Evaluation 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 Liza Saich As Media

Varndean college

Match on action shot, shot reverse shot and the 180

degree ruleDoing the preliminary task at the very start of the as media

course helped to introduce the concepts and practical application of continuity filming and editing by giving us a

taster of what it is like to film and how just placing the camera in any random place can confuse the viewer. When

filming we were given the task to incorporate into our footage three basic filming concepts; two action shots

called the match on action shot and shot reverse shot and a rule that shouldn’t be broken when filming, the 180 degree rule. The shot reverse shot is a simple yet effective camera shot that is used in every television show, movie etc. This shot is used when to characters are looking at each other and is most effective when they are talking. It is basically

when one person is looking at another person and then the other person is shown looking at the first person. When filming this shot you must stick to the 180 degree rule

which I will explain later. The match on action shot is when the camera films the action then cuts to a different angle to show the action ending. This cut is often unnoticeable. The

180 degree rule is when the camera stays behind an invisible line so not to confuse the audience. When filming objects/characters stay to the left and things on the right

stay on the right.

Being new to filming I had to learn everything about how to use the cameras and effective ways to get the best results from my footage. This was

quite difficult to do from just filming the preliminary as we only had a short, limited amount

of time. Although when filming the preliminary exercise I did learn a lot about the camera the

biggest thing I learnt was how when editing and putting a soundtrack onto a piece of footage it

makes such a big difference. Choosing the right soundtrack and appropriate editing can turn a piece of footage from okay to really effective.

Overall I think the preliminary exercise went really well considering it was the first time any of the members of

the group had used a film camera and the editing equipment. Although we had lots of glitches such as not getting the white balance and the lighting correct which

we tried to change in the editing suite but we were unable to, this caused the footage to look a bit jolty and

not as effective as we wanted it to look. It was very challenging to get the correct shots and make them

work when filming. We had to make sure that the person we filmed (which was me) was in the right place, sticking to the 180 degree rule, and to get enough footage to be

able to edit it effectively. One thing that did go really well was the fact that although we did struggle a lot we managed to come out overall with a pretty good first

piece.

As well as learning all the filming techniques on the camera and picking up skills in the editing suite, I had to do group work which involved allocating

pieces of work to each member of the group fairly. This was difficult as I had never worked with the people in my group before this task. Splitting up

the pieces of work went really well and each person in the group did the same amount of work.

Overall I learnt a lot from doing the preliminary exercise which I applied to creating the opening

title sequence. I also picked up things that didn’t go very well to make sure it didn’t happen again when

filming like setting up the camera correctly and sticking to the 180 degree rule.

Filming the opening title sequence

When planning my opening title sequence, I kept in mind the planning that we did to make the preliminary exercise. The first thing our group did was to make a mind map of all the ideas we had, through lots of talking and ruling out ideas that were too far fetched we settled on a Vampire thriller story. We then created a story board shot by shot to plan out how our opening title sequence may look. Using resources from the VLE such as opening title sequence clips we managed to find ideas that we liked which were realistic and we could try and make our own. Arlington Road had an opening title sequence that we really liked; the out of focus blurry shots revealing the main character bit by bit, creating a sense of suspense and mystery. This inspired us to try and put that into our opening title sequence. We thought a lot about mise-en-scene because our character comes across a dead body it had to be set in a reclusive area, so we set that scene up in a woods which was obviously in the middle of nowhere as it was such a vast empty space. To connote the fact that our main character was dangerous and had killed someone we got red food colouring and splattered it over the characters clothes and face creating a sense of mystery and danger. Our planning stage was very useful as it meant when we went out to film we knew what we were going to film, and didn’t waste any valuable time.

On the day of the filming we were a lot more confident then when we did the preliminary exercise. We had a lot more knowledge of cameras and how it can be effective. After doing a lot of planning and research on what we wanted our opening title sequence to look like and how to make it the best we could, we knew what to film. When filming we used lots of different angles and shots that we had picked up from the preliminary exercise. There aren’t any scenes from the first day of filming that I am proud of as a lot of them were rushed and not as good as they could have been due to camera issues- due to this we had to re-film.

Photo taken from media blogs varndean-Jake Macleods photo

We had to re-film parts of our work because of technical difficulties causing us to lose the best part of the filming day. Due to this our footage was rushed and not in the

right place. I re-filmed everything the weekend after. I used different, more suitable actors and even managed to get to the right locations. The new footage we filmed was much better and we ended up using all of it in our opening title

sequence. Our end product turned out really well. Although we had to re film and change a lot, we fitted it into the

right genre and used lots of really good shots. If I had do this project again I would do a lot of things

differently. I would have filmed a lot more than I did so that there was lots of footage to work from.

EditingWhen editing the preliminary exercise we didn’t get to film a lot of footage, the footage that we did edit was very minimalistic and one person was the main editor. I found editing the main opening title sequence easier than the preliminary because we could add more of our own unique stamp on it as it was as set in stone what we had to do as in the preliminary. However having the experience of editing the preliminary exercise was useful to have and helped a lot when editing the opening title sequence.