Preliminary Task Evaluation

For our preliminary task everyone in our group got assigned a room to film their scene in their groups. My group got assigned the editing suite to film our preliminary task. I thought this location worked alright for our task although it was difficult to find a good angle to be able to include the actors’ feet in the wide shot whilst avoiding to see anything but the white wall which we were filming in front of. Therefore we ended up having to use other parts of the room such as the TV’s and desks in the background especially when we were doing over the shoulder shots and close ups.


Whilst shooting our scene all of us were responsible for pretty much everything. One person was operating the camera but still everyone else in the group was choosing the frames and helping him assure that everything (i.e. Focus, exposure, white balance, etc.) was levelled correctly to get the best possible images. I personally was thinking a lot about continuity and with the help of all the other people in the group we were deciding on shots and focus points to enhance our scene.


Lighting:
The lighting in our scene was very basic as we just used the normal overhead lights in the editing suite. This made our scene look very clinical, making the viewer focus on the actors rather than the setting. This use of lighting ensured that both of the actor’s faces were seen clearly and therefore the camera could see their facial expressions and emotions. I think this use of lighting was effective because as the viewer you could then see the Rubik’s Cube being handed over clearly without having to think hard about what it is. This made the scene easier to understand and also easier to watch altogether.


Filming:
When we set up our camera we watched out for getting the right white balance- to ensure that all the colours in the room look normal and in proportion and also to make sure that there aren’t any continuity mistakes in terms of lighting and colour-, we watched out for getting the correct exposure- i.e. not having any areas in the image which were overexposed or underexposed by adjusting the aperture of the camera- and we also tried to make sure that we got a good focus for every shot. This just make the whole scene look professional although I did notice that we did not manage to get the focus right on some of our frames which we only noticed once we viewed the material.
As we were filming inside it was not too difficult to ensure that the tripod was level each time but we still tried to check before each shot, to make the whole task look a bit more professional and skilled. Every time after we changed our position we ‘Bubbled’ the tripod, making sure that everything was levelled.
With every shot we tried to remember to use the rule of thirds and put your main focal point of centre, to make sure that the type of shot (i.e. close ups, over the shoulder shots, wide shots, etc.) were set up correctly and that nothing was seen on the image which was not supposed to be there, and also that we made sure we followed the 180 degree rule so the whole scene made sense.
Our entire group was responsible for continuity and therefore we all made sure that nothing was in the frame which was not supposed to be there, such as camera bags or lighting equipments which made our scene look more professional. We checked each time that nothing was in the background which should not have been there.
As we were filming in the editing suite we were forced to adjust our angle of camera to ensure that the background was mainly the white wall, to make the actors stand out and to have the viewer focus on the actors rather than on the setting. For some of the close ups we had to adjust our angles to conform the rule of thirds and therefore have a nicer image composition.