Our first task to complete for our Media Studies Coursework is the preliminary task. This short sequence must be of someone opening and walking through a door, sitting down and exchanging dialogue with another character. We have decided to use people in our group to star in the preliminary task for convenience and also, two of us are already pretty awesome actresses! My group consists of me, Rachael and Kourtney. We chose to work together in a group because we are all good friends and have similar interests, this helped us when coming up with the storyline of our preliminary piece and also beginning to plan our opening sequence to a film.
The preliminary piece had to include the 180 degree rule and a match-on-action shot. As a group, we researched these on the internet to give us a full understanding of the concepts. This picture helped us work out the logistics of positioning the camera while filming the section of the task with dialogue.
We also researched into how to do a match-on-action shot by looking at videos on Youtube.com and found some examples that other people have previously filmed. This helped us gain an understanding of how to film this shot and give us ideas of how to include match-on-action into our preliminary piece.
When beginning to plan our preliminary piece, we had to come up with a story board. This is a detailed plan of all shots that make up the final video. We decided to create a sinister feel to the video and have Kourtney walking through a corridor and hearing a noise in a room. She then enters and finds Rachael clearly traumatised by something that she has seen. We thought that this would be a good way to include lots of different camera angles that show that we know what we're doing. We also get to see Rachael and Kourtney's amazing acting skills!
SCRIPT:
Kourtney - Are You okay? What's Happened?
Rachael - (fast speech to show trauma) Well they came in and I didn't know what to do!...
Kourtney - Look calm down, whats happened?
Rachael - They're coming...
We also had to choose a location to film the preliminary piece and settled on using the old science block at school as it is no longer being used and would give the effect that we are looking for. There are corridors that have cut off sections which are perfect for filming a small media task. This location would also give us good access as we would be able to do all the filming during media studies lessons.
We had the option of using a camera supplied by our school but we thought that it would be easier and more convenient to use Rachael's video camera so that we could use it whenever we liked instead of arranging a certain amount of time to film our piece which would limit the amount of material we could produce. Also, using a piece of equipment that we already know how to use would mean that we can quickly and easily film, view and upload the scenes onto the computer.
The camera we used was a Flip ultraHD video recorder which was extremely easy to use. Features include:
- 8GB in-built memory
- captures up to 120 minutes of video at once
- one touch recording & digital zoom
- flip out USB arm that plugs straight into your computer
- HDMI port for high-definition TV output
Our Video - the ACTUAL preliminary!
After planning, filming and editing together our preliminary piece, we encountered a number of issues, such as continuity and over-thinking the storyline. At one point in the preliminary film, a point-of-view (POV) shot cuts to a lower shot of Kourtney opening the door however the light in the room, which you can see through the window in the door, is off to begin with then in the next shot the light is on. This is bad continuity and it has made us aware of what we need to focus on when filming our real opening sequence. I also feel that we had been over-thinking the storyline of the preliminary piece too much; this had been discussed within our group and we all felt that not enough focus was put upon the camera shots and skills needed to capture exactly what we wanted, but instead we tried to make the story too complex.
To make our main task amazing, we would have to think about continuity to make the video look professional, also we must come up with a simple idea so it is easy to film but will also be amazing, allowing us to include some pretty cool camera shots and things to make it really interesting! I look forward to planning and filming AND editing our opening sequence!
