Main Task: Widows Creek

The Preliminary Task

The Preliminary Task Evaluation

Before filming our preliminary task, we had to take into consideration some fundamental rules to filmmaking. The first being the 180 degree rule. This is when the camera can only go anywhere on one side of the person. If it goes on the other side, then the viewer may believe the character has reversed positions and means they lose their bearings. There are some instances that the 180 degree rule can be broken, for example if we see the camera panning to the other side of the character, then we can acknowledge that the camera has moved and not the character.

We also included match on action in our preliminary task. This is when the same action occurs in another shot and the film is edited in a way that the action seems continuous. This is often used to focus on an object the actor is holding. In our film, our match on action was used when the phone number was dialed in the phone and also when the phone was taken out.

Another technique is the eyeline match, which is where a shot shows the actor looking at something and then the next shot is what they were looking at. We did not use this in our preliminary task though.

In our preliminary task, we replicated shots from the storyboard well. We found some very useful locations in the college that were relevant to the storyboard. However, we did have frequent issues with reflections in the outdoor shots, especially considering there are lots of windows in the college. There are some shots in the film where you can see people in the reflection, which we became aware of while editing and is something we need to take into consideration when we come to make our film. We had to consider the 180 degree rule during filming and kept to it. This was made easier though due to the minimal shots that contained more than one person.

In post production, we found Adobe Premiere to be very easy to use at first, with the razor tool being the most commonly used for us, in order to get our match on action shots to line up. We found it difficult at first with the timeline, as we did not know how to zoom in, but we found out quickly and the editing process was sped up considerably. However, we did have an issue at the end as we could not render the video. As we ran out of time, we were unable to add special effects and transitions so this is something we will hope to rectify when we move on to our film.

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back on your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it to the final product?