Preliminary Task Evaluation.

For our preliminary task, in groups we had to ensure that we created an opening scene that included four rules. We had to follow these four rules in order to ensure we got the marks. The first thing we had to do was to make sure that we did not break the 180 degree rule, This is ensuring that we keep the camera on one side of the people in the shot when filming so that it does not look like the people in the shot have moved and so that it does not confuse the audience. We did this throughout our scene by keeping the camera on one side and the people in the shot on the other, it was almost as though we created an invisible line so that we did not break the 180 degree rule.

The next thing that we had to do was a 'Match on action' shot, This is when one person gave another person an item of interest, we had to take one shot of a person giving the item, (in our case a piece of paper with information on it) and we then had to take another shot of the other person receiving the item. We had to do it from each persons perspective.

We then had to make sure we included an 'eye-line match'. This is where we had to ensure that the two people's eyes must match in order to keep the editing looking fluent so that it looks as though they are looking at each other even if they are of different heights. To do this we used two people of roughly the same height so that it was easier to do.

Finally, we had to add a shot-reverse-shot.This is where a shot is filmed of person 1 looking at person 2 from their perspective and then person 2 looking at person 1 from their perspective. In our case, we did this when one person was speaking to another and vice versa. We also did this shot when we were following where the people were going, we alternated between each person to add the effect that they were going to meet eventually.

There were certain parts of filming that as a group, we found challenging. For example, when filming the part that involved an actor taking items out of her locker, there was a large window behind her which meant that when she opened the locker, (where the camera was), the light behind her made it so that we couldn't see her face and it was dark/shadowed as there was not enough time for the camera to adjust to the lighting. To plan how we would film our preliminary task, we created a storyboard. In this we drew pictures of what we wanted each scene to look like and where it would be set, we also added where the dialogue would be and which camera angle we would use for each scene to ensure that we added all of the correct ones that we needed to get the marks. Next time I would use a more detailed storyboard as we ran out of time while trying to decide where we should film next and for how long etc. We also used a tripod effectively and for almost all of the shots, however we used only the camera on the floor for a couple of shots when we wanted to get a worm-eye view of them walking towards each other. The tripod allowed us to ensure that all of the shots were steady and not shaky.

We used adobe premier to edit our preliminary tasks. Firstly, we made a rough edit where we had to choose which clips we wanted to use out of the ones that we filmed and put them all into the new video with spaces in between to make them easier to edit. We next had to cut down all of the clips to the right length as some of them had us turning the camera on or off at the start and end of each clip so we had to get rid of those bits. We then added a title sequence, our preliminary task was called 'The Code' and we added text over the top of the video with the directors and actors in it. We then had to decide which transitions to add to each one to make it look neat and make it look like it flows. Finally, we added a piece of sound over the video, the video was incidental, so it went along with what was happening in the video.