the preliminary exercise

Preliminary exercise.

Our brief was to complete a continuity task which involved filming and editing a character walking and opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character with which he/she then exchanges a couple lines of dialogue. Our shots for this involved match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree line rule.

1- The rule of thirds and framing I felt could have been better as some shots seemed to fall out such as the eyelines. Next time I want to take more notice with each shot and try to visualise what the rule of thirds may look like within the scenes.
2/3- shot reverse shot seemed good though there were only two shots used within the film that had this in which causes not much to compare with. The 180 degree rule was kept to my surprise also as at one point I though I had broken it.
4- The eyelines sometimes varied but it seemed to be kept at the right level throughout.
5- Focus was clear though it took getting used too using on the new cameras.
6- Dialogue was supposed to be kept quite simple so therefore the discussion is quite short though it seems the sound that was recorded was ok. It was clear and understandable.
7- I felt the camerawork wasn’t great but ok for a first time cameraman as I hadn’t filmed before. The one thing I believe I should have done is to take more shots than I had done.
8- The continuity could have been better. A prime example would be at the beginning when Caroline puts her hand to the door followed by the second shot of which is a close up of her hand pushing the door opening. For a second maybe, it takes for her hand to reach up and open it. I felt this breaks the continuous flow of the scene. Whilst filming I felt that I left enough handle time before and after shooting though I could have done with more footage to fall back on encase some shots were not working. Also there are a lot of jump cuts between the shots which kind of disrupts the flow also.
If I had the chance to do the preliminary again, I’d plan it a lot better making sure the dialogue was a bit longer and that the range of shots were a lot more then just the few that I used. This way I’d have more to fall back on encase some did not look great.