Evaluation of Preliminary Exercise

'I've Been Expecting You'

Group 1E

From L to R: Olivia, Narishma, Frank, James.

  I was in group 1E which contained Narishma, Frank, James and myself. We worked really well together and chose to equally split the pre-production, production and post-production tasks, which meant that we completed the preliminary exercise together. In Production, James and Frank became our actors, Narishma was the director and I took charge of Camera and Sound.

Pre-Production
We began the task by thinking about ideas that would fit the brief given to us:
To show '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'.

We began by noting down what we would need in order to create a good film:


By discussing situations in which this event mentioned in the brief might occur, we came up with the 'I've been expecting you' storyline, and our notes gradually took form as a script, displayed below. In this script we deployed Todorov's Theory of Equilibrium, in the manner seen below:

EQUILIBRIUM BOY is unaware that BOY WITH BABY wants his attention.    
DISRUPTION BOY WITH BABY is upset with BOY. They share conversation.
NEW EQUILIBRIUM: BOY WITH BABY decides that he does not want to talk to BOY.            

The Completed Storyboard

Using the information from the script, we used notepads to create an initial storyboard for our short piece of film. We found this method very helpful because it allowed us to edit and re-order the shots quickly whenever needed. At this point, we started to add in details such as transitions and shot types. Because of this, we had to remember and enforce the 180 and 30 degree rules, because it would affect the angles we could shoot from. At this point, we went to look at our location, because it helped us know which side we should shoot the actors from, and where we should position the camera. As we were working in a small environment, this was vital as it would have been very difficult to shoot without planning our camera set-up.



A clearer look at our storyboards.
This is where we began noting down transitions and sound details, as well as framing specifications.



We also made a complete storyboard, some of which can be seen here

To aid us in planning the shoot, we compiled a shot list, which was much easier to do with the assistance of the storyboard, from which we could pick out each new frame with ease. At this point, we started focusing on continuity, especially as our sequence has its fair share of movement. We took down notes on anything that could break the continuity, such as using different hands to open doors, walking and spinning the chair at different speeds, and costume changes, to make sure that we were vigilant that these things would not happen during production.

As we had been set a strict one hour time limit in which to film any shots needed for the film, it was necessary that we had a shooting schedule so that we had an idea of the order in which we were going to shoot. This also helped us think about external factors that may have affected our production time, such as other groups needing to film in the same areas, and other pupils wandering around the school. Because of this, as you see below, we filmed the master shot before the rest of the conversation, and then moved outside to film the establishing shots. Although this meant that our continuity could possibly have been affected by moving back into the suite later, it meant that we didn't end up having other groups intruding on our sets. 

 

Production

We shot on location in and around the Media Block, using a video camera, which was put on a tripod in all shots apart from the crab shot, because the crab movement could not be easily achieved with the tripod we were using. A Shot-Gun microphone was attached to the camera, and a pair of headphones allowed the camera user to listen to the sound being recorded. We mainly used the shotgun setting to get rid of background noise, but Ambient 1, which is more sensitive, was used in our establishing shot as it was taken from outside the building. Along with our pre-production documents, we used a clapperboard to record the order of our scenes, so that in post production we could quickly capture the individual takes.

Post Production



The Adobe Premiere CS3 Computer Program.

 

We completed Post Production in the editing suite, using Adobe Premiere CS3 which is an advanced piece of editing software. After capturing our shots off the video-camera, we created a new timeline to order our shots in, and then used the razor tool to make seamless match-on-action sequences. We had a large selection of CUs, which allowed us to create a shot-reverse shot effect when cut together.







Reflections on the Task

At the end of the session, I think we came up with a fairly good continuity sequence. Our pre-production was good enough that we were able to film the shots in the allocated time period, and could edit them quickly and efficiently on the computer. During production, we found that the other groups caused a disturbance to us -  as noted above, we had to adjust our shooting order so that it did not reflected the shot order in the final sequence, which meant that we risked our continuity. Fortunately, any differences between the Master Shot and our other shots have not yet been picked up on. Another major issue for us was background noise. Even with the microphone on the shotgun setting, I could hear people in other rooms when they talked loudly. We continued shooting because we recognised that there was very little we could do as other groups needed to shoot too. Although I was worried because the background noise was easily picked up by the microphone, this became less of a problem on the computer because the speakers were not so sensitive to noise. However, the background noise does not run smoothly through the CUs. In production, we planned to take a long shot to pick up background noise, in order to layer it over our other shots, but time constraints meant that this was not a possibility. In future, we would try to wrap the main shooting up earlier in order to do this. What worked well in our shot was the use of match-on-action, which ran very subtly, especially in the first few shots where our character walked through two sets of doors. In addition to this, our video has received the highest amount of hits on YouTube out of all the preliminary tasks; though this is probably due to the originality of our script, we are more than happy to claim full responsibility for it!

The preliminary task has really helped me recognise the important of pre-production, as generally I am too willing to leap straight in with a video camera. In the Media Examination, this would be a very bad idea as we are given time and equipment constraints, and any actors we may wish to use need to be previously notified of our shooting dates. Storyboards in particular are very useful in implementing the 180 and 30 degree rules, alongside other continuity theories. I think that the location must be looked at before we can start planning shot types, as size restrictions could mean that some shots would be impossible to take in some environments. When shooting, it is vital that we have a clear set of instructions as to the movement and dialogue in the script, as this means we won't have to re-assemble or re-shape footage using adobe premiere cs3, to make the scene make sense again.