Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the whole product?

Since our prelim I have learnt lots about making a succesful opening sequence including organisation, the practacalities of our shoots and the importance of editing and different editing techniques.
First I will introduce the briefs for both tasks:

Brief for the preliminary task:
‘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 she/he then exchanged a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.’

Brief for main task:
‘The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.’

Our brief for the final film opening was a lot more open than the prelim brief. Therefore it also had a lot more complications however our pre-lim prepared us for these.

Pre-production:

Anna Francis Natasha Shot List


As compared to:

As you can see our second storyboard/shot list are both more developed and clear. We learnt on our prelim that it is really helpful to be able to look at these documents and know exactly what you're shooting. The visual nature of the animatic was therefore very helpful.

PLANNING THE SEQUENCE:

LOCATIONS:

We learnt about the importance of making sure that permissions are secured for locations. At first we were intending to shoot an extra scene in a hotel, on a group trip to Hollywood but unfortunately we were unable to as there was no filming in the hotel.

We tried to film it outside the next day but we didn’t go and check the location for noise levels and it turned out the traffic was too loud.

FROM THIS WE LEARNT THAT WALKTHROUGH’S AND RECCE’S ARE VERY IMPORTANT.

This wasn’t an issue in our prelim as our only location was the classroom.

Production:
Test Shoot: For our prelim we only had one shoot to do it in. For the real thing we learnt the importance of a test shoot. It showed us the limitations of what we could shoot, and we came up with several new ideas and shots e.g. the key shot of Lotus’s slowly moving shadow behind the glass. We also realised we needed better lighting/props and so bought lots of props together from a charity shop and had a lighting workshop.

This video shows us on our test shoot in the process of learning how to set up a shot.


Working to the Shot List: Working to the shot list was quite hard as we needed to be quite disciplined with ourselves, as we all wanted to move on to bits later on such as doing the head wound. Something we could have worked on was using the clapperboard for each take as we did a few takes back to back without using a clapperboard which led to some confusion when capturing.

Roles: We also learnt the importance of different roles on set. Although two of us were acting, we all had goes on the camera and had to delegate roles such as:

Dressing the set: Bin bags on the windows, Making the drink out of tea etc.

Recording the Shots:  Filling in each shot, how many takes the best takes and time codes on our shot list.

Continuity: We also learnt the importance of continuity. We had issues with reflections of the lighting in the windows, as well as issues such as which hand the glass was in.

Master Shots: We learnt the importance of shooting everything from different master shot angles when in the edit room, as we only had one for the gun scene and it didn’t comply with the 30 degree rule as it was too straight on. If we had an opportunity we would have re-shot this.

Time: Finally, time management was a major factor we learnt on the shoot. We had to fit a lot in to about 7 hours and we didn’t manage to do the head wound the first time round which meant a reshoot, which disrupted our editing process.

Editing:

Prelim:
When it came to the editing, the sound levels were varied and there were continuity errors such as the computer being left on in the background, which could have been sorted by changing the shot order. The cutting points were not exact either due to the editing being done quickly. However we did manage to stick to the 180 degree rule as well as using a match on action and a shot reverse shot. We utilized these skills in our real film as well.

We also learnt there is a lot more to editing then just simply re-ordering everything and putting it together. Music, Titles and effects all play a massive part. We didn’t realise that in our film there is a continuity error with the music, as it is shown as digetic but stops to allow for the conversation halfway through. However it is conceivable that what he was listening to has stopped and the second tack is non digetic.

We had a lot of footage but by looking through all of it we could find fixes to shots that didn’t fit or work. Therefore we learnt the value of trawling through all your footage and picking the best combination of shots.

We learnt that this means a lot of time needs to be set aside for editing, something which as a group we achieved by packing in as much time as possible over a three week period. Here is our editing schedule:

Team:

We all learnt the importance of co-operation on the shoot. We had different ideas of how to do things but learnt to do what was best for the group and overall project. Overall we worked very well as a group J