Preliminary Task - Finished Result

Preliminary Task

We had to do filming and present a short video of our finished result. The purpose of filming was to show different camera shots and how they are used effectively to give the audience a clear sense of what is occurring, it also provides an emotional basis which makes the audience feel emotive.

For this task I worked with Ana, Zoe and Charley. For the preliminary task we all put our ideas together to create the short 2 minute video. Charley was the one who recorded the scenes whilst me, Ana and Zoe did the acting. We made our video quite confrontational where two characters walk into a room to see another character crying. To begin our video, we had an over the shoulder shot of Zoe's hand opening a door. This just lets the audience knows that the characters are entering a room. It then cuts to a long shot of Zoe and myself walking in, this lets us know what were wearing and to get our surroundings around us. As two of the characters enter the room it cuts to Ana's face where we see a close-up of her face and we can see her crying. We then know that something is right with this scene, when we see the character crying we feel uneasy and automatically presume something is wrong with her. However this could also mean that the audience sympathise with her just from seeing the quick clip of her. As Zoe and I reach Ana on stage crying we see a low shot of me walking. This makes it appear that the character I am playing is dominant and in control. When we reach Ana it curts to Zoes face who comforts the crying and, who in return shouts at her and begs her not to leave her with the dominant character. During this scene we used shot reverse shot, this was to indicate the conversation betweem them as the dominant character watches in the background. As Zoe's character leaves we see the long shot of her walking away leaving the two remaining characters to sort the problem out between them. It then cuts to my face which looks at the camera, which makes it seem I am watching Zoe exit. My face then turns to confront the crying character. There is the mid shot of Ana crying who begs the dominant character to forgive her. Using shot reverse shot to show the conversation, the dominant character shouts at Ana. There is then the over the shoulder shot of me, which shows Ana's crying face, imploring that the dominant forgive her once again. It then cuts to a close-up of my face, which shows my agression against Ana. After shouting something at her, the camera shot zooms out to a midshot which shows me shoving Ana towards the camera. This shows us the agression of the dominant characters face, and shows how weak and vulnerable Ana's character is at this point.

I think that at this point, the audience feels tense and worried for Ana's character. During the filming we used the 180 effect. This was used just to not confuse the audience, so we know where the characters are at all times. If we didnt use it, it would seem that the characters were changing sides when infact they werent.

I think the whole filming was fun, and I real enjoyed doing it for the first time. It was a good experience to experiment with camera shots to give the audience a feeling of what is happening in the scene. After we edited the short film, I believed it looked very good. It was a very good experience and hopefully it will help me in the future when we do more filming.

Second Lesson - Working with Camera Angles

We were put into groups where we had to focus on different camera angles. I was with Charley, Ana, Zoe, Kayleigh, Hannah and myself. The first scene we had to create was a disruptive classroom, which we recreated and took a low camera shot. This gives the person viewing it the sense that the people in the photo were dominant. Next we had the dentist waiting room, i think we achieved a good photo by using some of sitting down, as if we were in a waiting room, i was holding my mouth as if i had a tooth ache. Zoe was also in the picture walking towards the makeshift desk as if coming up for an appointment. The shot involved a lot of things to look at making it seem like a busy waiting room, i think our overall result was good. The busy office was probably the most hardest shot to achieve. We took a high camera shot making the people at there desks seem small and vulnerable, The shot wasnt as believable as the others due to the fact it looked to much like a classroom! This was probably my least favourite shot of the 4. The last shot was the romantic meal. This was most likely my funnest one to do, it was enjoyable. We had two people sitting opposite each other at a table in the background. In the foreground we had another two people opposite each, looking at each other lovingly. There was also someone who was 'taking our orders' in the background, making it look like it was a more believable shot. The shot was a mid shot, only involving our upper half of our bodies, it  was good as it looked believable. Either the romantic meal or the disruptive classroom were our best shots. Although I still enjoyed doing the romantic meal one the most! My least favourite was the Busy office, it was a hard shot to do and i dont think we did as well as we could have.

First Blog

In this lesson we were introduced to different camera angles. I was surprised to find out there were so many camera angles and how they were used to give the audience different perspectives on the film they were watching. We learnt these angles, and then we were given a video to watch called 'kidulthood.' There were many angles the short clip that we watched and we were analysing how they were used.