Preliminary task evaluation

For our preliminary task, we decided to make it a little bit more entertaining with a comical twist, rather than the traditional opening doors, walking and having a short conversation. Although it does have these basic movements we have made them more exciting for the audience.

We wanted to practice the different filming techniques, this included; our first shot, continuity to show the female actress walking up, we think this shot was successful because it showed two sides of the actress (front and back) with a simple fade. The next shot was a tracking shot of the female actresses legs and feet as she was walking away from the camera, we noticed in our editing stages that this was poorly filmed as the camera was slightly shaky, to avoid this next time we will use a tri pod and potentially put it on something that wheels. Our next shot reflects the rule of thirds, it shows a low wide angled shot of the actress feet walking past the camera. This is through the audience seeing the foreground of the actresses feet and the background of the landscape.

The next shot was long and wide angled, this was top help set the scene of a typical school setting, we used the 180 degree rule to help create realism. We think this was a successful shot because the camera was steady and gave the impression that the audience were there themselves watching the actress. The editing from the current shot to the following shot flowed very well, the following shot was a match on action shot showing the actress attempting to open the door, the camera then pans up to a close up of the actors face revealing her embarrassment as she was unsuccessful. However we don't think we are going to use a similar shot as this because it was potentially unrealistic and unprofessional. The next shot is a tracking shot which follows the actress from the outside of the door, to through the door and ending on her sitting down at the table. We think this shot started of well as it flowed nicely however towards the end of the shot as the actress is about to sit down the camera was a little bit shaky. Similarly to before we would resolve this by using a tri pod on wheels.

We then used a shot reverse shot, which included a short dialogue between two characters, the camera started by looking over the shoulder of one and then changed to the other side to see the other actress. We believe this was a successful shot as the camera was steady, it flowed smoothly and looked realistic. For future reference we wouldn't film this in a busy area as the sound sometimes muffles. Our last shot was high angled to show both female actresses laughing, this is possible something we could use in our film to show the dominance of the stalker/ killer figure looking down on the victims.

Overall, we think our preliminary was successful because it helped us to practice and improve our filming skills and editing techniques. However we have also learnt areas were we need to make improvements to help make our opening two minutes as successful as possible.