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.