Preliminary task evaluation 

As part of my main preliminary task we were told we needed to create a short simple film telling a joke to one another. We were asked to make sure we demonstrate shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180-degree rule. This is to show our understanding and knowledge of each filming technique.  

Shot reverse shot: a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. 

shot reverse shot example 

 

Shot reverse shot example 

Match on action: Cutting on action or matching on action refers to film editing and video editing techniques where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot'saction. 

 

 

Match on action example – the previous shot then cuts to this shot 

180-Degree rule - The 180-degree rule of shooting and editing keeps the camera on one side of the action. As a matter of convention, the camera stays on one side of the axis of action throughout a scene; this keeps characters grounded compositionally on a particular side of the screen or frame, and keeps them looking at one another when only one character is seen onscreen at a time. The technique allows for an expansion of the frame into the unseen space offscreen. It is referred to as a rule because the camera, when shooting two actors, must not cross over the axis of action; if it does, it risks giving the impression that the actors' positions in the scene have been reversed. 

This is an example of following the 180-Degree rule as the camera has not been placed on more than one side of the 180 circle around the talent. 

Filming process (production) 

Before filming the short film piece I created storyboards and watched short videos with clear explanations of the camera shots I was instructed to use; this enabled me to get a better understanding. This prepared me for filming, as I had storyboards as guidance for filming the different shots. However, due to absence of my other group member, and another student leaving my group changed throughout this process. I had already created a film with Danni (absent) although it was unfinished. The other group, Jemma and Mandy had produced some filming although it wasn’t suitable for editing. As Mandy had then left the schoolJemma and I had to recreate a film ourselves at short notice.  We didn’t create storyboards for our filming due to our last minute change of group; therefore there is a lot of room for improvement. 

The editing stages of our preliminary task (post-production) 

Editing the clips and putting them together was something I was unfamiliar with to start with so admittedly I did struggle. Editing involved adding non-diegetic music, transformations between shots, cutting shots and deleting some diegetic audio from some of the clips. I didn't have a lot of time to edit the short media clip due to having to completely re-do the filming with short notice.  

Evaluation 

The end product in my opinion was satisfactory, I'd added music, a couple of transformations between shots and used a range of different filming techniques such as The 180 Degree rule and tracking. I also used different shots such as a mid shot and a long shot.  

To improve my final piece I could've added subtitles and end credits, more transformations and improved the audio quality of the dialogue.  

The film wasn't very well planned out as we didn't have enough time to create a detailed storyboard for each shot and we had to use any available setting suitable at the time. 

 If given more time we could've planned things out carefully and properly, we didn’t have time to take loads of filming of the joke being told so we couldn't get the filming as accurate as I would've liked.  

However, this was all due to the situation we were in, we had to reform as a new group, although the end result is far from perfect we did it and managed to show a reasonable amount of understanding of the different key features of making a great media film piece.