Today we were set the task of a first attempt at producing a video that displayed our understanding of continuity. To show this, we had to include certain conventions, which involved filming a match on action, abiding by the 180 degree rule, and utilising a reverse shot.
In terms of basic content, the instructions read as follows: Person A walks to a door, opens it, passes through, crosses room, sits down, talks to someone.
There was also the option to work to extension criteria, which suggested other peices of content: Person walks alone, footsteps, door bangs, mutterings, enigma, scream, implied fear, more than 3 locations, more than 2 people. The extension criteria for production techniques was also provided: Ambient lighting, extreme angles, reverse tracking, use of tilt.
For this peice, I worked in a group with Daniel Knights, James Wigger and Tom Palmer. Seeing as this was the first production task we had been given, we didn't strictly delegate specific roles, and instead discussed all aspects of the production with one another to get an idea of our individual strengths and weaknesses.
We decided to film in a specific outside area within the school grounds, because we wanted to utilise certain features within our video. The features we wanted to include were: a chain-link gate, a fence with vertical metal bars, a small area of trees, and a large metal container. Although our main aim was in showing our understanding of continuity, we also wanted to create a dark, serious tone with a concise narrative based on dry humor. We did this in order to get an idea for what we may want to achieve in our final film-noir production.
During filming, James operated the camera, Daniel acted as the main character, and I acted as the secondary character, whilst Tom helped implement continuity rules. I also had a list of the criteria we had been given and ensured that we fulfilled the basic requirements of the task and also included many of the extension items. There were certain factors we could not include because of our chosen environment, namely the sitting down section, but I believe we made up for this by using a similar technique to show our main character stopping to have a conversation with our secondary character.
Another problem caused by our chosen environment was that of pupils and teachers walking through our filming area. We combatted this by using our time wisely and politely asking large groups to use another route. On top of this, there is a small section of video in which a rain-drop on the lens distorts part of the frame. Luckily, it is hardly noticeable, but we will remember to keep the lens clean in future to maintain professionalism.
We edited our footage using Sony Vegas 8, as can be seen in the screenshots above. We did the majority of editing as a group; taking it in turns to deal with certain sections, but communicating consistently to ensure shots flowed. This allowed each of us to get a feel for the process of editing, and an understanding of what it entailed. Further editing was later done by James, who produced a revised version of the video (below) after we had all given feedback on the orginal.
