EVALUATION ACTIVITY 7: Editing and Camerawork

I feel that I have learnt a lot since the preliminary task and that this has shown through in the final production.

The first thing we learnt whilst filming the Preliminary Task and perhaps the most important is the variety of shots needed, from Close-ups to Long Shot, not to mention the Establishing Shot.

 Here is the Establishing Shot for our Preliminary Production:

This variety of shots is vital in order to keep the viewer interested as one long shot would bore the viewer, it is also handy if mistakes are made because you only need to retake one 5 second long clip rather than the whole conversation. But also it is useful for using Extreme Close-ups on something important that you don't want the viewer to miss, we didn't need to use one of these in our Preliminary Production however we did in the Thriller Opening to emphasise the importance of the keys on the hook which later disappear.

In the Preliminary Production we used an extreme Close up at the end of the clip to emphasise intimacy within what the character was saying but to also show that what she said was very important.

The preliminary task allowed us to explore different camera shots and techniques I had never used before. We were taught how to create a perfect match on action edit to show the movement of a person, for example, we used a match on action of someone walking through a door:

We used this technique a few times in our final production, when Holly was panicking about the intruder and was running around the house into different rooms. I think this was very effective because made our film very fast moving and created tension for viewers. I also feel that it shows how much we have developed our skills since the beginning of the year.

We also learnt about the 180 degree rule whilst doing the preliminary task; we practised this rule by filming a conversation between two people on the phone. The camera was always kept on the right hand side of the actors, within the 180 degrees. This is important because if the rule is broken it can be very disorientating for the viewer and won’t make sense causing confusion. However we didn't need this technique in our actual opening because we only had one actor.

Editing the Preliminary Task enabled me to get used to the software I would be using, Pinnacle, here I learnt the basics of how to cut and create a sound bridge but I also learnt how to add titles, full screen and not full screen. This was important for our Thriller Opening as we had to add our candidate names and numbers as well as create a Production Company Logo. 

My Preliminary task group realised that we had only filmed each clip once and say we weren't happy with one of the shots we had to use or cut it out so when it came to editing my thriller opening I learnt from this mistake by filming shots lots of times to make sure that we had at least one that was good enough.

As we filmed over a couple of days, we were wearing different clothes. This caused continuity errors and meant that we had to redo all the filming we had done on the first day and finish it all on the second day.

To prevent this when we were filming ‘Ready or Not’, we planned beforehand that we would allow enough time to  film everything we needed to in one day. This meant that everyone was wearing the same clothes and there were no continuity errors in our final production.

Here is an example of the continuity error within the Preliminary Task:

Since the preliminary task, we have also learnt the situations in which certain shots are commonly used such as close ups for emotion or to direct the audience to specific details whereas in the preliminary task when we were just using random camera angles. We can explain why we used different types of shots in our production. For example, we used a shot from inside the shed to show there was a presence and made sure it was slightly shaky so it looked like it was actually a point of view shot from another person. I think our understanding of camera angles and shots has grown a lot since we started learning about filming and editing at the start of the year. 

Overall I am very pleased with the final product even though there are many improvements that could be made if we did it again, for example I personally felt that there was a lack of tension in the middle of the production, however I think this was due to our choice of music but if we had chosen a louder and fast track then it wouldn't have fitted in with the opening of the movie.