Evaluation Q7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Problem 1:

The positioning of the camera was incorrect, as Rico's character was captured out of the frame. This could have been solved by using a pan. There is also too much space in the frame. We sorted this out by making sure that the character was in frame during each position of the action completed, and by doing this George starts off in long shot and moves in to a midshot without moving the camera.

Problem 2:

There is too much empty space in the frame. All the action in this shot is going on to one side of the screen. This makes it feel unbalanced and uncomfortable for the audience to watch. In our final product, we fixed this by making the action go across the screen from one end to the other.

Problem 3:

In this shot, the eye-line is too low down the frame, and there is too much space above Rico's head. In the real film, we ensured that the eye-line of the characters was in the top 1/3 of the frame and that there was little or no empty space above the heads of the characters.

Problem 4:

In the preliminary match cut exercise, there is too much camera movement in one shot. The movement is also very jagged, as we used a chair on wheels as a dolly, therefore we lacked the precision in camera movement that would make the shots look professional. In the real film we fixed this by making sure we moved the camera smoothly using the arm on the tripod.

Problem 5:

In the preliminary match cut exercise, this example of a match cut does not work in terms of continuity. It looks like a jump cut because of the position that Rico is now in. In our final product, we made sure that in the editing process that all our shots matched. We paid particular attention to shots of characters walking - we made sure that we cut the shot on the character standing on the same leg as they are at the beginning of the next shot etc.

Sadly, when filming the preliminary match cut exercise, the microphone did not work. This meant that we did not capture the short sections of dialogue in the storyboard. To improve on this, we always made sure that the microphone was picking up a substantial amount of sound whilst filming our final product.

Also, we could not take mise en scene in to account when filming our preliminary match cut. This is because we were given the task during one lesson with no warning. This meant that our actors were not in appropriate costume, we could not secure an appropriate location and we had to use what ever props we could find in the short amount of time between storyboarding and filming.

The editing pace we used during the preliminary match cut was quite loose; in several shots, we could have cut to the next shot at a much quicker pace than what we did. Through completing this task it taught us the power of editing pace, so we became much more vigilant about the editing process. We followed advice from our teacher to bring the shot in at the last possible moment, to cut at the first possible moment and always to cut on action. This was important in maintaining a dynamic pace to the film which would make the audience feel exhilarated as they feel like they are moving with the pace of the film.