Preliminary Exercise & Problems

We have been using a camera to film a preliminary exercise, which is going to be used to see what we are capable of producing at the beginning of the course and therefore does not to be a master piece. After filming the real thing, later on in the course, the two pieces of work will be compared together, which will determine if we have learned any new aspects and skills in media, capability of using the camera, and the ability to effectively edit the film and justify why we have made specific changes, e.g. a black & white shot. We carried out and filmed our preliminary exercise in a school classroom, we filmed it according to a sheet which was given to us and we had to include all aspects on the sheet. The sheet went like this:

1) Wide shot: “A” enters room
2) Over the shoulder: Both in shot, “A” closes the door
3) Close up: “B” replies
4) Wide shot
5) Over the shoulder: “A” replies
6) Close up: “B” replies

7) Wide shot
8) Over the shoulder: “B” replies
9) Close up: “A” replies
10) Over the shoulder: “A” leaves and turns back to reply
11) Wide shot: “A” has a final word, then leaves
12) Close up: “B” is left alone

After filming the preliminary exercise, we began to edit what we had filmed. We begun by cutting out any bloopers or test shots, secondly we began shortening shots so that none of them dragged on from any extra recording which may have occurred. We then added in different transitions between shots, such as jump cuts, dissolve shots, for a smooth transition. Lastly we added in text and a black fade out to finish the preliminary exercise.



Problems:
After filming our preliminary exercise we discovered that a basic guideline in film making, known as the 180 degree rule, states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. This meant that we had not included this in our preliminary exercise; however it gives us a heads up to remember this in our actual thriller opening.