- A character opening a door
- A character crossing a room
- A character sitting down in a chair, opposite another character
- Dialogue between characters
- Match on action
- The use of a shot/reverse shot
- Understanding of 180 degree rule
Planning and research.
We began planning the basis of our idea for the preliminary exercise during lesson times. As a group we watched and researched previous AS preliminary task examples, analysing the content against the task criteria. This made it easier for us as a group to see and note how we could demonstrate all aspects of the criteria intended for the task. Once our minds were clear on the task in hand, we began assigning roles within our groups as well as developing our ideas for the exercise through the use of mind maps. It was decided that the protagonists in our story were to be India and Channon, leaving myself as director and Nathaniel in charge of camera work. Although we all assigned each other designated roles, we all kept an open mind, contributing and helping each other improve our performances and adapt on instructional ideas. Keeping in mind the simplicity required for this task, we thought it would be best to use our idea of “a student arriving late to class” taking advantage of our location (as filming was to be completed during school time). Now, that the basis of our planning was complete we began to research more into editing techniques required for after filming the task. As a class, we went through various editing techniques including “Match on action” and the “180 degree rule” which are both key components needed to successfully complete the exercise.
Pre-production planning.
With our new found understanding of the intended editing techniques, we began to incorporate this along with our ideas conducted during the early planning and research stage, into a story board. This was to fully plan and outline our story through the use of both images and texts which followed the narrative of our filming. The images included in our story board, demonstrated the camera shot we were going to use, as well as the characters positions in relation to each other. This aspect of the story board worked well as it helped me (as director) make sure the actors and camera man stuck to the 180 degree rule. It also helped us as a group as it visually outlined which aspects of the criteria we had included, or needed to evolve on. Each member of the group adapted and added to the story board, often making notes of editing techniques we could include in each shot, or camera shots we could demonstrate to make filming seem more effective. For example, close-up shots to show characters reactions and facial expressions. As dialogue was a necessary requirement to include in our filming, we started to form a short script along-side the images and texts already used in our story board. The completion of our story board was mainly conducted in class; however, as a group we arranged a meeting to detail final amendments and ideas we could include in our filming. During our meeting we also discussed back-up possibilities in case of unfortunate incidents; for example, if one of our actors were to be ill, we discussed the idea of having our director fill the position of the absent actor.Deadlines were another aspect discussed during our meeting. Setting ourselves deadlines I believe, helped us work more intensely towards fulfilling the task as well as contributing to helping us manage our time well, not making the mistake to spend too long on one area and subsequently forgetting about another.
Production Process.
Our planning stage had now been completed, which meant we could move on to the filming of our preliminary task. As filming had to be done during school hours, and the theme of our story was based around school, we used our classroom as the dominant location. This worked effectively as we maintained the idea of simplicity. During the process of filming, we all took time to complete a video journal which detailed what we had accomplished through each day of filming. The video journal worked effectively as it helped us keep track of what we had done and what aspects of the story board were left to be filmed. It also provided an outline to contribute towards writing an evaluation of the task as from the notes made in the video journal; we can see whether completing our filming could have been improved by altering our self-applied deadlines to ultimately increase time spent on each aspect of the exercise.
Evaluation.
Overall I am pleased that my team and I, achieved in demonstrating the preliminary criteria, however I believe that a few aspects could have been altered to help us achieve this quicker, for example, I believe that more than one meeting should have been arranged to complete the video journal more effectively and also, to discuss clearer instructions of the roles. By this I mean, although contributing towards each other’s assigned areas worked well in some instances, in some cases it only created unnecessary discussion which wasted some filming time. Instead we could have included written feedback to each other’s performance during the filming process, in the video journal. This would have worked effectively and helped us see what (as individuals) we can improve on to effectively help improve our group performance.Another aspect I believe worked effectively was our deadlines. Setting deadlines towards each of our tasks helped us see how much time we were spending on each aspect of developing the final film product.
AS preliminary task from Jemma Goulds on Vimeo.
