Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Media Homework

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

What is the 180 degree rule? How did you incorporate it in the planning of the task?

The 180 degree rule is where the camera must stay on one side of the action that’s being shot. The camera stays on one side of the action throughout the scene because this keeps the characters in the same position from and audience’s perspective and keeps the actors looking at each other when only one actor is on screen. This technique allows the audience to see unseen background area while focusing on the actor talking perhaps. It is a ‘rule’ because when the camera films two actors, it mustn’t cross the axis of action. If this happens, it will give the audience an impression the actors have swapped places in the situation.

We decided to use this rule to show a two way conversation between two actors face to face. It would be done at a mid length shot including the shoulders and face to portray expression during the conversation, showing the audience what the actors are feeling to what they are saying or being told.

What is a match on action? How did you incorporate it in the planning of the task?

A match on action (or a cutting on action) is an editing technique where one shot cuts into another shot showing the action of subject. (e.g. opening a book, close up of the book, back to full image of reading the book). This creates a sense of continuity, carrying a visual bridge drawing the audience’s attention away from anything else in the background and on the object of interest. A match on action should show the same situation and same image, not two different objects or situations. We decided to use this editing technique to show an objects point of interest such as the mobile phone. Instead of the character being full focus, we cut from a long shot of the actor pulling out the phone, a close up of the phone being typed on and a long shot of the actor then moving the phone up to her ear. This shows the actor making a phone call in more depth rather than the audience not knowing the actor is making a phone call instead of idly playing on her/his phone.

What is an eye line match? How did you incorporate it in the planning of the task?

            Eye line match is another continuity technique used in filming. There is a cut between two shots showing the illusion of the character looking at an object or another character out of shot. We decided to use this on using one shot of the actor looking down out of shot, then cutting to another high angle shot of the phone. This gives the audience the illusion that the actor was looking at the object.

How did the filmmaking process go in terms of filming the shots from the story board and filming around college?

            Some aspects worked quite well where others need vast improvement. In some shots we forgot to add speech or certain actions to make the story make sense. Such as we forgot to make the actor take out her phone on the match on shot so didn’t show her actually taking her phone out and jumping to her dialling on her phone in a close up shot. We didn’t record her speaking so no dialog was used and didn’t make sense at all. There was no hint of storyline, just a lot of actions that didn’t run smoothly. We experimented with camera angles a lot with the running scenes, in which directions would work best and which looked unprofessional. We learnt running towards the camera at a diagonal worked better as we saw the actor’s expressions and the direction of where she was running more. It took us a long while of how to do the close up on the feet when running for a match on action. At first we couldn’t get the feet in the frame, so we used the running on a diagonal towards the camera again and found out that worked best. We were successful with using what distance shots to use as we found this easy to incorporate. We need to improve on camera angles, different techniques and how they are done, and matching dialog to movement next time we film.

What did you learn about video editing on adobe premier? Think in terms of using transitions, adding sound and green screen.

            The transitions were easy to put in when editing the film. Since it was based on an action film, short sharp transitions were used to add a sense of hurrying and a dynamic theme. This adds to the fast paced action of the actual movie. We added non-diegetic background music which had fast drum beats and loud sudden elements. This again adds to the action theme and the fast paced of running and tension of the actors situation. We didn’t get round to using the green screen in our editing but I think we would of used it to add explosions and distortions since these are the conventions of action movies. The red and orange associates with danger in which the actor is related to.