chloeAstleyASMedia: Preliminary exercise

Completed by: Myself

Yesterday, we filmed our continuity exercises. We had to produce a 30 second sequence of a character who walking through a doorway, sitting down and exchanging some dialogue and then leave. This task was to help us with being able to use our shots and time effeciently when we come to film our opening and to help us being able to be more aware of how hard continuity filming is. I worked in a group with Emma Gower, Tayla Powell and Laura Jeffreson.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Chloe King - Actress
Laura Jefferson - Actress
Emma Gower - Camera women/prop set up
Tayla Powell- Camera women/prop set up

Equipment needed:

Camera
Tripod
A table with 2 chairs
Books
Chairs

First we had to chose where we would actually film the short video, and who's storyboard we would use for the filming. We chose Emma's storyboard as a group because it had the most range of shots, and we also chose and I.T. room because it had the right layout that we wanted for the video.

Emma's storyboard:

The camera is first in positions on the tripod in a long shot of the door. Then we slowly zoom in and this makes it a POV shot as it seems the camera is viewing what a character would be if they were walking towards the door. This shot lasts for 3 seconds.
The camera is positioned inside the room and is on the lowered tripod focusing on the door handle. The character will behind the door and out of shot, turning the handle down slowly to show the door is about to open

The camera will record an OTS and POV from the person sitting down already in the room as the other character walks through the door. This will last for 5 seconds.
The camera will create a MS which is focused on the character already in the room, having a POV shot from the character who walked into the room. The character already in the room will exchange some dialogue: "Hi, are you alright?" This lasts for 5 seconds. This shot will be achieved by the camerawomen standing where the other person sits so that it looks like the character being recorded is actually speaking to the other camera.

The next shot is the same apart from that it will be a mid shot of the character who walked through the door speaking to the other character, and the POV will be from the character being spoke too. dialogue: "Good thanks, are you ready to go?". This lasts for 5 seconds.

The shot will be a two shot that shows the two characters from the side onwards facing each other. The dialogue spoke is: "Yeah, let's go".

The camera will be high angle shot of the 2 characters standing up and walking out of the room and then closing the door. It will be in silence after the dialogue. The door closes and there is a few seconds wait before the scene ends

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that I contributed evenly within my group and was willing and helpful. I feel that our final product turned out pretty well, as the continuity shots worked and it flows quite nice. Throughout this process, we gave each other suggestions and help on how a scene should look visually, how to act, how we could overcome problems etc. However, we did have to contend with limited time and lack of experience and knowledge with dealing with tape video cameras. It was this lack of experience that led to a few mistakes being made. We had an accident with the tripod, and then the camera was malfunctioning so we had quite a few problems to deal with.

However, as the camera was no longer working, Laura brought her video camera into school for us to work with at the end of the school day which was very helpful and beneficial for us. I think that despite the isssues and problems we had, that the preliminary exercise went quite well because we worked together well, we overcame problems, we tried our best to maintain a high standard of visual appeal and the final product was quite effective.

These are some photos of us during the filming process: