By Jemma Fowler

1. Question 7; Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? By Jemma Fowler

2. Preliminary Exercise The preliminary exercise we were asked to carry out was to introduce us to some concepts that we should think about when filming which all help with continuity; the flow of the film without the audience noticing the cuts which would have been made. And these are…..180 Degree RuleThe 180 degree rule is used when filming; The camera is placed on one side of the imaginary Line and doesn’t cross over to the other side. For example if a boy was running around a corner andhis left hand was closest to the camera when he hadcame around the corner his left hand would have tobe closest to the camera once again.

3. Match On Action  Match on action is when in the edit you cut from one shot to another that matches the first action. The shots could have been filmed hours apart as there two separate shots, but there edited to match the action, giving continuity to the footage piece. For example; a man walking up to a door to open it, and then him walking through and closing it. Shot Reverse ShotShot reverse shot is when character A is filmed over character B’s shoulder and then character B is filmed over character B’s shoulder to create the feel of a conversation between two people.

4. The preliminary exercise taught me a lot of things that I didn’t know before. One thing which I had learnt was that even if you only think you want to use the footage of a close up of hand when someone is walking through a door you film them walking all the way through the door to give you more to work with in the edit. Another thing I learnt was that when shooting a shot reverse shot you record the whole conversation from character A point of view and then you record the whole conversation from character B point of view, again to give you more to work with in the edit. We achieved match on action when character A opens the door and goes in and then when in the room he is walking in through the door, we carefully edited this to make sure the character was walking in on the same foot.

5. We used over the shoulder shots to create the shot reverse shot when the two characters were talking. We filmed the whole conversation from one characters side of the table then from the others to make it easier for us to create continuity in the edit. This is the pan/tilt we used when character A sat on the chair. A Pan is when you move the camera up and/or down to flow the action on screen.

6. Before we started filming we designed a storyboard with pictures and description of camera shots and angles. For our shoot we decided to start with a long establishing shot of character A walking along a corridor, then a close up of the character A’s hand opening the door. We decided on an over the shoulder shot looking towards the door as character A enters, as character A sits down we was going to use a low angle of the chair as the character sits down and then tilt up to the characters face. We was going to pan/track to reveal character B, then character B would turn around and remove his glasses. Shot reverse shot between the two characters was next and lastly we was going to have a shot of the door as character A leaves over character B’s shoulder.We also dedicated each person a role within the team. I was the organizer; the person who kept the story board, knew what every one was doing, when they were doing it, which shots we were using when. I also was in charge of using the boom for clearer sound. Tim and Luke were the actors and Ben was the camera man. We all thought of the ideas about each shot together as a group. By listening to each others ideas we came up with a brilliant storyboard and a fantastic piece of footage to match.The exercise gave me great more insight to concepts of creating a great piece of continuity footage. It also made me think a lot more about how you need to think about location and the surroundings of where your filming as on the day of filming there were builders on the roof which caused some unwanted talking and banging. Although a solution to this that I was taught was to record 30 seconds of wild track when the background sound is quiet so that in the edit you can place it over all your footage.

7. Filming the OTS After the preliminary exercise when storyboarding and planning our OTS I thought a lot more like a filmmaker. I thought about the locations; how nosey it would be, would it be inside or out, where about should we do the wild track. Also I thought a lot about timings as we only had one day to film and you have to be prepared for draw backs and filming a scene always takes longer than you think. We reeced the locations, one to make sure that they were safe and also to see how we would work with the location, plan where we could do certain scenes and shots. Also I thought a lot about Mise en scene; what’s on screen. You don’t realise certain objects are there until you go there to recce It for filming and you suddenly see things that cannot be on camera at the time of filming because it wouldn’t be conventional.When it came to filming day we all had dedicated roles; me- director, Leroy- producer, actor and boom guy, Ben- actor and camera man and Aimee- actress and camera women.

8. We had some problems on our filming day; such as people who had given us permission to film at their locations backed out on us at the very last minute, so we had to think of a backup plan. Leroy asked permission to use a room in the pub he works at and luckily the owner was kind enough to let us film in the downstairs event area which was perfect as it was dark, gloomy, had brick wall and the perfect table and chair to use for our shoot, which was all very conventional for our film. We also was luckily enough that the DJ of the pub agreed to do the voice for our P.E teacher.When filming we thought about different camera angles and shots to give us more of a variety when we hit the editing room. I think we worked well as a group as we all helped out with the camera and thinking of what was in the shot and giving ideas as we went along and listening to those ideas.If we were to do it again I would do a number of things differently like organizing backups and filming more shots from loads of different angles. Overall I think we adapted really well to the problems we hit and we filmed well. I think a re-shoot would be a good idea so we could get even more shots from different angles and we could think about sound more as well as we ha ideas about it but didn’t get all we wanted. Also I think we should have thought more about the concepts of match on action and shot reverse shot, as we didn’t use them in our final OTS although it was because for our idea we couldn’t really incorporate them but I think we should have thought of a way to as it would show of the continuity skills we had been taught. We did stick to the 180 degree rule, besides on scene when we broke it to create an effect of our character being confused and psychologically unstable.