Preliminary task

This is my edited version of my groups preliminary task. The task's criteria was a "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. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule"

To make our task successful , we had to think about a number of questions such as audience. The audience should be targeted by being able to relate to characters, plot and setting. To make it easier for the audience to relate to the characters, we used characters that are the same age as our target audience. There could be a cross-over appeal by music used to appeal to a older/younger audience but then a problem of copyright free music occurs. We also had to consider the shot types used to ensure there was a variation and used the shots in the criteria.

Shots we included were close ups to show emotion, medium shots used to show action and emotion. Tracking was used to follow a character walking across the room, and a dutch angle to imply tension and that somethings wrong. We used a low angle shot on the bully (brown haired girl) to emphasis her power and a high angle shot on the victim (blonde haired girl) to show her vulnerability. A match on action shot( this is when an action that begins in one shot is continued or completed in the next) was used when the bully was opening the door, and shot reverse shot(where one character is shown looking at another character and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. The viewer then assumes that they are looking at each other), the 180-degree rule(this states that 2 characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other) and a over the shoulder shot was used during the dialogue. Below the 180-degree rule.

We decided to shot it in the toilets as it was an accessible location to all audiences and had artificial light as there was no windows. We story-boarded the task before hand to make the filming as quick as possible, and so everyone knew what they were doing and what was going on. The storyboard included the shot types and dialogue. We also wrote a screenplay going into depth on the characters age, gender, ethnicity and stereotypes.

We repeatedly shot scenes to ensure we got the best from the acting and the camera angles then during the editing process we individually chose the best shots of each scene. The slap scene was filmed the most as its a critical part of the task as it emphasises the bullying of the story and the equilibrium/ disequilibrium between the two characters.
Problems we incurred were the first time we filmed it we accidently filmed it horizontally instead of vertically which meant it was the wrong way round, we then had to quickly film it again which made us have a shorter amount of time to edit. We also should have put the characters in school uniform as a polysemic meaning could have occurred because the uniform would be anchorage to it being set in a school. In normal clothes it isn't as obvious to where the setting is.

This task reminded us how important classic continuity editing is, when the editing looks invisible or un-noticable. Because we only had one camera, it is easy to film a scene then cut, then try to film another scene but realise the characters have moved. Then when the shots have been put together it is obvious and doesn't flow correctly.