Preliminary Exercise Evaluation

Preliminary Exercise Evaluation

The brief for our preliminary exercise was to create the first 30 seconds of a film opening. The first 30 seconds had to include a person walking through a corridor and opening a door. Once entered the room, there had to be an exchange of dialogue before the clip ended. We also had to use an over the shoulder shot when exchanging the dialogue, whilst keeping the 180 degree rule in mind. Our first thought; on the preliminary exercise; was that we needed to start off with a genre before deciding the setting and the dialogue which would be exchanged. We had a group consisting of four members including myself: Hargio; Vinisha and Samuel. We also pitched an idea based on the genre of what we think the preliminary exercise should be. In the end, we decided to do a romantic drama scene as it would appeal to the 15-35 demographic audience and it was unique in terms of our class as no other group were doing this genre for their preliminary exercise.

Once coming up with the genre, we figured out the dialogue which was going to take place and from there drew up a storyboard which included all of the different shots which we were going to use, the narrative of the film, the actions which we were to do and the dialogue which was to be said. Also, the length of each shot/cut was included so that we knew how long the film was roughly going to take up so that if it was under 30 seconds, we could tweet it slightly to fill the entire duration. The shot list; which we made whilst drawing up the storyboard; helped a lot in terms of the production side of the film as we were able to efficiently film the scene with the shots which we needed before shooting other angles for more engaging views; to create suspense.

A shot which I like is when the rose is being dropped by the protagonist as the shot is so meaningful. There’s no dialogue however, the connotation of a red rose being dropped suggests broken heartedness and even though the audience does not specifically know what’s happened, they are able to work it out due to these enigma codes.

In terms of the pre-production side of things, I’d have liked to create some more detailed storyboards, in order to show the idea’s and processes which went through our minds whilst preparing to film. I also think that next time we need to have a much larger shot list in order to ensure that we have a variation of shots from long shots to close ups as a different type of shot can portray a scene differently to another. This will therefore have a different impact on the viewing audience. Another factor which I’ll take into consideration when making the real production would be choosing an appropriate setting. Costa was a decent setting for a romantic drama however, I felt that the fact that it wasn't a proper Costa coffee shop, it lost a lot of realism as it looked as if it were a normal table with food (canteen).

Overall I think we did a somewhat decent job of the preliminary exercise however there were a lot of things which I would like to do differently in the future in order to make the film better. Looking back at the film, it was okay after the production and editing. Some of the strengths of the film were that the cuts were on time, the continuity editing was good and the film seemed to flow quite well. Also, the extreme close ups used; such as the close up on the eye; really portrayed emotion which was as intentioned however despite this, it broke the 180 degree rule as the shot reverse shot for the dialogue was on the right side of the actor but when the close up appeared it was on the left eye. This therefore made the film seem as if the person has got up and switched sides. Along with this, there was a lot of background noise as well as unwanted people in the background; such as cleaners. The background noise was quite annoying as this overpowered the sound and made the dialogue pretty hard to hear. When creating the final production for the media coursework, I’m going to take the factors listed above into consideration in order to ensure that it’s even better than what we produced for the preliminary exercise. Overall I think we did a somewhat decent job of the preliminary exercise however there were a lot of things which I would like to do differently in the future in order to make the film better.