Group 4B Film Blog

Preliminary Sequence- Brief: Create a short sequence in which a person walks through a door, takes a
seat and has a conversational exchange with another character.





Main Task- Brief: Create an opening sequence for a new fictional film of any genre.



Planning

The planning process for both films were fairly similar. From the preliminary we had become accustomed to having to create shot lists, storyboards and scripts, as well as dealing with location reccies and gaining permissions to shoot in locations.

For our main task, it was important to take into account what our audience would expect from a film of the Action/Scifi/Thriller genre and so carried out research into the conventions of such films before going on to planning for the shoot. This made the planning process a lot easier as we knew what needs we had to cater too.

We applied what we had learnt to our main task which made planning a lot easier, we still had to carry out a fair number of reccies before deciding on location and we drafted three scripts before finalizing our idea, shotlist and script.

The main difference we found between the Prelim and our Main task was that essentially, the main task was just a scaled up version of our preliminary which required more effort and time which required more research and planning, in order to satisfy audience. We also found the Prelim very helpful as it got us used to the customs of borrowing equipment from the media department and also when to return it.

Running a Shoot

Shooting our prelim, we discovered how useful setups were as they allowed us to have a Plan B if one of our shots didn't look the way we wanted it to.

We learnt the basics of Continuity Shooting and also basic media rules such as the 180 degree rule were practiced in this shoot.








We also learnt how to implement master shots into our sequence and when to use them for best effect. The master shot is important as it allows us show the audience where the characters are in the space. The master shot is our main set up and we ran through the whole script in each set up.






Here we can see the master shot being used at the beginning to establish the space and where the characters are. As we filmed from this set up the whole way through one cycle of the script, we were also able to use shots from this set up for the exit.






We can see here that this shot is taken from the same camera set up which saves us a lot of hassle of changing camera set ups for each shot and changing again if we didn't like them.






The Editing Process

The editing process for the preliminary was very easy as we were tasked only to create a continuous flowing scene. This meant we couldn't have any jump cuts which made the actor look like he carried out the same action twice. Instead it would be imperative to time the cuts correctly and cut to the next shot in the right place. Here is an example of a continuous shot.

 As we can see, the paper remains in the same place when the camera cuts to the second set up as it did in the first, this makes the sequence flow smoother and makes the sequence more believable             





We used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our sequence and as we had experience using it beforehand, we were able to edit fairly quickly. Capturing was a new skill that we learnt as we had footage captured for us last year, it was fairly straightforward, we just had to record the footage onto the computer through the camera.

For our Main task, we used the same basic principiles, however as it was a longer sequence and we couldn't keep track of the right place for each set up, we did have some minor mishaps in continuity. The most noticeable continuity error is when I am stood still and look at my tracker, the camera changes to an OTS and shows footage of me starting to walk right at the end despite the fact my character stays still throughout the shot.


Evaluating

We didn't evaluate our preliminary sequence as it was not necessary to do so, this meant that when it came to evaluating our main sequence, we had to learn how to evaluate our sequence.

In order to evaluate our sequence we used an online poll which wasn't very popular at first however we did manage to get some meaningful feedback from this poll where we had an average score of 7.0/10.

Getting qualitative feedback was quite easy as we worked in school and all of the teen males in our media class are part of our target audience so we could easily collect qualitative data.

Working as a Team

Working as a team was in my opinion one of the hardest challenges of this project. While it was enjoyable working with friends, we did end up wasting a lot of time that could have been more constructively spent. We also had disputes over ideas and spending a long time with friends in an edit suite did not help us to overcome that. However, the input that a group has is invaluable as we wouldn't have been able to come up with such a great idea, script and shot list if it wasn't for all of our input and we also learnt the art of coping with colleagues as well as coping under pressure and most importantly, by the end, we had learnt how to work effectively in a team!