AS Prelim

Our sequence is called Yes, Acctually and is a 01:09 sequence following a nerdy boy character preparing himself before he asks the popular girl character if she will go to prom with him. 

Our Group. 

1. Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you? 

 The group I worked with included Georgina Harper-Dennett, Gabriel Meytanis and Josh Oranu Noah. We worked mainly together as a group to manage the task but also took on individual roles in order to complete the task within the time frame. I personally focused on filming and directing the shots during filming and planning the shoot schedule during planning. Georgina and Gabriel both acted in the video while Josh took a more prominent role in using the camera. We all contributed equally during planning to decide on our story and plan out our shots and framing.

2. How did you plan your sequence? What processes did you use? What theories did you try to take into account? 

To plan our sequence we created several different pieces of paperwork to help us:

• Storyboard- to plan out the shots we were going to take, their framing and the order of the shots we created a storyboard.

  

  A section of our Storyboard.

• Props/ costume list

  

  Our Props list.

• Script- we drafted and created a script for out actors to use during the filming process.

  

  A Section of our script.

• Top- down plan- we created a top-down plan of how we wanted the room to be set out for out filming session.

  

  Our top-down plan of the room

We then walked through and blocked our sequence a few times to make sure it would run smoothly when it came to filming. 

During the planning of our film we took into account continuity principles such as eye-line matches, the 180 degree rule and match on action. We also wanted our sequence to have a clear romantic-comedy genre and therefore we had to consider narrative and the representation of our two characters. We reinforced stereotypes in order to convey the nerdy boy character and the popular girl character by using props like a pair of glasses and a phone. 

3. What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it?

The technology we used during filming was:

• Canon HG30 camera:
  

• a tripod
• clapperboard 

Me using the clapperboard and Josh using the camera.

• a microphone

We used the camera on its manual settings on a tripod which we used to keep our shots steady and used the tripod arm to move the camera when panning. We used the microphone to pick up the dialogue and diagetic sound in our shots.

During editing we used a mac and adobe premier pro to edit our sequence. In adobe premier pro we used drag and drop to put our shots in the correct order on the timeline and we then set out in and out points and used the razor tool to accurately cut down our shots.

Me editing our sequence.

4. What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing?

We had to take into account many factors during our planning shooting and editing, the main one being the brief which we had to keep in mind during the whole process and try and stick to.

During planning we took into account:

• the number of people in our group and how we would divide up the work load in order to stick to the time frame.
• continuity principles such as the 180 degree rule which were mentioned in the brief. 
• how the set up of the room would effect our shoot.
• What order we would shoot our shots in the get them done in the time frame.

During shooting we took into account:

• The positioning of the camera and the framing of our shots in order to create continuity in our sequence.
• The positioning of the camera in relation to the window in our room; we had to move the camera so that the reflection in the window would not be visible in our shots.

During the editing process we took into account:

• continuity principles such as match on action and making sure that when we cut down our shots they flowed well and achieved continuity.

5. How successful was your sequence? Please identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/do differently?

Overall I believe our sequence was successful in sticking to the brief and achieving continuity.

•  What worked well:

We achieved some good match on action for example between shots 1 and 2, shots 4 and 5, shots 5 and 6, and shots 10 and 11.

We also included some eye-line match shots which worked well for example shot 3 and shots 7-9.

We also included shot/reverse shot in shots 7-9 and didn't break the 190 degree rule as specified in the brief. 

• What I would do to improve our video:

Some mistakes we made included the camera shaking during shot three which we could improve on. 

We also did not achieve match on action between the last two shots and broke the 30 degree rule which therefore resulted in a jump-cut which broke the continuity of the sequence. To improve this I would re-frame the last shot from a different angle so that the camera would have moved more than 30 degrees from the previous shot, and then match the action with the previous shot in order to create continuity. 

6. What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework, do you think? 

From completing this task I have learn the importance of planning your shoot properly so that everything runs smoothly and you finish within the time frame. For example during our planning we ran through and blocked our sequence several times and this helped us a lot during the real shoot as everyone knew where the camera and actors were positioned at every shot. 

I also learnt that having several takes, different framing and angles of shots is very useful during the editing process so that you have different shots to play around with in order to create the best continuity in the sequence.

I believe what I have learnt in this preliminary exercise will help me when completing the rest of my foundation coursework as I am now able to create continuity in a short sequence and know what I need to take into account and do during planning filming and editing in order to achieve this and this will help me when planning, filming and editing our main task.