Evaluation Question 7: Preliminary Task

What brief were you working to?
We started off by having a preliminary task. This continuity task included filming and editing conversation between two characters, also the character opening and closing a door, crossing the room and then sitting down to talk to the other character. We had to include shots such as match on action, 180 degree rule and shot/reverse shot. Our main task was to film the opening titles to a new fiction film which had to last up to a maximum of two minutes.

Preliminary Task
When we first started the preliminary task, after learning about the 180 degree rule from watching some demonstrations in class, I then learnt how to display it onto the camera. I sat the two characters opposite from each other and made sure that the camera stayed on one side of the characters whilst displaying their conversation. The over the shoulder shot was a little trickier, as you had to get the opposing persons face matched with the other character, so we had to make sure that the camera was placed in the right position at all times when filming that shot. I found match on action the hardest to do, it was easy to film because all you had to do was film the appropriate shots, but it was the trickiest when it came to editing it all in so it looked like it flowed correctly. After a couple of tries, I got it right in the end. You just have to make sure that you have filmed more footage than normal, so if you can't get anything to match up, then you have some extra footage.


Here is a shot of Annie crossing the room to sit down and have a conversation with Jodie. I placed the camera across the room and made sure it was still and in the right position to capture Annie making her way across the room. After than she then sat down to begin her conversation. I filmed the start of the conversation from this angle so then I was able to get the beginning section correctly.

Applying the skills to my film
Doing the preliminary task has helped me massively into applying the tricky shots into our film. I filmed the conversation between Lucas and Violet against the tree, and I remembered the over the shoulder shot and tried to match the faces up to each other. I also edited match on action, trying to get different shots in a different times, so it looked more tricky and clever. I feel that I have got better at doing the match on action because that is the one that I struggled the most with, and when it comes to editing, if you try a couple of times, you eventually get it right in the end. You just need to remember to film more than you would normally do in case you can't get anything to match correctly. I don't feel that I did anything differently as I kept the same skills from my preliminary task and applied them to my film. I feel that every film has an over the shoulder shot, so if I didn't apply this to our film then it wouldn't have looked realistic.


Applying Over the Shoulder Shot and 180 degree rule

This is another over the shoulder shot that I applied to my media title sequence. As Saul is a lot taller than Jodie is, we had to bend him down a little to make sure that he fit into the shot correctly.





These two shots are the over the shoulder shots that I used in my preliminary task. At first I thought it was a little tricky to get the heads in position correctly, but once you do it a couple of times, you get used to it. I didn't consider over the shoulder shot and 180 degree rule as two separate things, if you just remember them both when you are filming a conversation then they come together really well.



Applying Match On Action

 On the bottom left is a match on action shot of Annie opening the door in our preliminary task. The shot on the bottom left is a match on action shot of the character Violet picking up her phone to dial voice mail.From the left picture we learned how to do this by filming Annie opening the door, but for longer than we would have to make sure that we have enough footage and then edit it to look like it all matches. I'm really glad that I learnt how to match on action because I feel that it makes your film really interesting and it also looks really professional.









Overall, I feel that the skills and techniques I learnt from my preliminary task have really helped me filming my media sequence. This has now become basic knowledge to me, and I feel that if I didn't know how to do these skills whilst shooting, then it would have ruined our film and not made it look as realistic as it does now. The match on action really worked in our film because we wanted to get different shots of Violet from different angles in her bedroom, not just the same boring medium shot, we wanted to change it up a little. So using match on action gave it something different. Using over the shoulder shot displayed the conversations that needed to be shown which added the element to our film. So I feel that doing our preliminary task played a big part in helping develop our film.