Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task we created a short film following a given script we had to interpret in our own individual way. As a group Georgina, Paige and I decided to make our film a realistic drama. We only had three actors but four parts and for this I played two parts myself. To share evenly the camera work in our film, we decided the angles of the shots before we took them and took it in turns to film separate scenes; the opening sequence was filmed by me while the scenes outside were filmed by Georgina and the scenes inside were filmed by Paige.
The opening sequence consisted of a number of shots fading into one another depicting a characters legs walking and opening a door. We used high angle shots to capture the feet and either panned or tracked the movement with a hand held camera. This made the action seem more realistic and fit in with the realistc drama we attempted to portray. We also used match on action where the character opens the door from the inside and is shown to be walking out the door from the outside.
In the outside scenes we used the 180 degree rule to film a conversation between two characters sitting on a bench. We also used an over the shoulder shot where one character was filmed alone looking beyond where the camera was situated and then was shown from the back in the next shot while the other character was the focus.
Inside, the change of place was shown through editing where a transition was used to change shots. The first scene was an experimental shot of two characters, one walking toward the other filmed from a very high angle straight up above the subjects. This created what we thought was a hospital drama feel which we needed as the characters were supposed to be in a hospital.
The sound in the film could be improved as the background noise changes in cuts making the speech vary in volume and become hard to register. The length of shots could also be increased to create a smoother film that flows easily, the ASL is around two seconds and this length disconnects the shots from one another. The movement in the shots is relaxed whereas the short length suggests action. The last shot could also be improved as the camera angle changes to reveal the characters in a postition undetermined by the previous shots. The characters seem as though they moved instantly into this new position and so this shot feels disjointed.