Task 2 - Prelim and Evaluation

Evaluating the Prelim Task

Firstly, the skills I feel I was good at while preparing and filming the prelim, was the filming and editing. From this, we all learnt many skills that helped us from lessons so that we could apply it to our prelim film. This consisted of:

The 180 Degree rule

The 180 degree rule is a type of camera position in which you can film 2 actors - usually having a conversation together. The purpose of this is to understand how 2 people can be filmed from 2 different view points, however with no confusion. This way, there will be no confusion with where the camera is. Due to our prelim -  I believe we followed this well and there were no confusions with it.

Match Cuts

Match cuts allow the audience or viewer to see points of view from different angles and perspectives. The purpose of this is to create a visual metaphor. With our prelim video, I believe this was also successful as we used this many times, and in the right way.

During our planning, it was quite tricky as we all did not have many ideas. As a downfall, we had changed our ideas twice, but eventually caught up and had a final idea. In order to be organised, we created a storyboard in which we included each scene, the dialogue (when necessary) and the camera angles. We also created a script so we had everything planned.

When it came to filming, we all had a chance to do so. However, we didn't entirely stick to the script or storyboard, but referred to it whenever we were stuck and eventually were successful. We filmed each scene many times using different angles so we could match cut and edit later on. 

The editing at first was quite tricky as we didn't know how to exactly use the tools, after a while we played around with the tools and got the hang of it. I think the editing was quite straight-forward once we got used to it and we all had a chance to edit too. Our editing was successful as we all agreed on each other's ideas and were all prepared to come in our own time to finish the editing off.

My favourite part of the completed prelim was one of the match-cuts at the beginning. It was filmed really well and when edited with other angle shots, looked even better. I believe this was a success. Also, the fact that we used close-ups to show the actors facial expressions was very effective.

If I were to film again, I would make sure to have a wider range of angle shots as many of ours were mid-close ups and not many closeups, low angles, high angles etc. We could have also used panning to zoom into the footsteps of when one of the actors were departing. 

Prelim video