Preliminary Task

This is my edited version of the group preliminary task. We were asked to film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room, sitting down opposite another character with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. The task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. The task was to reinforce our understanding of classic continuity editing, the smoothing over of discontinuous editing to make the link between shots logical.

We first considered the target audience we wanted aim our film at so we could relate our characters, plot and setting at a specific age group. We decided to aim it at young youth (15 to 25) and use a school setting because this is something the vast majority of this age group can all relate to.

Bullying is also a theme many people can relate to. We used a girl with brown hair as the bully and a girl with blonde hair as the victim as so she looked stereotypically innocent and is also a Binary Opposition.

We used high angle shots on the girl with blonde hair to increase the feel of vulnerability and low angle shots on the brown haired girl to make her appear more domineering. We used over the shoulder shots to show the girls reactions and close up shots to show emotion.

We had to re-shoot our preliminary task due to having the camera at the wrong angle and we also decided to change our location. Our initial filming took place in a teachers office and we decided the toilets would be more suitable because it gave more of a feel that the victim was being hunted down and we could make use of the  cubicles to incorporate shot reverse shot into our filming well by having it from the points of view of both characters. shot reverse shot is a feature of continuity editing and part of the criteria for our task. It is a technique where one character is shown looking at another character and then there is a shot of that character looking back at the first character. We used it to make our editing seem less obtrusive and appear lifelike.

We used the 180 degree rule, also an example of continuity editing, when exchanging dialogue both our characters always have the same left/right relationship as if the camera is passing over an axis or a "crossing line" connecting the two subjects.

We began our film with match on action shown in the girl entering the toilets. It is a cut that connects two different views of the same action in the same moment, making the shots seem continuous.