Evaluation - Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The preliminary task involved making a video clip of a brief conversation between two people. By doing so, we were confirming that could effectively utilise the four of the essential filming rules and methods. These are: the 180-degree rule, match on action, shot reverse shot and of course, continuity. At the time, these skills were new to us, and so we were able to put them into practise during this exercise. The task itself involved filming a person walk through a door (with a close-up of the handle), sit down across from another person, and engage in a conversation. The people that can be seen in the preliminary exercise are actors that we hired so that we ourselves could become more accustomed to using the camera. Here we learnt the basic skills of film-making, which proved to be beneficial for us when undergoing our main task: to produce a 2 minute opening (including a title sequence) to a film. The genre we chose was horror; a slasher specifically.

As we were learning about these new rules, we therefore ensured that these techniques were present in our preliminary exercises to show that we could use them effectively and without too much inconvenience. During this exercise, I felt comfortable with using the 180-degree rule, as well as shot-reverse-shot. These were simple to go about as we simply established our 180-degree line of action by not allowing the camera to move beyond the legs of the chairs. Shot-reverse-shot was accomplished by simply shooting from over the shoulders of the two speakers; recording the conversation once from both ends. However, successfully adhering to match-on-action proved more difficult than we had expected. For example, we filmed the male actor opening the door with the handle in one shot, but in the shot we attempted to match it to, he opened it with his hand. Thanks to some some clever editing though, we managed to hide this technical error. However, we were able to learn from this mistake, and therefore when shooting the real film, we made sure we shot each shot several times from different angles and in different ways in order to minimise the possibility of error as much as possible.

Following the completion of our preliminary task, I felt as though I had come away more knowledgeable. I now knew how to operate the camera effectively, and how to achieve several different types of shots such as close-ups, high-angle, over shoulder shots and many more. All of this was achieved while remaining to comply with the basic rules of film-making.

Shot-Reverse-Shot: Being able to successfully accomplish this would inevitably proved a challenge for us, given that in the first scene, Volnus' face is deliberately obscured, and in the second scene, only one actor is present. However, it does still occur in some sense when Frank tells Volnus to "go to hell", and the camera switches back to Volnus' point-of-view (seen below).

Although, a true shot-reverse-shot does not occur in this opening two minutes, it would certainly have occurred in the rest of the film, and we would have been capable of doing so. It is merely the context of the opening two scenes that prevented us from explicitly using one. We wanted Volnus' true identity to remain a mystery for now, so we avoided using a true shot-reverse-shot in order to achieve this.

Match-On-Action: As mentioned previously, we had some issues with this in our preliminary task, so to resolve this, we shot each shot several times from several angles in several different ways, and then took the best. I believe that this technique was successful as all of our shots seem to flow without technical error. This therefore contributes to the film's verisimilitude, and makes it a greater film as a result.

180 Degree Rule: This, although perhaps not entirely noticeable, was indeed present in our film. We drew our imaginary line in the same way we had in the preliminary exercise: the camera must never go beyond the legs of the chair; i.e. - the camera must never be placed anywhere behind Frank. When filming, we successfully obeyed this rule with each shot (with the exception of Volnus' point-of-view shot that broke the rule intentionally for an eerie effect). As a result of this success, our film maintains its continuity, and is a superior film than it would otherwise have been as a result. Had we not had practise in our preliminary exercise, then I believe it would have been far more difficult for our film to maintain continuity and verisimilitude, and so our preliminary exercise doubtlessly contributed to the film's overall realistic merits.

Throughout this scene, the camera never goes behind Frank (left) in order to keep to the rule; the only exception being Volnus' point-of-view shot when looking at Frank's phone, which can be seen above.

I think that the preliminary exercise gave use a taste of the skills required for film-making, and gave us a basic understanding of how to use the camera to accomplish different shots and techniques, while still complying with the laws of continuity. By using these techniques individually, we were able to assess what we were capable of doing and what required improvement. It therefore made sense target our weaknesses as this would develop our skills as film-makers. Hence, by developing these skills, I feel as though my skills have massively improved from when we began. I now feel far more confident in using a camera for a variety of different shots and techniques, as well as using Final Cut Express to edit the film post-production to maximise continuity. I feel far more accustomed to all aspects of film-making, and feel as though I have come away far more knowledgeable. Now equipped with this vaster span of knowledge, I feel as though I have definitely opened opportunities for film-making and editing in the future; far more than I could have ever done previously. This has certainly been a fantastic experience for me.

Evaluation - Question 6

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Evaluation - Question 5

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Evaluation - Question 4

The audio clip on the final slide may not work properly, so here is the link to its source
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Evaluation - Question 3

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Evaluation - Question 2

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Evaluation - Question 1