Prelim Task

 

Planning

I have decided that I will work best on this topic in a group with two other students in my class, and as a group we sat down and began to plan any ideas that we had related to the task brief we were given which was:

 

A short film around one minute long which included the following actions:

Somebody opening a door

The door opening

A conversation between two people sitting down- around four lines of dialogue

Somebody exiting the scene

 

This footage had to include different camera angles and movements and was to be edited by us.

 

Our group started off the prelim task by creating a mindmap of various ideas we had individually and putting them together so everybody had contributed their opinions and possible ideas for the content and filming of our short film. We looked at the many different sections and noted down any thoughts we had for the task.

My Story Board

 

We then decided to each draw a story board on our own to show our own ideas of what the footage should look like with the plot, camera shots and sound. Each of us had to include shots of somebody opening a door, sitting down with somebody and around 4 lines of dialogue must be shared between them. I decided to use the plot of a girl character running away frantically at the start of the footage as it leaves the auience wondering what she is running away from. I then decided to use a flashback effect to the previous action that had led her to run away. I then did a shot of her hand opening the door followed by an action match of the door opening, where she walks to a bench and sits down to have a conversation with a male character who's role is a thug. The idea of the plot is that the girl owes the boy money and he is threatening her if she doesn't bring him it. This then makes sense as to why she is running away at the start.

 

Laura-Jo's Story Board

 Laura-Jo took a different approach to the similar plot we had of the girl oweing the thug money, however her story board started with a pan of the girls feet walking towards the door which would then open, and her scene ended with a chase unlike mine which started with a chase.

Nikki's Story Board

 

Nikki's story board is very similar to Laura-Jo's with the structure as the pan of the feet to start with and then ending with a chase scene.

 

After we had all drawn our ideas on to a story board, we sat down as a group and discussed which elements we liked best on them for our film. We decided as it was the majority vote of the group, that it was best to start off with the pan of the girl's feet walking towards the door and ending with a frantic chase scene filmed using handheld camera. We then continued by discussing the different locations in which we could film the plot we had agreed on and decided that the picnic benches outside lower site cage would be best as it is a quieter location for filming and the door scene could still be shot there. We then discussed what the characters needed to wear and decided that casual clothes would be good for the age of the characters, and therefore decided a costume wasn't necessary as the actors would already be in casual clothes when we film it at sixth form. We came up with the different camera shots which we liked from the three different story boards and decided which shots would be used in a particular order.

 

Filming

The first decision we had to make as a group was the actor and actress we wanted in our film. We decided to ask a boy in our year to play the thug and Nikki from our group played the girl as she had the correct outfit and image for the role. This left me and Laura-Jo to using the camera and filming the footage, which we took turns in doing e.g. Laura-Jo would film the first shot with mine and Nikki's input and advice on different angles and movements, then for the next shot I would film with help and advice from those two. We also included a scene which was through hand held camera to allow Nikki to film some footage as well.This allowed us all to have equal roles in the production of the footage and we all had input on the final shots. The day which we decided to film on was snowy so we had to change the scene where the characters sit on a bench as it was covered in snow and unrealistic to sit on it, so we changed the scene to two characters standing sharing dialogue. We had to do more than one shot of each scene as the focus was incorrect or we hadn't got the correct angle on the image and this then benefited us in the editing stage as we were able to chose which shots worked best together. I enjoyed using the cameras and filming the shots, however if we were to do it again, I would use a tripod for the camera to ensure that the shot was steady and clear. I would also try and record the sound separately as the dialogue is difficult to understand.

 

 Editing

The editing stages were the most difficult in my opinion as I was using a software which I wasn't familiar with and therefore had to experiment with the different options before beginning to edit the clips together. We took it in turns to do a section of the video and edited it to the final idea that we had come up with, however some sections we changed due to the options the software gave us for example we added a transition between shots where Nikki was running, to give the impression that she had ran for a long time which had an exciting effect on the final video. As a group we had a few issues with editing such as sections deleting half way through which meant we had to edit the shots again and sort out the order of the footage. We managed to solve this problem quickly together and continued with the editing, I found the cropping option hard to get used to at first but now I feel confident when using the tool and can make footage link together smoothly. We decided to change the song from the original idea as the song we chose 'Me and You' by Nero which was more exciting than 'I predict a riot' by Kaiser Chiefs as it was more upbeat and matched the running scene better. We made final changes such as adapting the volume of the different scenes to allow the dialogue to be heard more clearly over the ambient sounds. 

 

Our final video

 

 

Evaluation

I am happy with the final result of the prelim task as I think it came together well and we followed our original idea and plans well. I think we followed the brief well although had to make changes to the sitting down scene due to weather issues which were out of our control. To improve it I would use dubbing at post-production for the sound to enable that it is clear and easy to understand. I would also use a tripod for a more stable camera shot on the still shots such as the mid shot used for the dialogue scenes.