Prelim Task

Prelim Task

Part 1

On tuesday the 7th of October when we arrived in class Mike told us that he would once again be bringing us to the film room, he told us to leave all of our stuff in the class and to follow him to the studio; Upon arrival we were told by Matt this class he would not be teaching us anything, but that instead we would be filming something our selves. Matt gave us wo pieces of paper each which looked like this:

Story Board (Page 1)

Story Board (Page 2)

He told us that these were story boards that we would have to try and re-create ourselves, he put four cameras and four tripods on the table and split us into groups, in my group there was myself, Simone, Xalil and Nikita. Right off the bat Simone offered too be one of the two actors/actresses needed, the rest of us wanted to be behind the camera being either the camera man or director but evidently there had too be two actors, so we did the only logical thing left to do, Rock - Paper - Scissors, I lost so I had to be the other actor, Xalil was the camera man and Nikita the Director. 

Next we unpacked the tripod, bubbled it, then unpacked the camera, turned it on and put it on the tripod. Whilst Nikita and Xalil looked at the story board and decided how and where the camera would be set up to try and recreate what was seen on the story board, me and Simone read through  the story board and tried to learn our lines and practice them too each other. We started off by deciding where the scene would take place, we decided that Simone would be the black coloured character on the storyboard and that i would be the pink coloured character on the story board. Simone would come through the main door of the media room and that i would be against the wall which is in front of it, and that Nikita and Xalil would be on the other side of the room and that the 180 degree line would be placed in-between where Simone and I were placed and Where Xalil and Nikita were (Simone to the left of the screen and I to the right). 

Once we were all ready to start filming, we came to the decision that we would start off by filming the Wide Shot’s (WS):

Nikita and Xalil set up the camera facing me and Simone’s sides, like the shot is shown on the story board. the camera was not placed pointing downwards or upwards but simply straight forward as in the storyboard. After we made sure the white balance and focus were correct, and tape was placed on the floor to know where to stand we started filming; We filmed the whole script through because if we filmed only what was shown as Long Shots on the storyboard then it maybe it would not look very natural or like the conversation was flowing, and we know that you cannot film too much only too little, it is always good to have extra footage just incase.

The next shots we filmed were the medium close up (MCU) over the shoulder (OTS) shots:

We started by filming the shots over my shoulder so Xalil set up the camera and Nikita made sure it was perfect with Simone perfectly in focus whilst my shoulder and the side of my head was out focused and not taking up to much of the screen, and of course respecting the 180 degree rule. We filmed the whole script through a few times to make sure we had footage to choose from. We then shot the over the shoulder shots which were over Simone’s shoulder with me as the main subject of the shot and did the same.

We then shot the single character medium close up shots (MCU):

I was the only character in these three shots, and since I am quite tall Xalil had to raise the tripod to be able to get a front facing MCU shot, which was a little to my left so that it wasn't directly in front of me and so that I was not looking right at the lens to show that I am not talking to the camera but to Simone because it was not meant to be a point of view (POV) shot from Simone’s point of view.

Once we had filmed all the scripted shots we decided to film extra shots for extra footage. We filmed shots of Simone’s hand on a door handle opening the door and a shot of Simone’s hand with a phone in it putting it into my hand and a few more shots. We filmed these shots just to add extra footage to make the scene look better on screen.

In conclusion, even though I did not have a chance to work behind the camera as i would have liked too, I still think that the task was good to put too practice what we had learned in the previous classes with Matt and Paul.

Part 2