Evaluation of our Assessment Piece - Catherine Middleton

Use of the Camera-

Generally, we had steady shots, but after looking at the final piece I’m not happy with the shot across the lake as the camera shakes and jolts and doesn’t flow smoothly.  Most of the framing was good –i.e. using the rule of thirds and allowing enough head room. However, sometimes we broke this rule (e.g. the CU of his face, using a slightly canted angle – this worked due to it showing his confusion.) Some shots weren’t framed correctly, for example the shot showing him walking towards the water doesn’t give enough lead room and occasionally we crop out some of his body/head. We tried to follow both the 30 and 180 degree rules where possible and this worked successfully I think. We tried to use a range of shots – mainly using CU’s and MS’s in order to show detail and emotions of his face, as well as LS’s to establish location and space/movement. We also used a canted angle (MCU of him) to show confusion, and high angles to show power and make him look vulnerable. We didn’t use too much camera movement other than simple pans and tracking, for example in the MS/LS following him as he moves towards the water. I think we maybe could have improved our use of camera movement by making the pan on the LS across the lake a lot smoother as it looks really jolty.

Use of Editing –

I think our shots flow really nicely – it’s not to jumpy or too quick and sets a good pace to make the scene feel worrying and to make you feel apprehensive about what’s coming next. I think the transitions and effects work really well, especially the mumbling of the voices and slight fade to black and white rather than a bright colour shot during the MS/POV shot walking towards him as he sits of the bench – it adds to the creepy atmosphere and the creates more suspense, making the viewer feel uncomfortable and worried for the main character and what could happen.

Selection of Content –

I don’t think we chose appropriate actors really as the quality of the acting could be improved and distracts from the story and camera work.  However, the location worked really well I think –quite isolated, making it feel quite unnerving. I think the costume could be improved as the colours of his clothes seem too bright and set a happier tone than we would want for a horror film, perhaps all black would be better. I think the pendant was maybe slightly girly but worked well in terms of shape and size!

Self-Assessment –

I mainly contributed to the planning and filming stages, rather than the editing. I drew out our shots into a storyboard and wrote up our shot list ready for shooting our film. I then helped shoot the sequence by operating the camera and adjusting our planned shots to accommodate our exact location and weather etc. I think overall some shots could be improved in terms of framing and composition and the acting could be of better quality, but generally I was really happy with our film.

Catherine Middleton

The Final Product

WE'RE DONE!!!!!

It's taken us a couple weeks but after much hard work, and a tad of determination, we're done. Here's the finished piece

So after filming and editing our footage, we looked over our finished piece and evaluated and compare it to the original film we based it on. We thought that generally the composition and continuity of our shots was good - we tried to use a wide range of shots, choosing the most appropriate for the scene, including long-shots, close-ups and mid-shots as well as experimenting with using a canted angle to show confusion and panic. We thought the shots flowed quite well together due to us following the 30 and 180 degree rules throughout the filming. 
I think were we to re-shoot, we would have to improve the acting quality to make the scene more believable and also to improve the general quality of the clip. We would also consider reframing some of the shots as some don't use the rule of thirds to focus your attention on specific points in the shot, and occasionally exclude parts of the actor from the shot: such as his head.
However, despite the few downfalls to the project, we believe this project proved a success. 


Go Team :P

Composition Exercise.

We shot a short clip focussing on the composition of our 6 shots using the rule of thirds and the 180 and 30 degree rules.  After editing our footage we watched it back and thought that the close up shot of Josh's face set an eery effect on the clip. We used the rule of thirds to focus the viewers attention to particular points of the shot. However we found it quite hard to follow the 30 degree rule sometimes, as the location didnt have a lot of room to film in. We thought the final edited footage ran quite smoothly, however some of the transitions could have been smoother. There was the odd occasion where it seemed to jump but that was only visible to a more critical eye. Our shots were well framed, bar the odd occasion where there was a lack of head room, but again, that was not a major problem to our footage
Editing was hard, mainly because we did not have enough shots to fall back on in case there was an error we had missed whilst recording. Acting was not recognized as a weak point, solely because the focus was not on the actors, but on the editing and camera skills.

First Continuity Exercise

Hello! well this week we have been filming our first continuity exercise. This is basically where we ensure that factors occurring in our scenes do not cause confusion to the viewer, eg. moving more than 30 degrees after each shot to prevent creating the illusion of "de ja vu". If this does happen, it is called a "jump shot" (just a bit of Media terminology for you guys)

Firstly, we planned our exercise using play dough. We created little characters (as cute as they were) with pictures of our faces on it, pretending that they were us. I know it seems pointless, but we did it so we could establish which shot types we were going to use. After we attempted to film a short film with play dough, we went on to film our real film. This proved much harder than we thought it would be. We opened up this exercise with an establishing shot with the camera facing the actor. This was tricky to film as when we imported it on to the computer you could see the director (Catherine) holding the door open for the actor to walk through. We then moved on to film the actor with the camera behind the actor, this took many attempts but eventually we managed to get it just right! Yes, we will eventually upload the out-takes of that scene. Afterwards we filmed a close up of the door being opened, this was hard to edit in as we had to many shots of it so therefore it kept jumping, which didnt look very good on camera. 

We then moved on to the next scene; the most difficult scene! As the character walked through the door it jumped a huge amount to a different angle so it looks like the actor opened the door and jumped to the position what she was standing in. The disadvantage of doing the next shot was that as character 2 walked through the automatic doors, the 2 actors kept laughing at each other so it was very hard to carry on with the filming, so after numerous shots we decided to give up and move on to the next shot. This looked odd as this also jumped, character 2 didnt walk close enough to character 1 to start a conversation, so you can see where we have cut the camera to begin the next shot. Another disadvantage is the close up shot of the camera. When character 2 asks for the time, character 1 forgets to tell character 2 the time and then immediately, without focusing on the time, she automatically says that she is late and runs off, leaving character 2 feeling awkward as she runs out the door and up the stairs to where she has just come from.

If we was to re film this scene, we would change location to a straight corridor instead of a small corridor in which the character have to rotate to begin the next scene. The reason for this is because it was very hard to stick to the script and it was very hard to film the 30 degree rule as there wasn't much space. Also we had many interruptions because were filming in one of the main entrances in the college so we had numerous amounts of people walking through our shots, so therefore it took longer to film and most of all we got too distracted and couldn't concentrate on what we was doing during the main scene.

That's all for now. Don't worry, you'll hear from us again soon