Preliminary Task

For the preliminary task we had to create a short continuity film that involved a character opening a door, crossing a room, sitting down opposite some one and then engaging in conversation with them. Our task must demonstrate match on action, short/reverse shot and stick to the 180-degree rule. 

We completed the film and edited it to a level we were happy with, this helped us find problems, solutions and more ideas to implement in our final film. 


The first thing we noticed in our preliminary film was the opening shot being too long, it consisted of a seven second, long shot showing Nathan walk down a hallway to a door. We think that to keep the viewer more entertained and interested we could have varied our shot type or cut the clip down more. From this we have learned that to do better in our final film we must use a wider variety of shots especial when displaying a travelling scene, is done correctly it should also help us achieve some tension in our film which is going to be set in the thriller genre. 


Our match on action of Nathan opening the door seemed a bit jumpy, especially once he gets through the door. This has told us we need to work on our editing skills more in order to achieve a fluid, seamless action shot which would look professional. Our time spent editing went by quickly and we now realise that when editing our final film we must spend time fine tuning each clip to get good quality match on action.


A final error we wanted to discuss is the continuity in the conversation, when the camera changes perspective that actors also change position; this spoils the overall continuity of the film and distracts the viewer which is not what we want to happen. We believe that to prevent this from happening in the future we will have to look more closely at the footage we just filmed to keep continuity as close to perfect in the next shot. This will also keep the viewer fully engaged in the film which is what we aim to do in our final task.


There are some good points to talk about our preliminary task though; we completed the task to a good standard in the short time we had and we worked well as a team, equally dividing the editing process up between and fully discussing what type of shots we wanted to capture.


Overall we think we managed to complete the task given to us well and included everything the prelim asked us for. We got to grips with the equipment quickly and discovered how to overcome problems which will be present in the final film, such as how and when to use what shot, how to use the editing software to get good quality match on action and how to achieve believable and effective continuity.