Preliminary VIdeo and Preliminary Evaluation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyfCt1azCHg

The preliminary task that was set for the group was to do a short film sequence of someone walking down a corridor, opening a door and having a conversation with someone else. As a group the things that had to be included was the 180* rule, a match on action shot, shot reverse shot and include continuity. Trying to include all of these was relatively easy, it was just knowing where abouts they would look best in the sequence.

the camerawork was pretty average. We had a lot of shaky shots and the movement shots were not smooth. The shots that we used were

• Long shot
• mid shot
• over the shoulder

All of the shots that we used made it visually interesting for the audience as we edited the shots to be at a fast pace. We decided that we would include computers and white boards to make it look more like a school environment. We found it difficult when moving the camera in one of the shots as the tripod was difficult to move as we were unaware of how to move it and loosen it up. One of the other movement shots that we used was going around the back of the actor. This was to show the change in the 180* rule. Unfortunately we broke the 180* rule earlier in the film which was very frustrating as this shows that we didn't think about it whilst we were filming. the steadiness of the over the shoulder shots were pretty bad as they were very shaky and i feel that we could have done it better and taken more time with it. Our strengths were the editing of the shots and mainly the tripod shots. i felt that like we had cleverly worked on the editing as it was visually interesting for the audience. our areas of improvements were to make the over the shoulder shots less shaky and to have a wider range of shots.

Our editing was pretty successful. I think we had done well to do this The sequence fit well together and all the shots joined well. We didn't stick to the 180* rule as we moved the camera without realising.We effectively used match on action in this particulare shot. Throughout the conversation we used shot reverse shot to show who was talking and the facial expressions. Thankfully the continuity was there. I thought that the titles were very basic and didn't really have a lot of effects on them as we felt that we should keep it very basic. We didn't really feel like we needed a lot of effects on the edit as we wanted it to be natural. The only thing we used was the fade in fade out as we wanted it to look more interesting. We used basic lighting as we felt like a complex lighting was not needed as we set it in a school environment.

The technical skills that I have learnt are how to use imovie on the mac, how to do a storyboard, shot types that work well together, how to effectively use lighting to create atmosphere. I want to improve on my knowledge of mise-en-scene for thrillers as i feel it will help me when it comes to making my thriller.