Evaluation

Preliminary Exercise: Evaluation       Courtney Smith

To film a short conversation between two people that demonstrates 180 Degree Line, Shot Reverse Shot and Match An Action.

180 Degree Line/Rule: This is where you draw an imaginary line in which you must not cross this line with the camera. If you have people sitting across from each other in a scene then you must stay on one side of the line. Once you have established which side you will film from, you cannot cross to the other side, otherwise this would be breaking the 180-degree rule and your film wouldn’t look professional and wouldn’t look right. This is very useful in continuity editing.

Shot Reverse Shot: This is where you are filming two characters and they are both looking at each other. This shows one person looking at the other and then vice versa. This is used for basic conversations.

Match On Action: This is where one shot cuts to another shot portraying the action. This is useful because it ‘skips’ to the action.

Plan: Firstly we wrote up a draft for a script and then typed it up onto Celtx. This was helpful for writing a script and I found it quite easy to get the hang of. After that we watched some videos on storyboards and then drew up our own storyboard. This helped me to establish what shots to use for which takes. Then we did location research in which we had to find/book an available and suitable environment to film in. We needed to make sure that it wasn’t noisy or busy and made sure we had enough space to film the corridor scene.

Shot List:

Firstly we had a Long Shot of person 1 walking down a corridor.

Secondly we shot a Close Up of a door handle where person 1 opened the door to walk inside.

Then we had a Medium Long Shot of person 1 walking in and sitting down inside the room.

After that we filmed a Medium Two Shot of the two people sat down.

Then we shot a Medium Close Up over person 1’s shoulder.

Then did the same Medium Close Up over person 2’s shoulder.

Risk Assessment:

You could drop the camera on your foot causing injury and possibly damage to the camera. To reduce the risk of this happening you can ensure that the camera is held tightly (if handheld) or make sure the camera is secured tightly onto the tripod. We made sure that the camera wasn’t loose and that nothing could injure us.

We made sure that when selecting our filming environment that it was empty, quiet and available. If it was busy someone could walk past and accidentally knock the camera, possibly causing damage to the equipment.

How we filmed the piece:

Firstly we set up our tripod to a sensible height, not too high and not too low. Then we set up our camera and made sure it was secured to the tripod. Then we set up the environment and placed chairs and made sure that the path was clear for our actors to walk safely whilst being filmed. When we started filming we used a long shot to film the person walking down the corridor. Then we used a close up shot to capture the door handle when the person uses it to walk inside. After that we used a medium long shot of person 1 walking in the room and sitting down across from person 2. Then we filmed a medium two shot of the two people sat down. Then we used medium close up to do a shot reverse shot for an over the shoulder shot over person 1’s shoulder. Then we did the same for over person 2’s shoulder.

How we edited: To edit the conversation we used final cut express. In this program we put all the shots in order and then cut the shots together so that it was smooth and that the film had no continuity errors. After that we added a title to our film so that it explained that it was our film for our preliminary exercise. Then we added a fade in effect so that it fades in smoothly after the title screen. A fade out was added at the end so that it faded to black.