Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Preliminary
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Final Two Minute Film
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When repeating the same process' such as the scripting, sketching a shot plan and location shoot, I felt that the preliminary task was a good template for our final product. Especially as a director, it allowed me to write the script with ease- even though for our final film it was much more in depth. It allowed me to consider every detail when script writing from the layout of shots to the font.
Elements of Continuity
18o Degree Rule- This is when an 'invisible' line is drawn when two people are conversing. Both people must be filmed on the one side of that line so they appear on opposite sides of the frame to make the conversation look real.
The main element we wanted to improve from our preliminary task was the fact that we broke the 180 degree rule.
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When it came to the two minute final film, the 180 degree rule wasn't needed in terms of a conversation, however, when filming I was more aware of the 'invisible' line from the mistakes in the preliminary task. This made the shots smoother and contributed to the continuity of the piece.
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Match on Action- This is when the action looks continuous from two different shots integrating together.
In the preliminary task our match on action wasn't entirely correct. The 'boys' head should've have been looking directly to the pass where he would swipe his card. His head, however, wasn't tilted directly down which meant the action of swiping the card wasn't matched. We used this minor error to help improve for our final film
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This shot shows a progression from the preliminary task as I directed our actress to look where her hand would go to open the door. In this way, the continuity was more successful.
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Eye-Line Matching- This allows the audience to view what the character is seeing from their eye line. The camera will film from their eye level to make it feel as if we are the character.
Upon reflection on the preliminary task, it's become clear that we didn't actually use eye-line matching. The camera was always facing the 'boy'. The shot of him looking at the art work was the closest we got to an eye-line match, but it is not filmed from his vision. The shot then cut to looking at the 'boy' from the art works perspective.
When him and the girl were conversing it was still an over the shoulder shot, however, it was from eye level. This meant that we had experimented with filming from eye level but not matching. |
Here it is evident that 'Ivy' is looking at a camera screen and then the shot eye-line matches to a extreme close-up of the mobile phone and what the character will be reading from the phone. It makes the audience read the phone as if they were the character so therefore was successful.
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Lighting-The lighting differed from the preliminary task to our final film. This was due to the genre, as horror requires low-key lighting. When doing the preliminary task we didn't have an issue with lighting as the natural light didn't effect the camera work. Through the developing stages I experimented with lighting issues, using reflectors and three-point lighting. This enabled me to prepare how we would get the low-key lighting effect on the day of filming.
Sound- The sound was similar in the sense that both contained music, however, the preliminary task didn't have diegetic sound when the music was playing but the two minute film did; this was a decision formed in the editing process. The preliminary task did have diegetic sound in the form of dialogue which our final film didn't.
Sound- The sound was similar in the sense that both contained music, however, the preliminary task didn't have diegetic sound when the music was playing but the two minute film did; this was a decision formed in the editing process. The preliminary task did have diegetic sound in the form of dialogue which our final film didn't.
Overall, the progression was a successful one. Through the development from the preliminary task to the final film, it enabled me to become aware of editing issues shown above and also the aspect of sound and lighting. From a directors point of view, it allowed me to write the script with knowledge of the layout what each shot needed to contain. It also made me aware that when filming, we needed to allow a longer space before and after the action in the scene for editing purposes- as well as taking a numerous amount of each takes so that we weren't stuck if one shot didn't work out well. With the preliminary task focusing on continuity, it introduced us to features that we might not of considered when shooting and editing the film. This was important as in psychological horror genre, continuity is crucial to make the film believable and therefore relatable to the audience so the fear is intensified.