Preliminary Task Evaluation

For the preliminary task my group filmed in the media studio whilst others filmed in various classrooms. I think that this location worked to our advantage because an office scene was used as our background,making our short film seem more realistic rather than using a classroom to set the scene for quite a dramatic script.
   During filming the four people in my group including me took turns to try out the different roles in filming. Before we started to film we all took part in setting up the scene; arranging the objects and positioning the lights for the best effect in our opinion. The two roles that we alternated between were the director and the camera man. When I was a director I made sure that everything was in the right position  before we began to film, then when i was satisfied with the set I would tell the room to 'stand-by', instruct the camera man to 'role camera' then shout 'action' until the scene was finished which is when i would shout 'cut'. We all participated in the camera angles used in the scene and the camera man was in charge of setting the white balance and recording the scene.
   Most groups had the oportunity of using stage lights for our preliminary task. Our group used two lights in our task in order to get rid of the shadows on the back wall because we thought the scene would look better filmed that way. At first we only used one light but it was only effective when we used two lights to get rid of the shadows.
  We found that setting up the camera now came easily to us since we had been practicing before and luckily we remembered before we started shooting each scene to check the tripod was level by 'bubbling' it so our shots all came out straight. Framing the shots was found to be more of a challenge because at the time we thought a couple of shots were well framed but when it came to editing it turned out we were a bit too close in and subsequently we cut off a bit of our actress' head. The lighting equipment was far back out of the shot so we didn't have that mistake of accidently including the lights in our shot.
  We chose appropriate angles for a couple of our shots. We used a high angle shot on our victimin in the scene whilst we used a low angle shot at the other actress. We used these to show the contrast in power between both people, the high angle shot to show the powerless victim whilst the low angle shot showed the powerful villan. We also used quite a few close up shots in order to capture the expression of fear and anger on each charactors face. A few still shots were filmed of the object we used in our scene just incase we wanted to add that in when editing the scene.
  When filming the shots we were using a specific script which we did follow to some extent but we just changed a few words in order to fit in with our particular scene. Whenever we used a different angle to film a shot we went through the entire scene in that angle, that way when in came to editing we would be making the job a lot easier for ourselves because we could cut and paste which part of the scene we wanted in that specific angle.
  When it came to the 180 degree rule we remembered to shoot on the same side of the line the whole way through so thankfully we didn't break it. At first using the appropriate terminology on set so everyone knew what was happening was a bit strange a took some getting used to but by the end of the task we had all gotten used to using the right terminology.