Preliminary Task: AS 1st lesson
Thursday, September 24, 2015In the first lesson of AS Media studies, our class was set a continuity task to film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, whom she/he then exchanged a couple of lines of dialogue.
In order to complete this task, we were taught what a match on action, a shot reverse shot and what the 180 degree rule was. In my group, I had Abbey, Tommy and Hannah.
Match on action: A film editing and video editing technique where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot's action. A common example is a man walking up to a door and reaching for the knob.
Shot reverse shot: A shot where one character is looking at another character and then the other character is looking back at the first character.
180 degree rule: A filming guideline that participants in a scene should have the same left-right relationship to each other, with filming only taking place within the 180 degree angle in which this is maintained in a conversation.
Preproduction, Filming, Post-Production and evaluation of the Preliminary Task
Considering none of us had prior experience to filming and editing before and we were set a restricted time to complete this task, we found the majority of this task a challenge.
Firstly, our first AS lesson was a Period 6 (afterschool), so our group had little achievement casting roles. Because of this, I had to act as the character opening the door and talking to another character. Before this task, I had little experience with acting, so it was difficult to successfully complete each shot without unintentionally smiling and giggling. We also struggled to find someone willing to take part, until we came across a teacher whom was walking down the corridor we were filming match on action shots. Abbey asked the teacher who mentioned she was on he way home. Because of this, we needed to work fast and efficiently. She managed to perform her role well which impacted on the succession of the task. I believe that our group could cast roles more successfully who preferably have more experience of acting than myself and the teacher if we were given more time to do so.
It took a long time to complete the dialogue as it was pressurising for all of us to think of something our characters could talk about. Therefore, this resulted in our film being boring and rather unsatisfying to watch, as no interesting conversations took place. Our group have learnt from this experience to produce an original script in advance before filming a significant piece of work.
In my opinion, I think that the filming prospect of our Preliminary task went rather well because we adapted to the shot techniques rather quickly. It was tense to film the task in the amount of time given and the lack of preparation we had, but I think we positioned each shot efficiently. We were only given a video camera which lacked precise quality, therefore we accepted the fact that our video would not be a high standard. Editing our Preliminary task was a quick and more simple prospect to complete, but in the future it would be preferable to gain more experience with the editing software.
If we were to do this task again, I think we would take the dialogue into deeper consideration and include the genre of humour within it. This would hopefully result in our video being more enjoyable to watch. I also think that looking around the CLC & classrooms and contacting our friends would help us be more successful in the casting zone, although this would take up a significant amount of filming time.
If we were to do this task again, I think we would take the dialogue into deeper consideration and include the genre of humour within it. This would hopefully result in our video being more enjoyable to watch. I also think that looking around the CLC & classrooms and contacting our friends would help us be more successful in the casting zone, although this would take up a significant amount of filming time.
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