really well in a short space of time. We were creative with our ambitions of what we wanted to do and overcame issues along the way, for example the lack of good lighting. We varied our shots well and created realistic matches on action with the walking to and opening of the door. We worked well as a team and took planning very seriously and eachother's ideas into account. We decided to rehearse our sequence and take photographs so we'd have an idea of what each shot would look like, this worked incredibly well. I think that our final outcome was well edited and we had aimed to edit in a frenzied way to match our thriller genre. In hindsight, I feel that we could have made it a bit longer and varied the shots even further. We could have used more ECUs and odd camera movements to distort the vision of the audience, which is a convention of many thrillers. We also filmed some shots as handheld OTS, but only in the editing stage did we realise that the tripod had been left slightly in shot, so they were unusable.

What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework, do you think?

  I have learnt about the importance of planning and how to overcome difficulties you may face when shooting. There was a lot to learn in regards to the whole aspect of continuity that you might not think to consider when shooting. It will definitely be significant in every aspect of filming. Any form of film sequence needs continuity, otherwise things will not seem realistic or make sense for the viewer.

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