Preliminary Task - Miss Miller

In this task we were placed into groups, my group consisted of myself and Krista. We were given this preliminary task in order to understand and develop our skills on how to use the equipment needed for filming such as using a tripod. These skills will be necessary when creating our own thriller opening sequence. We were also asked in order to be able to create different angles, for example, midshot. We were asked to film a short clip which had to be a maximum of 1 minute long. We had to film a conversation about anything we wanted using different camera shots and angles. We decided to go outside on the benches near the basketball courts and film ourselves having a catch up. When the film was completed, we had to transfer it to our computers and edit it using 'Final cut' which is a movie editing application. Learning about how to use 'Final cut' has helped me because i need to know how to use this in order to edit my opening sequence for a thriller film. Myself and Krista then had to talk about how well the filming had gone and give ourselves an overall review of how well we thought our film was.

We were asked to include 5 different camera shots and angles within our short clip. These included; Panning, mid shot, long shot, over the shoulder and close up. We were given a maximum of 40 minutes to create our pieces. Myself and Krista believe that some of the shots and angles were easier to create than others. For example, over the shoulder was a difficult angle to film as there were only two of us, it took us a long time to keep angling it correctly as well as pressing the pause button every time the other person spoke. When arriving to edit our scene, we noticed that some of our clips were missing, therefore, we weren't able to make a film that was long enough and it didn't include all of the cinematography techniques that we were asked to use. Not having our clips has taught me not to waste as much time worrying about what the conversation should have been about, and to not panic over not doing the conversation correctly, we also should have taken this more seriously. It has also shown me that filming is not as easy as it looks because it requires skill and we both realized that we needed to practice more before creating our opening sequences so that we received a better review than what we did on this clip.

Panning: This is the first shot that we used in our clip. In order to do this, we had to put our video camera onto the tripod and made sure that it didn't fall by placing it in a fixed position. I slowly followed Krista walking along to the bench and made sure that the camera was steady in order to film correctly. In the clip, panning can be seen from 0:16 to 0:24. I believe i did a good job in filming Krista entering this scene because panning must be steady and straight in order to get a good shot. I think that this shot was the easiest part to film compared to other shots and angles because we were able to use a tripod. Myself and Krista decided that we would use the panning technique in our own opening sequence for our thriller clips.

Over The Shoulder: We used this shot within our scene in order to show the audience the facial expression of the person that was being filmed. This makes the conversation flow very well. This shot was easy enough to film, however, it was hard at some points because we were limited with time so we had to keep stopping and being quick when shooting. But overall, it was quite easy to do because we would just have to place the camera on the tripod then film then stop filming then move the tripod to the other side. This will help us in the future as we will be able to estimate how long it will take us to film accurately.

Due to the clips being lost on the camera, we were not able to film all of the 5 angle and shots that we were required to film. We also wasted a lot of time deciding who was going to say each part of the clip so we ended up not having a lot of time left to film the rest. We also had to edit the film afterwards, so we therefore didn't have a lot of time to put the clips together. Towards the end, we realized that the story line wasn't main part of the filming, and all we needed to do was base our knowledge of cinematography into our piece in order to create a good piece.  I believe that if we hadn't wasted so much time on the conversation, i think that we would have done a good job and we would have learnt a lot of new techniques. When making a clip, i now know that the planning time is the most important time.

After the video was completed, we had to move on to the editing stage. I used the 'Final Cut' software to edit my clip on the macs available in class. I learnt how to upload videos and pictures from a computer or a camera to the mac. I then learnt how to preview each clip individually that we filmed together and the ones that we wanted to use, we would drag them down onto a timeline. Then, i learnt how to cut and delete clips in order for the clip to fit together. In order to trim, you click the video and a line appears and you just move it forward so that it cuts out the unnecessary parts of the clip. 

In conclusion, i have learnt how to film using a video camera and including specific techniques that are used within the cinematography. I have also learnt that i need to manage my time better so that myself and my partner have enough time to film all of the clip and have time to edit and we didn't have enough time to finish in class so we had to stay behind for a few minutes as we edited our clip. I have also learnt that i must keep checking the video camera to make sure it is filming exactly what i want to film. This has helped me learn how i want to film for my thriller opening sequence.