Preliminary Task reflection

Preliminary Task reflection

In my preliminary task I was asked to do 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 two people exchange a couple of lines of dialogue. This task was meant to demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.  

I went about the task by writing a shot list because this would help me to demonstrate all the shots I need to include. I also story boarded to help me if I had any script trouble as I made sure to write the words each character said next to the shot I had drawn. This allowed me to shoot different shots quickly as I could quickly refer back to it I made sure to make the storyboard as clear as possible because this allowed us to film it in under an hour.

Some things that went well were the fact that both actors thoroughly knew the script this made them more comfortable with where to look. As I had to film a match on action involving someone opening a door and entering this meant that I had to ask the actor to retake certain shots, so I thought this could have an impact on the quality; continuity of the shots. But it didn't surprisingly.

On the whole I thought it went quite well; the only difficulties I seemed to come across was obeying the 180 degree rule as I wanted to vary my shots as an over the shoulder shot can be quite overused when two characters are sitting down and talking. This is why I tried to use a wide shot of them talking across the table. Another difficulty I found was the sound on my iPhone (which I filmed with) seemed to pick up very small sounds such as the people talking in background, when someone entered the room I edited that out luckily, this is how I solved many difficulties even when the people I used stuttered I edited it out.

The thing I would've done differently is most likely the type of camera I used.  I would improve on this because the overall quality of the video was very poor because of this, with such poor quality this resulted in the audio quality being poor as well which could make it hard to hear. Furthermore, this would make me defiantly consider the type and quality of camera I will use in my final piece also whether my characters may need a microphone or not especially depending on the environment and weather will greatly affect everything.