Preliminary Task Evaluation Movie

On my video prelim I worked with Damon Coates, we managed the task by drawing a scene by scene plan of what we decided we were going to do, once we had drawn our plan we went to find a couple of friends who wanted to be in our film, after we had decided who was going to be in our film we went to find where would be a good place to film.

When we were planning our sequence we started by talking to each other about the different ideas we had and the different shots we had to take in to consideration the following points that we were goings to include in our prelim video project. We knew the basics shots that we would add to our film were;

·         To continual e.g. we were told to film a person walking through the door, so we would have to film from one side and then the other but we would have to have the person and door in the same place for each different shot of the door being opened.

·         We would also have to film the character walking across the screen

·         Then he/she would have to sit down opposite to another person and have a shot-reverse-shot conversation with each other.

After that we started talking to each other about what we would have the characters do and talk about we came up with idea of a person sneaking in to a office and looking through different secret documents and items, we then decided that he/she would pick up a laptop or phone and pick it up and scroll through files, then they would get caught by the owner of the office and documents, they would speak about what was happening and then the culprit would be shot. The inspiration that we used for our ideas was James Bond, we decided to reverse some of the roles, e.g. the person who normally gets shot in a James Bond film would be the owner of the office where as we decided that we wanted the secret agent who was sneaking around the office to be shot.

The technology that we used was a video camera, a tripod, Firewire 400 cable and an Apple eMac to do the film editing on. We also used a DV tape to capture our film on.

We decided to use the eMac because they are easy to use and the software allows you to do more features than the similar software on a windows computer. We also had better knowledge of the different advanced features which was included on iMovie.

The factors that we had to take into account when we were planning our film;

·         Where we would film

·         What it would be based on

·         Who we would use as characters

·         What they would say

·         What camera shots and angles we would us

·         Another was when we could film because we didn’t want the area to be in use also we had to consider when was best for us to meet up and film.

When filming the factors we had to take into account was;

·         The camera shots

·         The amount of light in the room

·         Where the actors would be positioned when filming

·         How we wanted the actors to act

When we was editing there was a number of different factors we took into account which are;

·         Which computer we should use a XP machine or a Mac

·         Which software to use

·         If we wanted a opening title scene

·         An end title scene

·         Where we should edit

Overall I think our movie turned out ok but I believe we could improve upon a lot if we did it again because of the experience of doing it the first time and now being able to see on the Mac some of the mistakes we made on the movie. I think that the parts to identify which worked well was our continuity with the shots on the door, also the high angle shot of the secret agent walking to the desk worked well. In hindsight I would use the tripod on the shot of the spy opening the door. I wouldn’t use have a shot of the camera man following the actor whilst zooming out from a close up shot of the door handle being opened.

Another thing I would improve is the not making the room as dark as it was because when it came to editing and reviewing the filming it was obvious that it was too dark in the room, even though you could still see the actors it wasn’t light enough. When you look through the camera it seems lighter that it was when reviewing the film.

I have learnt that when filming I shouldn’t make the room very dark unless it is necessary because it isn’t very visible when watching the film back on a computer, also I have learnt more about how to improve editing on iMovie. I believe that this will be very significant later on in my coursework because it will make my overall movie look less amateur and more professional which is what I aim for when producing a Movie.