Evaluation of Preliminary task

My Preliminary Evaluation

My Preliminary task involved me recording a video of someone entering a room, walking across the room towards a chair that is opposite another person, and exchanging some dialogue with that person. I also needed to use a shot reverse shot, the 180 degree angle rule and maintain continuity as best as possible.

In my Preliminary video, I can see that I have clearly shown someone entering a classroom (my choice of setting as it was convenient) through a door with well maintained continuity - I firstly decided to record Carrigan (female character who enters the room) walking towards the door from the corridor outside of the classroom. This helped to set the scene of a typical school setting. Once Carrigan walked up to the door I made sure she raised her left hand to push it open as she was more comfortable using that hand. I then decided to capture her walking through the door fully from the inside of the classroom so the next scene in the classroom didn't randomly cut to her walking half way across the room. So, I ensured that when entering the room, she again used her left hand to push the door open and also walked towards the door on the same end of the corridor as before - this ensure continuity was maintained as though it all happened in one take.

However, as you can see from the video, when we cut to Carrigan entering the classroom she is wearing different clothes and has her hair tied back. We can also see that at the end of the video it cuts back to her wearing what she wore before and this also goes for the male character in my video - he is wearing different clothes in 2 parts of the video. This is because this footage was taken on two different days (due to some errors being found after looking over the first day of footage - carrigan had opened the door using her opposing hand in the classroom scene and the two characters were not sat across from each other quite enough) and the people in my video were given very short notice on the shooting of the footage (simply because I was pushed for time) meaning they could not change into what they wore on the first day of shooting. This is unfortunately a continuity error but I have learned from this that much more planning and attention must go into film making, which is exactly what I will do in my opening sequence footage later on.

I also feel as though I used the 180 degree rule quite well in my video - I made sure that when recording David (male role) and Carrigan for their shot reverse shots that the camera was always on the same side of the table so that it was on David's right side and Carrigan's left. This meant that when I put the shots together it didn't seem as though David and Carrigan had swapped places but as though the camera was almost the perspective of someone stood next to them, looking at carrigan and then david, therefore not confusing the viewer and making them feel as though they were there in the video.

The great thing about this shot also is that it makes the two people look like they are opposite each other without having to add one full shot of both of them in frame to see that they are opposite each other, especially if it doesn't fit that specific scene too well, so I feel the shot reverse shot captured it quite nicely. Also, this shot emphasizes when david turns to the table to look at his work as he is talking, making him look very buried and enthusiastic about the work and this also helps the shot flow into the last part of the video where both of the characters are sat fully at the table and no longer opposite each other.

However, I would have liked David and Carrigan to be looking slighter more opposite each other rather than being on a slight angle despite having the chairs positioned directly opposite each other before filming. I wanted this so that the attention on the characters and dialogue was the main focus and really emphasized at that moment in filming. From this I have learned to not be so afraid of re-shooting things if its not exactly how I had wanted it to be and to also direct the people in the shot a little more before shooting.

Overall I feel as though I did a good job of meeting the brief as this was my first time recording and editing a video and I did my best trying to "repair" some of the faults made in the video from the first time shooting so that continuity was maintained in a few more important aspects.