The Brief: Preliminary task

Preliminary exercise:

Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task:

The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

We have decided to make a preliminary task based around a clash of personalities, where one character has commited a murder, but his conscience is trying to make him face reality. The character keeps telling himself that it's not his fault and that everything will be fine, but his conscience is pushing him over the edge. It will start off with the character walking into the room and there will be his conscience sitting on the chair opposite the table. When the character sits down his conscience starts to speak to him, reminding him of what he has done, but he won't accept it and sarts to shout at him, but as the camera zooms out and he is the only one sitting there, he was imagining everything.

Preliminary Task: Storyboard

Preliminary task: The Solus Script

‘The Solus’ script

*Looking at man*
Persona: “What have we done…?”

Man: “We?!”

*Looking at persona*
Persona: “Yes… we… (smirks) you didn’t stop me”

*Looking at man*
Man: “I shouldn’t have to stop you… you should know when to stop”

*Looking at persona*
Persona: “But we like it”

*Looking at man*
Man: (lashing out) “You like it! (echoes)

*Changes to both but man is alone*

*Back to looking at persona*

*Looking at man*
Man: “You’re insane”

*Looking at persona*
Persona: “We’re insane”

*Looking at man*
Man: “Leave me alone”

*Looking at persona*
Persona: “We’ll never be alone… never”

*Looking at man
Man: “No!” (echoes)

*Changes to both but man is alone*

END.

Preliminary task: Editing with Harry Clarke (Completed)

We are currently working in our AS Media class and Harry is sorting out each part of the scene into chronological order and then he has rendered each of the clips. The video above is the completed preliminary task, there are some things we need to improve such as the sound quality and we could of included many more shots to create more meaning.

 Also another fault of ours was that we forgot to crop some of the clips so there is an outtake in the last clip. At some points, the camera was canted and slightly blurred, but nevertheless this created a stronger scene as the scene was meant to create a dark and mysetrious effect.

The dailogue didn't flow effectively as the transitions between each clip were't smooth and they weren't cropped as well as they could of been, and when the clips were being recorded, the length of some of the clips were quite short and difficult to edit.

 However, Harry's use of editing and audio made the preliminary task more eye cacthing and effective as he used a variety of effects and transitions.

In progress of completing our preliminary task

During our preliminary task, we had to consider many different factors which could affect how effective our editing would turn out.

Throughout creating the task we had many outtakes as we had realised that we had recorded for a time which was too short or we were trying to contain our laughter. We also had a problem with the lights as they were difficult to control because they kept switching to fast and we wanted one individual light over the table and not three flashing lights. Also, the camera was a little out of focus at some points so that the image in the scene is sometimes blurred, but it is also effective even though it was a  mistake as it blurred the character who was the "Evil" one.

Our positive factors of creating our scenes were the we positioned the camera so that we have the shot/reverse shot, match on action and 180 degree rule. Throughout the time we were taking various photographs to show what we were doing while recording each section, and some of these are shown in this blog (to the left).

Preliminary Task

For this particular task, we have to record a character who walks into a room, sits opposite another character and then exchanges a couple of line of dialogue. We also have to include a reverse shot and a one hundred and eighty degree angle.

We have thought of two main ideas. The first idea was a game of cards, with a comedy side to a serious game. We would let them exchange money while the characters are focused from each side of their shoulders when addressing each other.

Our second idea we expanded on a lot more, which was a man with two personalities. We drew on some flash cards to show each individual scene. The first scene included the man slowly opening the door in silence and as he closes it he sees a man who looks similar to him on a table in the corner of the room and he is tapping his fingers against the table. For this part of the scene I am using a diegetic sound. When he gradually goes over to the character, he realises that it is himself. To do this effectively we would have to switch the camera angles so that the other person is only seen from the back of the head. To do this we are making sure that the other character which we are using has a similar hairstyle to the character who is being seen. He begins to remind him of when he killed someone with the murder weapon and the character begins to realise what he has done, and when the camera slowly moves out, he is the only one who is sitting around the table and he realises that he is the psychopathic character who was sitting opposite the chair, which represented his self conscience.

In these pictures, you can see that we took a photo of each camera angle and included Mise En Scene. In these particular freeze frames, you can see the setting of where the dialogue is exchanged and when the main character (Ryan Clarke) is walking into the room. We have shown that the scene is low key lighting and the setting symbolises that it's a horror/psychological film.