Finally

Overall I am very pleased with this preliminary task. We have created a clip that meets all the requirements needed;

• A character opening a door


• Someone sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue


• Match on action


• shot/reverse shot


• 180 degree rule

When the brief was introduced I was quite excited about the task. I enjoy filming, and I was in a group with people I get along with, so there was no issues. However as we progressed we faced quite a few problems, such as continuity etc.

Our grouped lacked in communication which was another big problem. This resulted in no storyboard to follow while filming. Even though this was not necessarily a bad thing as it meant we could experiment with shots, a storyboard would have worked as a guide and was something we needed to do to keep our class teacher happy.

If I would give advice to someone embarking on the preminary task now, I would say;

1. Be very organised- know what you are doing regarding actors, set locations, etc


2. Interact with your group members outside the classroom. Meaning meet up or talk to arrange things and so you know whats going on


3. Be grown up and take the task seriously. If people are mucking around then it is impossible to get the work done.
   

As well as learning a lot during this task, I was also able to help people in my group who had less experience. If I was to re-do this task again, I would get more involved in the editing.

Safe

A bit more writing...

TV is the kind of media institution that might distribute my media product as it follows most of the codes and conventions that make up a TV drama.
Radio is out of the question as our media product is a film clip which is visual. So therefore you need a TV to watch it.
I think our clip is not dramatic enough to be distributed as a film. It covers everyday life problems and issues which effect everyone, this is why it would be successful as a TV Drama.

Filming

Filming was what I was most excited about and I feel we used our time very effectively; Every member of our group got a chance to use the camera and film different parts. However, we did face many problems leading up to the filming;

1. With one tripod between three groups, most parts of our film was filmed hand-held. The problem we had with this was some shots looked shaky and unprofessional.


2. As we shot our scene over a few days, one problem we had was continuity. Ollie's costume changes twice throughout the film which is quite noticeable. If we were to re-do this task I would definitely make sure the characters have the same costume. This can be done by being more organised and by interacting more with my group outside the classroom.
   

But with all that sorted, I felt the filming ran smoothly. We managed to get a lot of different shots which were really useful in the editing suite.
The camera we used to film was a Canon mv930 camcorder. It was quite simple to use and nothing was too complicated, however the quality was not that good

Camera Info


We tried to attract our audience by only having two characters, we thought this would bring the audience closer to them and make it feel more personal. We used a lot of low angled shots so the audience were aware of which character is in control. This is highlighted when Ollie gets down on his knees to propose . The shot is from Kushi's view looking down at Ollie. By doing this, it suggests to the audience that Kushi is in control and has the power at that particular moment in the scene.

A few definitions..

• Match on action- This is an example of continuity editing. It helps the audience to continually understand exactly what is happening. It means that when something is happening in a scene, when there is a cut the same piece of action must be going on. For example; Exterior shot of a character opening the door is followed by an interior shot of the character entering the room.
  


• Shot/reverse shot- This is where the camera switches back and forth with the dialogue. This is the most common way in which dialogue is shot in TV dramas.
  


• The 180 degree rule- This is where the camera must not cross the 'line of action' otherwise the characters will appear on the other side of the screen, creating confusion for the audience.

Intro

In our preliminary task we had to plan, film and edit a short scene. It needed to include;

1. A character opening a door


2. Someone sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue


3. Match on action


4. shot/reverse shot


5. 180 degree rule
   

I was in a group along with three others; Ollie Morris, Alex Linfoot and Ella Permaul. After brainstorming for ideas we finally decided on making a proposal scene with two characters. We also had to convey a contrast of status in the scene, so we had to include one character being more dominant then the other and also everything mentioned above.

The Team:

We were told before starting this task that we would need to get our own actors, costumes, props etc, however, we were all very unorganised, so without any actors we had to use Ollie and Kushi as a last minute decision.

When thinking of set locations, the obvious place was our school as Kushi played the role of a school teacher. We also wanted to have quite a small set as this follows one of the conventions of TV dramas; they are typically set in an enclosed location such as Albert Square in Eastenders. This picture shows where our scene was set.