Yesterday Mr. Breese gave us a basic talk through the main types angels and how to make them, he then gave us a camera and we began to make our priliminary task. We had to film some-one from outside a door walking towards in then going through it, sitting down and exchanging a few words of dialogue with another charector. To do this we were split into groups, mine consisted of myself, Charlotte Woodward, Dasha Titova and Janice Ma. We were given two cameras and tripods, in our groups.
We were taught how to turn on, cut a scene and how to film by using our cameras we were also shown how to fasten them onto the tripods; we then all set off around the school, quietly, and looked for a suitable location to film our clips. Our group decided it would be best if we were to film one of us walking into one of our house areas, pull out a chair and sit down at a desk, have a conversation with another one of us sitting on a chair, the opposite side of the desk. I was the main filmer in our group and I also decided where the cameras would best be fitted.
Firstly, I placed the camera outside of one of the house areas, and filmed Charlotte walking through the door. In the room she walked into, there was another camera across the room filming her walking into it, then walking across the room, and walking over to the chair where she would sit in. Once she sat down, I called "cut" the stop the present filming. We then placed the two cameras; one to the left of her, behind, and one to the left of Dasha who was sat on the other side, behind her. This way, the audience were unable to see either camera in the shot. Both then filmed our short conversation.
This was done so that we could produce a reverse shot. A reverse shot is a shot from the opposite side of the previous shot, often used in conversations between one another. It is done so that one character is shown looking back at another, who is unseen. During this filming we had to obey the 180 degree rule. The 180 degree rule is when the camera cannot pass 180 degrees from where it is filming. You have to almost imagine a straight line. If you cross that line, you have broken the 180 degree rule; this is done so that the audience do not become confused as the where the charectors are. We then repeated this routine, making three more similar movies, so we each had a turn of walking through the door. Each time, we placed the camera at different angles. Another skill we learnt was panning. Panning is a skill we used bduring filming, as we were able to control the camera on the tripod, and slowly move the camera side to side in certain clips.
After filming all our shots we produced in our lesson, we then extracted the SD Cards from the two cameras, and placed them into the SD drives to import our video clips. We imported every clip from both cameras onto “Corel Video Studio”. This is the programme that our school uses to edit the films made, we then decided who was going to edit what scenes, and then begun our task. I really enjoyed the filming and the editing however i prefered the latter. It was enjoyable to film with my freinds and then to edit what we had made as the outcome of our task, I believe looked really good especially for a first real attempt.
However, unlike many of the people in my class, i had actually had some previous experience with editting but with another programme called “Window's Movie Maker”. I started to do this because I found that I really enjoyed it and I even made some videos of holidays for people as a present because its fun and a personal present to create, I would give them to people as a present by burning the movies onto a DVD disc. Despite this, I realise that this type of film we are working on is very different as we are using more technical and advanced techniques, using different camera angles and editing with ‘match on action’. Match on Action is when two clips have been filmed and edited so that it is seen as one easy natural take. It is perceived as a continual flow of the scene. It is done so that the action done in a film clip looks natural and flowing.
