preliminary exercise

Evaluation

Our brief was to film an edit a character opening a door, crossing the room and sitting down opposite another character and they both will exchange some dialogue. In this exercise, we had to use the techniques shot/reverse shot, 180 degree rule and match on action. Our clip, was about to girls having a conversation with enigma codes being thrown around to create suspicion so nobody truly or fully understands what the situation is about. The script we made was very useful because we was able to clearly read our lines and use it in the final product. It also helped us to portray what facial expressions and body language to use when saying a line. Our storyboard was some what useful as it helped create a vivid image of what actions we would make in our final product. With the shot list, we was able to know what camera shots were next and how and where we should place the camera which was incredibly useful. However, in terms of pre-production, I think we would have to design a better story board as it was not used much. Also I would make the shot list more clear for us to read. These two things were in issue in making the final product. 

Strengths...

One of our strengths was editing. We had quite a lot of editing techniques in our final production from embedding sound to the clip to purposely slowing down parts of our clip to changing the colour to black and white in some parts. This was greatly effective as the usage of black and white can help extinguish who the antagonist as they would look quite daunting and mysterious due to the low lighting. Also the sound helps exaggerate the mood of the clip more clearly because if it is a slow pace song, as we used, then instantly the audience will recognise the clip as a clip with suspense. That would be using parallel sounds. We also attempted to use camera angles quite effectively. We had a low angle shot on one character which conveys that this character has power and had more authority compared to the other character. The high angle shot used on the other character depicts that this character was looked down on and seemed weak. We followed the brief and used the 180-rule throughout the exercise. Shot/reverse shot was also used which aided in displaying character identification so as to show the audience what the character was feeling. We also used close up and extreme close up to make sure the audience notices the important part on that scene for example, we used an extreme close up on the paper at the end which quoted " I did it" This helps the audience  to understand that this paper is an important part to the clip but since no one knows what the character did enigma codes are clearly shown there. Following from that, throughout our whole clip we was able to use enigma very tactfully which is another thing that went well I our exercise. 

Weaknesses... 

We had quite a few weaknesses in our production. For example, the camera work could have been presented much better because sometimes the camera was moving when it was suppose to be a still shot. Another thing is that the high angle shot that we used was not effective enough as you couldn't really tell it was a high angle shot. Also, we did not fully follow the brief as we did not have a part where someone opens the door. This is due to not having the brief with us while we are filming. In editing, we could have used transitions to make some scenes flow much better making the suspense in the atmosphere more intense. The timing of when the character should start acting was a bit on a confusion that could be slightly seen in our clip. Another weakness that could be different in our work for next time is to actually use the shot list. In between the filming we were continuously changing shots which is a risky because it may contradict with something that we had planned to do later on therefore next we will follow the planning we did unless the change is really vital. Lastly, the lighting could have been so much better as I some scenes the lighting would change and can confuse the audience so next time we need to consider how to keep the lighting the same.