Our preliminary task:
The preliminary task we were set was a continuity task we were set to do outside of lesson time.
We were told we had to film someone opening a door, walking across a room and then sitting at a table and exchanging dialogue with another actor using shot reverse shot filming. We were told we had to focus most on making the piece flow and making the scenes and shot "continues".
When planning..
During the planning process we spent a lesson gathering together our ideas on what we wanted the subject of the piece to be. Our initial idea was that we wanted to make something scary. The outline we had was someone coming home to find someone in their house. However, this proved difficult when trying to find a setting as to where to film it as we wanted the house to be spooky and abandoned. We did not have a large amount out time to film (two afternoons after school, and during if we could find the time and a weekend) so, finding somewhere that suited what we wanted to do was hard.
Because of our struggle to find somewhere we changed out idea slightly. We decided to change it to a women coming home, to find another woman in her shower. We liked this idea as although at first it didn't seem to scary and was a while off out first idea, the piece could be filmed in a spooky way, and we could also just use a friends house.
When choosing out actors as a group, we decided to only have two: the "wife" and the "mistress" or person who was seeing her husband. This we thought was a good choice as it followed the specifications for the task and also we didn't have to make an effort in finding many willing people to act. The actresses used were myself and a friend of ours, Jeanne. We thought this was appropriate as both Jeanne and I study drama at A-level and so were well suited for the task.
In the end we decided to film at a Lucy's house (a member of our group). This we decided was good because the landing of her house and front room/hall are very open plan so we could make use of the whole space. Another benefit of filming at lucy's house was that we could use all the lighting in the house and could work fast. When making the story board we only drew out the main parts of the film, as most of the film planning happened when we in the actual house where we were filming, as it meant we could be more visual and try and see which shots would work and which wouldn't. Although I think a story board would have helped us plan, I don't think it would have helped us with filming.
Our script however, did help us when we were filming. In the planning process we decided that we didn't need much dialogue as we wanted most of the piece to be focused on the woman coming home.. and so we wanted lots of detailed and suspenseful shots to set the tone of the piece. An example of this would be the mirror shot of her going the stairs.
When we were actually filming ,we did however run into a few troubles. The most common issue we had was trying to make the piece flow when filming the shots.Making sure we had used shot reverse shot in a way that was effective and not "messy". Another issue we had was trying not to get the people filming in the mirrors shown within shots. Lucy's bathroom has two and so when doing shot- reverse-shot this proved difficult.
Review:
The task itself I think could of been better, but also I think as a first attempt it went okay and we learnt some valuable lessons. For example we didn't think enough about the audio that we wanted in the piece. This was mostly the humming in the background. Because we didn't record the humming as an audio and lay it over the top (which we should have done) the humming was distorted and jumpy which sounded unprofessional and also was disorientating for the audience. Another small error/issue we had is that because we had to fit in our filming into one evening we couldn't take many shots and choose the best ones, this was an issue as we then couldn't cut and trim scenes as we didn't have enough footage to put in-between.
On the upside I do think that we upheld the element of continuity in the piece, and I think that we were creative with our planning and filming with a range of different shots, like the one looking through the bannister, the mirror shot and through the sitting room window.
Next time I think as a group we should go to the place where we are filming and talk about the shots we are planning on using. Also,I think that if we knew exactly where we were filming for a while before we filmed we could decide on how to create each scene and plan the story board there, that way I think we will have better use for the story board as it means it would have the exact shots on, and then filming would be a lot faster as it would simply be like following a set of instructions, rather than filming whatever we thought would work. I also think we underestimated how important audio is when filming this piece and so should focus on it more when planning next time.
Planning my next piece I think I will plan much more thoroughly, and also take a larger part in filming. Although in this piece I helped direct the shots and things, I'd rather not act in the next piece as it lessens my involvement in the actual filming and directing.
The preliminary task we were set was a continuity task we were set to do outside of lesson time.
We were told we had to film someone opening a door, walking across a room and then sitting at a table and exchanging dialogue with another actor using shot reverse shot filming. We were told we had to focus most on making the piece flow and making the scenes and shot "continues".
When planning..
During the planning process we spent a lesson gathering together our ideas on what we wanted the subject of the piece to be. Our initial idea was that we wanted to make something scary. The outline we had was someone coming home to find someone in their house. However, this proved difficult when trying to find a setting as to where to film it as we wanted the house to be spooky and abandoned. We did not have a large amount out time to film (two afternoons after school, and during if we could find the time and a weekend) so, finding somewhere that suited what we wanted to do was hard.
Because of our struggle to find somewhere we changed out idea slightly. We decided to change it to a women coming home, to find another woman in her shower. We liked this idea as although at first it didn't seem to scary and was a while off out first idea, the piece could be filmed in a spooky way, and we could also just use a friends house.
When choosing out actors as a group, we decided to only have two: the "wife" and the "mistress" or person who was seeing her husband. This we thought was a good choice as it followed the specifications for the task and also we didn't have to make an effort in finding many willing people to act. The actresses used were myself and a friend of ours, Jeanne. We thought this was appropriate as both Jeanne and I study drama at A-level and so were well suited for the task.
In the end we decided to film at a Lucy's house (a member of our group). This we decided was good because the landing of her house and front room/hall are very open plan so we could make use of the whole space. Another benefit of filming at lucy's house was that we could use all the lighting in the house and could work fast. When making the story board we only drew out the main parts of the film, as most of the film planning happened when we in the actual house where we were filming, as it meant we could be more visual and try and see which shots would work and which wouldn't. Although I think a story board would have helped us plan, I don't think it would have helped us with filming.
Our script however, did help us when we were filming. In the planning process we decided that we didn't need much dialogue as we wanted most of the piece to be focused on the woman coming home.. and so we wanted lots of detailed and suspenseful shots to set the tone of the piece. An example of this would be the mirror shot of her going the stairs.
When we were actually filming ,we did however run into a few troubles. The most common issue we had was trying to make the piece flow when filming the shots.Making sure we had used shot reverse shot in a way that was effective and not "messy". Another issue we had was trying not to get the people filming in the mirrors shown within shots. Lucy's bathroom has two and so when doing shot- reverse-shot this proved difficult.
Review:
The task itself I think could of been better, but also I think as a first attempt it went okay and we learnt some valuable lessons. For example we didn't think enough about the audio that we wanted in the piece. This was mostly the humming in the background. Because we didn't record the humming as an audio and lay it over the top (which we should have done) the humming was distorted and jumpy which sounded unprofessional and also was disorientating for the audience. Another small error/issue we had is that because we had to fit in our filming into one evening we couldn't take many shots and choose the best ones, this was an issue as we then couldn't cut and trim scenes as we didn't have enough footage to put in-between.
On the upside I do think that we upheld the element of continuity in the piece, and I think that we were creative with our planning and filming with a range of different shots, like the one looking through the bannister, the mirror shot and through the sitting room window.
Next time I think as a group we should go to the place where we are filming and talk about the shots we are planning on using. Also,I think that if we knew exactly where we were filming for a while before we filmed we could decide on how to create each scene and plan the story board there, that way I think we will have better use for the story board as it means it would have the exact shots on, and then filming would be a lot faster as it would simply be like following a set of instructions, rather than filming whatever we thought would work. I also think we underestimated how important audio is when filming this piece and so should focus on it more when planning next time.
Planning my next piece I think I will plan much more thoroughly, and also take a larger part in filming. Although in this piece I helped direct the shots and things, I'd rather not act in the next piece as it lessens my involvement in the actual filming and directing.
A strong preliminary report with some detailed reflective comments.
ReplyDeleteWWW: You discuss the planning and filming stages in quite a lot of detail and are evaluative in your comments.
EBI: Read your work through carefully to check for communication errors (particularly punctuation and clarity of expression). Upload this piece again (as a reply to this comments) with amendments made in a different colour.
If you have a script and storyboard for the preliminary task, please upload this to the Preliminary Task page.