AS Prelim

The name of the piece was 'Yes, actually!' and the genre was Romantic Comedy. The narrative was a nerdy boy gained the courage to ask the popular girl to go to prom with him. She initially refuses but he manages to change her mind.


1) Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you?

The group

 I worked with Prudence Cater Phillips, Gabriel Meytanis and Joshua Oranu-Noah. To manage the task we worked as a group and individually. As a group we came up with the title, the idea and the dialogue. We decided on camera placement and did the blocking and walk throughs. My role was that I acted in the video, drew the storyboard, designed the room set up and did the initial plan of the script.

2) How did you plan your sequence? What processes did you use? What theories did you try to take into account?

Storyboard showing the first two shots. Shot types, duration,
action transitions and possible problems.

We planned our sequence using the processes of creating a storyboard, a top down plan of the room with camera positions marked on, a prop list and shot list. We then cast the roles, created the script, blocked the movement and did walk-throughs. Theories that we tried to take into account were continuity ones such as match on action and eye-line matches. Because of the brief we also focused on the 180-degree rule and incorporated shot/reverse shot. We took genre, character and narrative into account as we wanted to create a clear story that made sense and fitted into the genre of Romantic Comedy. We wanted the characters to be very like the stereotypes of the popular girl and nerdy boy and to achieve this we used signifiers such as a mobile phone and leather jacket for the girl and nerdy glasses and pens for the boy.




3) What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it? 

Technology in shooting: 

Me editing one of our first shots. 

• Cannon Hfg30 camera
• a tripod
• a microphone
•  headphones

We used the tripod by having the camera mounted on it and used the tripod arm to move the camera smoothly in panning shots. We kept the camera on auto setting and used to zoom button when in one of the shots we changed from a mid shot to a medium close up. We used the mic to pick up the diagetic sound and dialogue and used the headphones to hear what the recording sound liked when we were filming.

Technology in editing: 

• PC based edit suites
• Adobe premier pro

We used the drag and drop tool to place the shots into chronological order. We cut shots, reordered the shots and synced them together to create a slowing timeline. To create continuity we used the razor tool to cut shots down by very small amounts (eg. fractions of seconds).



4) What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing?

 There were many factors we had to take into account otherwise the shoot would not have worked.

  

Room set up and some camera
positions.

Planning: 

• Amount of time we had and the number of tasks we had to complete. 
• Work out the set up of the room taking into account the 180 degree rule and camera positions. 

Filming: 

• The window in the room behind the table where most of the action took place. (when we were filming we could see the reflection of the camera in the window).
• Time- we only had an hour and twenty minutes to shoot all of our shots.

Editing:

• Time- we had lots to do and less than 2 hours to do it in.
• Continuity-making sure the shots matched up perfectly.

5) How successful was your sequence? Please identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/do differently?

Gabriel and I acting.

I believe that the sequence was very successful. We followed the brief completely by completing the action and demonstrating match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. We also demonstrated the following well: eye line matches, a master shot, varied shot types and we portrayed the events in real time. We achieved what we aimed to which was to establish the genre of Romantic Comedy, the juxtaposing characterisations and have a clear narrative. 

In hindsight, I would have taken more takes of the penultimate and last shots as in editing we were very limited with what we could do as none of the shots matched up with each other exactly.

6) What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework, do you think?

The main things that I have learnt from this task are:

• The importance of good planning which will enable a good shoot.
• How easily continuity things in shooting (ie wearing glasses then taking them off in between shots) can be missed.
• How many things can go unexpectedly wrong when shooting.
• How much effort,time and skill goes into making even a one minute sequence. 

This learning will be very significant in completing the rest of my foundation coursework as it has shown me what planning, filming and editing are really like. It will help me stay motivated as I am pleased with seeing the finished product and have really enjoyed the task. It will make me maintain my work ethic and my need for everything to stick to time but it has also shown me how things can go wrong and that is alright as long as you can use that to improve.