The Prelim Shooting Task

Today we shot and recorded our preliminary shooting task that we had created as a group. In the short time that we had we created a script out of our individual ideas that we had previously put forward in our separate blogs, after that we put the ideas into motion and started to record clips that we would later edit and could use in order to create our short, and simple, film clip.

My individual involvement in the group was generally to act as the detective in our film, where I was to question, the criminal and fellow actor Ellis. During filming we, as a group, put possible ideas together and suggestions on how we could record a specific shot, or what could be changed, whether it be the dialogue, the shot, or even the actions that we performed. From then on we carried on our roles.

For me, acting was quite new, as you had to stay focused and make sure you didn’t get too much of “the giggles” which is safe to say, to some extent, we succeeded, though in all honestly there were times where lines were forgotten or you made a mistake or, technical errors, or you made a mistake in the sentence you said that generally made you laugh.

While filming we had to ensure that continuity was followed, which meant the audience, or viewers, could understand what was being shown to them so that the information or story could unfold. Continuity also ensures that viewers can understand what is going on in each shot and that they slide in with each other to flow without confusing or disorientating the audience with confusing shots where the camera seems to be in random positions. The 180 rule, match on action, and shot reverse shot, helped us in ensuring the film flowed as not to confuse our viewers.

Match on action ensured that when a camera changed position the action being portrayed continued or fit in with the previous shot after the camera had been moved and the action had been continued after. The 180 rule ensured that the camera was only able to be positioned on one side of the line of action which in our case, ran down the centre of the table as not to baffle viewers, where as shot reverse shot simply involved the camera changing who it was facing depending on what actor was speaking or what they where physically acting.