preliminary Match Cut Task

Making a short film(Friday 16th December)

In today’s lesson, our task was film a short scene where a person walks into a room and shares conversation with another person. We had to include elements like Match Cuts, Shot/Reverse Shot and keeping the 180 degree rule. Lauren was the one who walked inside the room and start talking to me whereas Karess was the one using the camera.

We have had planned our work last week so we had plenty of time to the shooting and then editing. It took us about 20 minutes to finish the shooting because we were well organised. After shooting a small scene, we had to edit what we have done in order to make the scene make sense. The shooting went well because we were filming in the storeroom, which was a quite place to film. After the filming, it was time to the editing. Editing at the beginning took a bit time because of the lack of organisation. We have started the editing but we could not finish because we had less time and editing took more time then I was expecting.

I have learnt a lot filming with a group because we all got different ideas and we bring all into one then it creates a good idea. I am pleased with my group except the absence that occurs a lot for the members in my group. I’m a bit nervous about the thriller though.

Film Practice

In todays lesson we learnt more about different types of shots that we could use in our Thriller. The shots included a match cut which is where a transition that involves a direct cut from one shot to another, which "matches" it in action, subject matter, or actual composition. This kind of transition is commonly used to follow a character as s/he moves or appears to move continuously. Film continuity is often dependent on match cutting. Match cutting can also be used in a montage sequence, to show a similar activity occurring over a passage of time.
We used this today in our film practice frequently and found that it made the seen much more interesting for example as shown previously in the viedo the actress (Lauren) walks into a room but instead of showing this from one standared shot we used a match cut which also enabled the group and i to include various types of angled shots which we thought would increase the quality of our work. I personally thought that this would make the scene much more interesting and enjoyable to watch instead of using the average one shot as we could see the scene from several angles and learn a lot of key elements to the scene which in our case included a bag in the actresses hand which was a crucial part of our short scene.
Unforunately due to previous absenses and complications this was the first time that this final group and i had worked together unlike other groups in the class. I initially thought that this would be an issue as it takes some time for people to work well with one another and communicate sufficiently together but this did not come to be an issue within this group as we all knew what was needed to be done and the roles that we played.
Filming comes quite naturally for me so i thought that it was vital that my role was behind the camera so that the group could do the best and this also allowed me to grow in the filming department. This was approved by my group which meant that we could promptly begin filming giving us more time with editing which is for me the hardest part of producing a film scene.
We continued filming quickly as we had planned the shots that we were going to take and filmed them instantly. The group and i then had half of the lesson to begin editing and it was here that we wanted to get a headstart and hopefully complete all of our editing at once, but we were aware that many problems can sometimes appear on the footage making the editing process that much more difficult and we remained cautious just in case any did show up on our work increasing the time that we had to spend on it.
But we were still unaware of what was yet to come.

The Editing Continues

Continuing from the previous lesson the group and i remained editing our short film. As simple as i found it, it had come to our attention the that the footage was quite too dark which we were not able to identify whilst filming as the quality on the camera and on the computers are some what different. This really made the group and I wary that the rating of our footage would decrease but we still pushed on to complete the editing as we felt that the teacher could still identify the range of shots that we used and see our strengths in filming.
As the editing continued we finally managed to complete our practice filming excersise and we were able to look fully at it and analyse the strengths and weaknesses that we feel about the footage. After a long ananlysis on my work i came up with this conclusion

Strengths: I feel that me being behind the camera enabled me to take control and gain a lot of experience. I feel that i worked quite well and managed to include a variety of shots. As a group i feel we worked fantastically together as we all had our roles and knew exactly what we where to do and i feel this played a big part in the success of the footage. Although the panning shot that we certainly wanted in our footage came to be quite difficult i thought fast and came up with a solution that made it possible and worked hard to achieve great footage

Weaknesses: I feel that planning was a key weakness in the group as there was a large amount of things that we should have thought about thoroughly before we began filming but due to our eagerness in wanting to start as quickly as possible it led to several issues that we had to recover from very quickly including the lighting which i have spoken about previously. The location that we where going to film in also came to be a weakness in filming as we couldnt find the appropriate location that was suitable for the style and mood that we wanted to create.

Overall the group and i managed to overcome the troubles that we came across and pull through to create a good peice of footage, although there are a large number of things that i wish to change i feel i did he best that i could do and showed the skills that i have as a director

Storyboard Tutorial(Tuesday 12th January)

In today's lesson our task was to create a shot list for the storyboard which we had and the Match Cut Exercise.

We had a story of a guy who chain smokes while copying the confidential files to the computer and plans to a CD. He packages them and is seen posting them. To show this story board we have listed the shot types, angles etc to show it in the storyboard. After doing the task we get to watch the short film they done and we saw our mistakes which we wouldn't of done. After watching the short film we've learnt about a shot called match cut. As we were showned in the short film we had to produce a match cut with story we had being given.

To conclude this, we've done a shot list exercise then learnt the match cut shot. After doing the task we had being given an another task to show if we really can use match cut with the story that was given.

Watching Thrillers(Friday 9th January)

In today's lesson our task was to gain ideas from the previous A level students who made thrillers last year. We have watched about 6 of their videos and analysed on the mise-en-scene.

The elements that will make a good thriller is to seduce the audience into long term commitment. The reason for this is because if we knew much information about the film, we wouldn't bother to watch. The other element which will make a good thriller is the camera shots being used correctly, i.e. can be an establishing shot at the beginning to inform the location.

The videos I have watched from the previous A level students has being done well, especially the soundtracks which has being used good in the scenes. In one of the videos I've watched the flashback which they showed was well done because the camera shots has helped a lot.

Sound Editing(Tuesday 6th January)

Our task in today's lesson was to watch a scene from 'The Casino Royale 007' and to analyse the soundtracks. We have watched the scene then later on enter the section 'Sound Landscape' which gave us more information about how their manage the soundtracks in the film.
After learning about how to manage the soundtracks in the movie, everyone had an opportunity choose one scene out of the four. I have chosed the casino scene and I didn't have any diffuculties about managing the soundtrack.
After doing the editing on the sound for a film after we get to edit on our short scene with the limited soundtracks.