Evaluation

The scenario we were given was titled the encounter. A character walks through a set of doors and sits down opposite another character and they exchange a few lines of dialogue.
Our storyline for the scenario begins as follows; A girl walks down a set of stairs angrily and sits opposite her boyfriend after snatching his phone. She accuses him of cheating, which he denies and she later poisons him by giving him a bottle of water.

Shot reverse shot is a set of repeated cuts between two shots; the subjects which are usually people. This normally starts with a shot of both people. Shot reverse shot helps the audience to focus on the person speaking. I used this during my work with Chelsie and Kye. I filmed an over the shoulder shot focusing on chelsie when she was speaking and vice versa for when kye was speaking.

Match on action is when a cut occurs midway through physical action. It adds detail, continuity and makes the scene more exciting and dynamic for the audience. We used match on action by getting actor chelsie to open the door. We filmed her walking through a door two times, once from one side of the door and again from the opposite side. Then during post production, I cut the two clips to make it into one where chelsie opens the door on one side and walks through on the other.

Rule of thirds means that the subjects eyes are always a third of the way down the screen, this helps the audience to focus on the subject. I made sure that whilst filming, the person who I was filming always had their eyes a third of the way down the screen so that my work applies by the rule of thirds.

The first challenge we faced during production was recording in the setting/location that we planned without it being too noisy. With the first recording, the background noise was too loud and consequently, the dialogue in the clip could not be heard. Additionally, another problem we faced was finding suitable characters to play the roles and also getting them to wear the same clothing from the first recording again the second time we recorded. Wearing two different sets of clothing would’ve made the scene look inconsistent so therefore we concluded that it was better to film the whole thing again. If I were to film again, I would make sure that the actors say project the given dialogue loud and clear to avoid having to waste time and film again.
During post production, I struggled to put together the match on action of chelsie opening and closing the door. It took me quite a while to edit the clip so that it ran smoothly. Also, I would make sure that I print a full script next time so that my actors can follow it. I only roughly instructed them as to what they should say and this meant that when it came to editing it was hard to combine the clips because the dialogue was different in all the clips. The weaknesses of my work were that it was hard to think of an idea for my piece of work that was creative and original yet still followed the brief. Storyboarding was also tough because I personally find it difficult to draw and it was hard to draw the scenes how I visualised them. The weak storyboard led to us having an overall longer production time.

However, the digital technology aspect proved to be the strongest part of my work. The use of the camera and tripod allowed me and my partner to explore a wide range of different angles and use a variety of filming techniques (match-on-action, rule of thirds etc.) Also because we were both familiar with the technology we were using it was a lot quicker for us to set up and start filming.      Overally, to improve I would definitely make the planning of my work, more detailed in order to make my filming less time consuming. I would pay more attention to detail so that the continuity in my editing looks neat and professional and there are less jump cuts.