Preliminary task evaluation

This preliminary task was to create a continuity video which required us to edit a character of our choice opening a door, crossing a room and sitting in a chair, the character also had to exchange a few lines of dialogue with another character. The video had to demonstrate match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. We had 
to edit all of our filming on Final cut express, I worked with Sophie for this task.

At the beginning of this task we had some technical problems because the cameras batteries had ran out and there were no spare, this meant that we had to wait until our next lesson to start filming, which put us at a disadvantage from other groups because it meant that we had less time to edit our filming but on the other hand we had longer to plan our video enabling us to get straight on with the task during next lessons filming.


Mine and Sophie's idea was to film in school and structure the video to look like someone was arriving for an interview. We thought that the character needed to look nervous and worried because these would be the typical characteristics of someone in this situation. We asked her to look at her watch, fiddle with her hands and take deep breathes as she walked and waited. We didn't include shot reverse shot in our video because we forgot to film this during the filming stage and we were limited on time to film due to difficulties at the beginning but we did include match on action because our character walked through a door and we showed the shot from both sides of the door. We chose to put a soundtrack over the video because of some difficulties with the wind and doors opening and closing during filming, the wind was very loud on the film and this made the presentation of the video unprofessional, also doors opening and closing created the same unprofessional presentation. However using a soundtrack enabled us to learn the skills needed to do this and to get more experience using final cut express. We didn't have any dialogue in our video as the brief said that we should have because of the soundtrack we felt that dialogue may spoil the final product. The task brief stated that we needed to make a continuity based video but we did not actually do this. We speeded up the pace of the video to match the soundtrack as it was a fairly fast song, after doing this I realised that this didn't suit the genre we were hoping for because an interview is meant to be stressful and worrying and the soundtrack that we used was very upbeat and created a positive mood. We changed the colour of the background in the video to black and white because of the lighting during the filming process, it was a dull day outside when we filmed and the lighting made it hard to see the character, we tried to make the shots brighter but this made the quality of them very grainy and hard to see. After editing I realised that in the video at 0.12 minutes you can see Mine and Sophie's reflection in the door while we are filming, so this means that I have learned to make sure that the camera and people using them are not visible in the shot before filming is started. 
Overall I think that with the time that we had to film, it went well. If we were given more time we could have included more of the camera shots and movements that were required in the brief. Using Final cut express to edit is still fairly difficult because I am still familiarising myself with it and learning new skills as I go. Working with Sophie during this task was more beneficial compared to the School Promotion Task because we both had an input with ideas and both got involved with the work and equally planned, edited and we have the same level of knowledge and understanding for filming.