Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. The task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree-rule.
Main Task Brief:
The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Although the Prelim task was a short, simple sequence displaying what we had learnt about continuity, it was still very difficult to ensure everything was created in such a way that the narrative ran seamlessly. The most valuable thing I learnt from the Prelim however was the importance of good planning! As a group we devised sheets and sheets of possible shot types, a main story board and 'optional cool shot' storyboard, as well as an alternative storyboard after we changed the original sequence.
Final opening sequence planning
We had organised actor contracts, location reccies, props etc in advance so our first shoot day went flawlessly and we finished on schedule. A firm believer in spontaneity, I was a bit concerned rigorous planning and constantly referring to shot lists would stifle our creativity when in actual fact it enhanced it- because we knew exactly what we had to do and the time we had to do it in, we were left with scope to experiment with different shots, many of which became our favourites.
In the Prelim task we deliberately shot the S/RS from two distances, MCU OTS and CU for variety. Although we did not end up using the latter, it taught me the importance of filming MORE THAN NECESSARY. In our final sequence, we captured over 100 shots in total even though a majority did not make the final cut. As in the Prelim, one of the members of our group featured in the sequence so we delegated jobs equally, playing to our individual strengths and by logging all the shots taking care not to let one person do too much filming/directing etc.
Group Paperwork
Establishing or master shots were very important to set the scene and edit to close ups from. In our sequence we go from an ELS to an MS to an ECU, the continuity rules of not jumping shot types learnt from the Prelim.
In the Prelim task we did a walkthrough of the sequence on Lewis iPod. Similarly, we did the walkthrough of the stair scene in the music block and from this realised exactly what shots we needed and drew up a detailed shot list and storyboarded from it.
From the Prelim we learnt the MOA and used this throughout our sequence when Ava enters the house, takes out her earphones, looks at her phone etc. Before learning about it for the Prelim I was not aware of the 180 degree rule which was very valuable when filming our sequence in order to make the narrative flow and suspend our audiences disbelief. Using knowledge gained from the prelim task, we made sure to stick to continuity rules although there were a few errors as between shoots the phone we were originally using for Ava's broke and the screen cracked and we lost the case we had used to cover the apple logo. We had to use an iPod touch and frame the new shots so it was not noticeable and fortunately noone raised the issue at the screening.
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