My Preliminary task- Evaluation

YouTube Referance – http://www.youtube.com/ringwoodmedia#p/u/9/ucE–ckm3fg

Our preliminary exercise gave us the opportunity to use a variety of shots and sequences to create a short film in the school enviroment. Our film was about a pupil asking a member of staff wheather they could borrow a green hexagon, after the teacher declines the proposal due to him not having one. When a second pupil asks for the same item, the teacher then suppies the second pupil with the green plastic hexagon, to the first pupils shock and confussion. We feel that our prelinary exercise was made as a comedy, and we feel that we achieved this due to the positive response from the ‘test’ audience.

Firstly we recorded a scene that included someone that wasnt in our group, and we filmed what we thought was a good piece off work, however once we uploaded it onto the computer we decided that we felt it would be better if we tryed to go over what we had done and start over, whcih is probably for the best, as the first peice was very poorly done, and the camera shots that we were asked to give hadnt been achived. Rather than adding to this piece, we thought if we re-recorded we wouldnt need to worry about the clothes that we wore, and we wouldnt need to set up the scene exactly the same, because the smallest change in the scene would be noticed easily.

I felt that in my edit I had a wide variety of shots that all linked together and made sense they were all smooth and flowed well together. Throughout the film, we tryed to include a variety of camera angles/shots to make the film up to a better quality so that the viewer enjoyed watching it more. I feel that some of the shots we made were very nicely edited, for example there were smooth cuts from the pupil walking down the corridor using a tracking shot, and then changing to a panning shot as he walked around the corner, and then to an extreme close up of his hand as he walks through the door, I feel that this small scene was fluent and well edited to create a decent variety of shots.

When we were filming there were a number of errors that we ncountered, the first of which was very early on, in the second shot infact, when we see the characher making his way down the stairs, and because of his body language we expect him to turn right when he comes down the stairs, instead we see him appear on the left which is a tracking shot that we used a dolly for so we could follow him along the corridor. However when we see this short sequence it doesnt look right in the mind.

Another error we made was inside the room when the charater comes through the door and turns on the light, we had to include this because we realised that we had filmed most of the piece with a light on in the room, however we neded to find a way we could make this beliveable so we quickly fimled the character entering and turning on the light. This also didnt look right because someone coming into an office wouldnt turn on the light as they enter. Again in this bit fo the film, we shouldnt of let the character have there foot on the table, as it doesnt look right, and looks odd in alot of the shots, the arm positions also change during the sequence without showning the change, which tooks odd aswell.

However the biggest mistake that we made during filming was the fact we only recoreded eaqch bit of the film once, which meant watever the result of that film was meant that we were stuck with it. nomatter what, we could of had bad sound on the piece which would be very hard to edit, and may mean we need to come in again with same clothes on and record again, whcih would be alot of trouble, we did also encounter a problem where a friend that was in the room with us at the time was caputred in a shot that we were going to use, but because he was caught at the side of the frame it meant that we couldnt use that shot without making the look of that piece fake.

During the film I decided not to upload any kind of theme tune or song, as I thought it would ruin the versimilitude of the piece, hoever I did include some sounds that were on a site called ‘www.freesound.com’ they have a wide selection of sound effects that you can easily upload and put into your film peice, I found this site very usefull, as because we only had one recording of the film we could easily add and take away sound that we didnt like, which made the versamilitude better agin, although some pieces of the editing dont correspond to the sound, for example the footsteps, I tryed to make the timing as close I could in the time that I was given. Because we were based in a school environment, we did come across a few dificulties, for example there seemed to a constant noice in the background from classrooms, and sometimes there were people who wanted to cut through our shots in order to pass. Because of this, we frustrationally had to re-do some scenes to create a smooth and interferrance free shot. However it was quite common for even at the quietest times to still have unwanted sound, so the site with free sounds came in usefull alot.

Even though we had the error at the start of the film i still liked the second shot where we see the character walking down the corridor, becvause of the way the camera moves with him, the camera slightly moves with the position of his body, making you feel part of it, as if you were walking behind him. I also quite like the shot where we see the hand on the door, and is it pushes we slowly see more of the body i quite like it as it shows the entry into the room, and meakes the following shots make sense.

I feel that we made a very good effort at this piece of work, yes there are improvements we could of made but in the time we were given we gave it our best attempt, and considering we had to re record our whole peice of work it made the editing an even quicker process than it would otherise of been. I am happy with the result that we ended up with.