Preliminary Task

Above is our preliminary task in which we had to follow a brief that contained a continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.

Video Evaluation:

1. Does it follow the brief?

The video on the whole follows the brief very accurately. There is evidence of clearly filmed shot reverse shots. For example when the man says "Hi", a shot reverse shot occurs in the form of an L cut. An L cut is when the reaction of the person the dialogue is directed at is shown as the man is speaking. There is also lots of match on action - at the start when he is walking the camera angle changes and the man is still walking despite the camera angle change. Match on action also occurs when the man is getting up from the sofa. This gives the audience a feel of real time and can be described as continuous editing. However, one slight inaccuracy that occurred were a few shots that broke the 180 degree rule. The reason it broke the 180 degree rule was because in the conversation scene, the camera switches to the other side of the metaphoric line meaning that the sequence of footage may be disorientating for the viewers.

2. How effective is the editing? (Pace/Flow/Accuracy)

The editing is very effective in the sense that it keeps the audience entertained with the constant variety of camera angles and lots of match on action to compliment it. The flow of the editing is accurate in order to look continuous. This means that the audience don't get confused with the flow of action. The use of continuous flow will help suppress the footage to real time.

3. Has sound been recorded clearly?

The sound for this particular task didn't need to be anything fancy and therefore there was no need to do any external recording or sound design enhancement. The sound was recorded straight from the camera microphone and then in editing we added a low pass filter in order to eliminate any low booming sounds. This meant that the audio was heard better without much background noise.

4. What is the quality of the camera work? (Framing/Angles/Shot choice)

The task was filmed on a Canon 550D DSLR camera with the use of two different lenses depending on the shot type. For close up detailed shots of the face we used a Canon 55-250mm and for normal perspective shots we used a Canon 18-55mm keeping the zoom on 25mm. The reason for this is because a 25mm zoom on a crop sensor camera is the most accurate representation of what the human eye can see and therefore this allows for the best footage. The framing as well as the shot type of each shot was very appropriate to capture the emotion of the rejected man as he walked out.