Preliminary Evaluation

For our preliminary task we had to create a sequence which displayed good continuity in the following actions:

- opening a door

-crossing the room

-sitting in a chair opposite another character

-exchanging of some dialogue

This would all need to be edited to show good match on action, filmed with a shot/reverse shot in it, using the 180 degree rule.

For our narrative we decided to do a sequence about two students discussing whether they have completed the homework for a certain teacher, when the teacher they are talking about walks in. We felt that this was the most efficient story-line due to the setting we were already in. Also there was no research needed for this as it was something we are already knowledgeable about. The script is o the left in fig. 1

Fig 1

On the right in fig 1, you can see the shot list which we produced to accompany our story board, this was to help our shooting session go as smoothly as possible. We all agreed on what type of shot to do and quickly discussed on how to do it best. Our story board is below, again we did this on post-it notes so we could change the order around if we wanted without wasting time.

At the time of shooting it seemed as though everything was going smoothly, however this was not the case. Even though we thought that we had filmed each shot that we wanted, we came to realize that we were missing a few, also we did not stick rigidly to the script and so many of the takes we had filmed could not be used due to conversation continuity fails.

I was pleased with the match on action aspect in my preliminary task, the opening and passing through a door was done well, there was another moment involving the turning of a characters head. You can see them in the two screen grabs below where the match on action is adjacent.

I also have an example of the character walking across the room, we used an over the shoulder shot, this was to establish the other characters presence to the audience. All of the exchanging of dialogue takes that we were able to use because they had good continuity happened to be over the shoulder shots, so it was a shame that there was no variety of camera angles. 

From this preliminary task I have learned to strictly stick to the script, and that actors must do the same thing each time in order for there to be good continuity. I also realized that you must tick each shot off the shot lost after you have filmed it, this was a basic mistake which we made which was the cause of the main issues of our preliminary task.