Evaluation activity 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Initially when you watch our preliminary task followed by our final piece, you notice the substantial change in quality of camerawork and editing. These changes come in the form of inclusion of different (and more advance) shots, a more natural editing technique, and the quality in the portrayal of our story line.

Throughout our preliminary task, it was not uncommon to see a shaky camera, unnatural use of shots (that we believed at the time looked professional), a poor choice of music, and lastly a poor attempt at editing and the continuity of our shots.

In contrary to this, our final version of our opening scene shows a variety of sophisticated titles, a more professional use of editing techniques, and an improved quality and choice of music to compliment our story line. The shots that we used included:

-180 degree rule: Requires you to not change the angle by over 180⁰ upon the character that is being filmed. It allows the character to be continually identified. We used this technique throughout, especially whilst filming our murder as their dark costume and hidden identity meant they were harder to identify.

-Shot reverse shot: We used shot reverse shot when capturing the interaction between our different characters during their train journey. This may have also been called an over shot to see their conversation taking place.

-Match on action: We used match on action to capture various events including the receiving of a text message, the dropping of the petrol can, and the falling of the match as it hit the floor.

-30⁰ rule: We implemented this rule when capturing many of our victims who were sitting still or just moving small amounts. This made sure our editing looked realistic and continuous.

-Rule of thirds: We used the rule of thirds when filming establishing shots as this is more pleasing to the eye and allows the audience to take in the correct amount of information for a shot.

-Canted angle: demonstrates distress by altering the perception of the viewer upon the drama that is happening on screen.

In our opening to our film we included several different styles of shots and camera angles,ranging from your basic close up and medium shots, to the more complex canted angles which added drama through our cinematography. Our use of the canted angle improved as we took various attempts at making sure it looked realistic but still creating a feeling of uneasiness.
Our editing effects were very quick cuts to build tension and also the use of non-diegetic sound added a dramatic feeling.

 

The fades and transitions that we used were simple cuts to the next shots including a few attempts at graphic matching. We kept our transitions simple to maintain realism.