Preliminary Film

The lesson of 16th January, the group completed filming all that was needed for our preliminary match cut task. Using all of the shots that we had, Tuesday's lesson gave us the oppertunity to edit these shots which we did to the best of our ability in the time that we had. We made sure that each shot went smoothly together, and that we selected the shots that showed the various different camera angles that were filmed. Also, we wanted to make sure that the shots where dialogue was involved, were very clear and put the point of this practice film across. We thought that although it is a fairly simple film, it put enough across to the audience and told what was going on in a very effective way. We edited it so that it was believable, but also so that suspence could be added. This stage went very well and the group worked well together to make sure that the best was made out of the good filming that was done on Friday.

Everybody has definitely progressed in their skills, from the first to the sencond practise films as it seemed more natural to use a variety of different things in both the filming and editing work. Also, I think that it was much easier to edit the second film because we knew exactly how to use all of the programs in order to make the editing very effective. Also, I think that I have gained a much better understanding generally, about the productive side to media and everyone in our group definitely have grown in knowledge and skill.

To some extent, I do feel like we followed the conventions of real films but also challenging them too. By this I mean that although our film was only meant to be short, we used realistic looking props, good dialogue, a clear structure and a wide range of different camera shots- all of which you would expect from a real film. However, as we were limited as to what we could do with this preliminary film, we challenged the forms of real films because there were limits. However, we made the best out of what we had and I think it paid off. Our location was cleverly chosen because of the amount of light that we could have in that room, and the use of chairs and tables made our film look more realistic. This location allowed us to walk in and out of the scene and gave us a big enough space to shoot in.

I think that our practice film does allow us to make any comments about representation because the two characters in the film are of the opposite sex, so we had to think about how we were going to represent each person. We decided to use low angle shots to present the male character, stereotypically, as the superior, in order to make the audience aware that he is the one they should be more weary of. The girl, on the other hand, looked to be inferior because of the high angle shots she was mostly filmed at. This showed the different representations of gender and allowed us to use this to our advantage in our practice film.

After seeing the final product of this preliminary film, I think that our group did very well although we would have liked to have got the chance to add music and add a few more tweaks, concerning our editing. However, I think that it went very well and the actors and camera woman did a very good job.