Preliminary Task Evaluation

For our Preliminary task, our group filmed in the dead-it suite (old edit suite) above the theatre. This location suited out task as there were pipes along the back wall and it looked quite shabby. This was suited to our script which was a discussion between two characters about murdering someone. Another reason it suited our script was because we needed a door for one of the characters to enter and exit through during the scene, and this room had 2 doors, so worked perfectly. All the members in our group had an equally active role in the task. We all had a go at calling the instructions and filming. We had to make sure we left 5 seconds ‘breathing room’, either side of the scene, so that it is easier for us when it comes to the editing stage. For lighting we used a standing light and a fill light, both of the characters had cast shadows behind them. The lighting was important to our scene as it added tension and was am easy way of effectively creating a more appropriate mood for the scene.

We set up the camera correctly as a group and we all checked that we were happy with how it was set up before we started filming. We adjusted the tripod and bubbled it to make sure it was level. Once we had set up the camera on the tripod we filmed the colour bars to make sure that the tape is working, if we had gone straight into filming and then found out the it was a faulty tape then we would have lost some or all of the scene. The colour bars are a way of checking the tape is working and it also checks that the colours are all set to the correct intensity.

We made sure that the shot was framed correctly each time and that none of the equipment could be seen in the shot. We decided to film all of our wide shots first, then we did over the shoulder shot from one side, followed by the other side. We then did a shot of just the gun, then the eye line of one character from the gun to the other character and we did a shot of the shadows. To finish we did some close-ups of each character and the tried an extreme bird’s eye shot of the scene but in order to achieve this we had to lift the camera and tripod up so it was touching the ceiling. We used the 180 degree rule and did not break it, there were a few times that we had to think about it before we started filming but we never broke it.

As I mentioned before we used all the appropriate terminology to make sure everyone on set knew what was happening. This helped and made sure everyone was working as a team and knew what was going on.