Preliminary task Evaluation

The filming for our preliminary task took place in the school canteen. The setting was natural with an ambient lighting and a diegetic sound of students talking in the background. This helped to set a familiar theme and a calm mood. At the beginning we used a long shot of Amelia walking round the corner in order to establish the setting of the corridor and the way to the canteen. We used match on action of opening the canteen door which in my opinion worked really well and the transition seemed smooth and unnoticeable. This way the viewers can follow Amelia without being distracted by obvious cuts.  

During the filming we stuck to our storyboard and used all the shots we intended to. However, our actors helped us to alter our script in order to make the final piece more interesting. We used an extreme long shot from a high angle of Amelia from the second floor of the canteen to establish the mise en scene of the canteen. This was also a pan to show her walking to the cookie stand. We then shot a close ups of her face and then hand picking the cookie. This allows the audience to see her making the decision and then follow her choice as she chooses her cookie.

Whilst filming the dialogue we used shot reverse shot to show the girls’ emotions as they were speaking, this also brings the focus to their face. We also used the 180° rule so both of the characters maintained their original positions. However we were shooting by the canteen window, and although the light on characters’ faces was good during close ups, it darkened them in mid-shots. Therefore in future filming we will be careful about positioning the actors.

We filmed the footage in 1hr and 30 min and were done with editing in two lessons. During this process we learned how to cut and montage the film but in future we would like to explore sound in final cut pro. We would benefit from knowing how to add and edit sound and music, as we found that the background noise in the canteen was a little bit too loud and the dialogue couldn’t be heard properly. So in future we will use the mic for the camera in order to make the speech clearer. We also felt like we needed more footage so we could do more with it. The responses we’ve had were generally good but I feel that we could have done more research on final cut pro in order to edit freely; this will be done in preparation for our main task. We also only used straight cuts to keep the focus on the characters as we didn’t need to create any specific effect.

Overall I think we’ve achieved the brief of the Preliminary task, our continuity was good although certain improvements could be made such as the position of the hands of the actors. We will do further research in order to achieve the best results for our main task.