The process of planning, filming and editing for our preliminary task was a long one yet the end product I am proud of. Our match on action went extremely well, particularly as the main character walks down the corridor and through the door. The combination of establishing shots and midshot brings the scene together.
The planning process involved a combination of drawing up a story board by deciding what shots went where and for how long the camera would be recording on that particular time. Doing this was harder than expected as you would think that a set time (6 seconds) would be short, however on film this time would appear longer than expected. We would then have to cut this section down to make it shorter and fit with the flow of all other shots combined. Another section of the planning process was writing the script and choosing a topic for the characters to talk about. This would have been successful if our actors followed the script which we had written. However they did not and change words round as well as changing words completely. To solve this for our main task we will use more reliable actors that are willing to follow the script.
The start of the clip begins with a midshot from behind the main character. We did this so that the audience can establish which direction the character is heading in. it also provides a point of view from the character as we see what they see. In this shot we can see trophy cases, art work and notice boards. This can tell the audience that this character may be in a working environment or in this case a school reception. We then switch onto a long shot with the main character walking down towards the camera. She is central throughout which gives the audience a clear indication that she is the main character. There is then a switch to a long shot facing in the opposite direction. This then shows her walking away from the camera once again, however this time we can see the door that she is walking to. These sections are simple yet when they come together to make a full scene they allow the audience to anticipate what is to come.
There is then a side on shot showing the character pushing the door open. This section lasts for only two seconds yet is a vital part of the piece as it is in the brief. There is then a bird’s eye view shot which then pans, following the main character. We first tried this shot as an experiment and as it portrayed the right affect. We may use this type of shot again in our main task. We are then back on the ground continuing the pan shot. A difficulty with this shot is that joining the two together as there was a background of a cityscape. However instead of keeping this as a negative we manipulated this to become a positive. We then used the land marks to join the two shots together to perfect our continuity.
In the convocation section we had many difficulties when we came to the editing process as for a start the actors did not stick to the script which then resulted in them not saying the same thing every-time we shot the same scene. We then had to work around this problem as we had to combine the two sections which also combined two of the same words at one point. Which you can hear as the tone of her voice changes in the second half of the word. Our shot reverse shot came together well. However this I found editing this section was the longest part of the editing process.
A negative aspect of our preliminary task was that we had constant back ground noise which caused the clarity of the speech between the two actors to become reduced. To solve this problem in our main task there are many options. One is to film our project in a quiet place where we can guarantee there will be no background noise by making it someone’s house and requesting that everybody who is not in the film to be quiet. On the other hand we could attach a microphone onto the camera which we will direct towards the sound we want. E.g. dialogue, I feel this will be the best option as we may wish to film in a public place and will not have the authority to remove all background noise.
