Q7.

1. Q7. Looking back at your Preliminary Exercise, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?

2. The aim of our preliminary exercise was to practise our skills of filming, editing and directing. • What started off as a reasonably easy set of shorts turned into quite a challenge of our abilities. • This exercise was incredibly useful as it was something we could look back on when coming to film our opening title sequence. • We had a basic plan of our short sequence. We followed a basic storyboard and acted on improvisation for our speech. • The sequence was, our actress would walk up a staircase, walk down a corridor, then turn a corner, enter a room, sit at a table opposite our 2nd actress, they would speak, the sequence would end. Q7

3. Shot Reverse Shot • As we were practising our skills at filmmaking we needed to involve as many filming techniques as possible, we used this Shot Reverse Shot as one of them. • We needed to capture both characters speaking from both points of view. • Each shot is an Associated Point Of View, looking over the characters shoulder as the other one speaks. • Three lines are said in this Shot reverse Shot. • Actress 1: Hi, how are you? • Actress 2: I’m good thank you, how are you? • Actress 1: I’m good thanks. • We only had one camera so it was very hard to make the shots look authentic. • We filmed an APOV shot over actress 1 and filmed the whole conversation, therefore we could keep the same position of the APOV for actress 1 without messing up the shots. • We then filmed an APOV over actress 2 and filmed the whole conversation again, so it would flow easier when it came to editing. • We edited the SRS together and it flowed rather well, the only problems were that the camera had slightly different positions for each APOV. And the end of the characters speech quietly echoes over the following clip. Q7

4. Match on Action • We tried to involve Match on Action in the exercise wherever we could, here is an example. • Our character walks through a door on the outside then enters a corridor on the inside. • We had to make sure the actress was in the same position at the end of our first short as at the start of our second. • We also had to make sure the door was as open at the end of our first shot as at the start of our second. • I do feel the shots looked good together and flowed well. Q7

5. Planning • Before: • When it came to planning our Preliminary exercise we had little knowledge of how to plan a sequence of shots. • We had created a rough storyboard with a few notes but we were basically going to leave it down to making it up as we went along. • This was not the best attitude to have towards filming because we hadn’t thought about how important planning our shots was. Q7

6. Filming our Preliminary exercise • Filming our Preliminary exercise was easier said than done, we had planned to do shots that without any practise were very hard to construct. • For example, we had planned to do a planning shot of our character walking towards the camera, down a corridor, before turning a corner and walking away from the camera, while the camera panned with her so she would always be in shot. • This sequence was particularly hard to shoot because we were not experienced at techniques like panning and we had little space in the corner to track the character. • We did eventually get the shots we needed but we had to cut the first bit of the shot and intercut it with another shot of the character approaching the camera. • I did not feel the shot looked as good as we wanted, the cut together of the two shots was a bit clunky and it did go on too long. Q7

7. Filming our OTS (Part 1) • When it came to planning the filming of our OTS I knew that practise was over and that this was the real thing. But were we prepared? • Looking back on the experience of filming our Preliminary Exercise we knew what worked and what didn’t. What type of camera techniques, movements and shots worked and what didn’t. • We had planned better than our Prelim. We only had a day to shoot so we had to structure our day around the shots we needed. • I did not feel our planning was that useful. We had created a storyboard and plan of our shots but when it came to filming in these locations we tried out new ideas that we felt looked better and worked better. • What am I most proud of? • I was most proud of the drug deal scene. When we first arrived at the shooting location I was sceptical to whether we were going to get the shots we wanted on such a narrow, steep staircase. • I feel this sequence worked very well in the end and even though we had little space to move our tripod, we were able to get better shots that those we had planned. • What areas needed improvement? • I feel the scene that stared me didn’t work as well as we wanted it to. • One of the reasons for this was that it was too similar to the first drug deal scene. • Both scenes are set on a narrow staircase, and in both scenes the characters are walking. • We wanted to add the effect that these characters maybe enemies in rival gangs but have similar routines. • We felt this was just confusing and didn’t work. Q7

8. Filming our OTS (Part 2) • How have you used match on action, shot reverse shot or the 180 degree rule in your final piece and why? • I feel we tried to add these techniques into our OTS wherever we could. • Most frequently I feel we have involved match on action, for example in Holly’s drug deal scene. • Because we had little space to move the camera on the staircase the shots were rather short and could only capture a certain amount of movement. Therefore, we had to rely on match on action shots. • We filmed Holly from the top of the stairs going down, this is a reasonably long shot but we could not capture the entire scene from up there. • We then filmed her coming down the stairs approaching the camera. This is a very quick shot that only captures a few steps of walking. • We then cut to our final walking shot. This time we filmed behind Holly walking down approaching the drug dealer on a platform. • I felt this MOA worked very well in the limited space we had. • How successful is your end product? • Although improvements could be made I feel that our final product is very successful. • In a day of filming we managed to get some very good shots, basically all the shots we needed and more. • Is there anything that you would do differently next time? • If I were to do this again I would focus more on the planning process more than the practical process. • I feel that our end product was successful but I did not feel we were as prepared as we should have been. • Plus, if I were to do this again I would make sure we involved more Foley sounds. I have learnt that Foley sounds significantly increase our marks and if we had more sound effects the quality of our final piece would have been higher. Q7

9. Editing our Preliminary exercise • Editing our preliminary exercise was just as important a learning experience as filming. • Editing our Prelim was easier than our OTS, all we had to do was cut everything together so that it flowed and add music. Unfortunately this sounded easier than it actually was because this process was all new to us. • We learnt the skills of cutting our clips so they flowed together but in some parts of the sequence this was hard to do. • For example our match on action. These shots had to flow very well if they were to look real. The door had to be in exactly the same place in the end of our first shot as in the start of our second. As did our actress. • Another two shots that was hard to make flow was when our actress walked up the corridor, turned a corner and walked down in the other direction. • This was two shots and when it came to editing it was very hard to make them not look jumpy. • In the end, unfortunately, these two shots did not flow as well as I wanted them to but it was a very good learning experience for when it came to filming our final OTS. Q7