What have you learned from your preliminary task?

The preliminary exercise that my group and I had to complete was a continuity task involving the filming and editing of a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character and having a short conversation. The task had to demonstrate the 3 principles which are the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot.

First we planned the storyline, we thought about various different plots in order to satisfy the principles of opening a door, sitting in a chair and two people having a conversation. We thought about where the door would lead the person opening it, we thought about what the people would talk about etc. In the end, we decided to make the short film more interesting by adding in some emotions. One of the characters would be very angry with the other character therefore opening the door very violently and confronting the other character. We thought it would be best if we didn’t give out the reason why the character is angry, to add suspicion and to make it a little different. To show all of this we roughly sketched it on a storyboard, this showed all of the camera shots we would use and whereabouts we would use them. The storyboard did well in helping us create a visual image before filming.

Involving the 3 principles was the most important aspect of the task. Shot/reverse shot is when the camera shot alternates, usually between two people in dialogue. We used shot/reverse shot when the main character was confronting the other character. Match on action is a technique used to connect two different views of the same action at the same moment in the movement, by doing this filmmakers make seem that the motion continues uninterrupted. We included this technique when the main character is walking towards the door, then we cut it to her opening the door. We used the technique again when she is walking over the other character sitting down at a table, then we cut it to the main character sitting down at the table opposite the other character. The 180 degree rule, is a rule in which you are not supposed to cross the line of action, for example if people are having a conversation, wherever the camera is, they should be seen to be looking at each other and on the same side of the shot, this prevents confusing changes in screen direction. We were careful not to break this rule, when filming the two characters talking.

Once we had finished filming, we moved onto the editing. Camera shots like match on action and shot reverse shot needed to be edited and cut on the computer. When putting all of the shots together we would constantly watch it over, to check if everything worked so that it wouldn’t be confusing to follow, it was pretty easy to spot if something didn’t work. We did the title at the beginning, and we did the credits at the end on top of the bloopers, which was quite comedic and original because no one else had thought of that. We had a look at the various different transitions that were available and we ended up using the fade to black one to show she had entered the library.

During the planning, filming and editing of this preliminary task, I think I learnt the most in editing. I didn’t used to know how to use the film editing program before, but now I do. I also know how to do a storyboard, which I found out was very useful, it makes the process of filming a lot easier and quicker.