Preliminary Task

Before we started our preliminary task we were given a workshop on using a moving image camera. We then were sent off in small groups to record a moving sequence of someone walking, and then of them coming out of a door and down some stairs. I volunteered to be the walker so I had to make sure I hit my cues and walked to the same place every time. When positioning the camera, we had to take into consideration the reflection from windows and the glare from the sun and to “bobble” the camera so it was level and not at an angle. The following day we ventured on creating our preliminary task. We were given a storyboard that consisted of a conversation between two actors. We decided to have a person coming out from behind a screen and hitting a mark so we put white tape on the floor for both the actors. The shots consisted of over the shoulder shots, reaction shots, close-ups, mid shots and wide shots so it really tested our knowledge of what we had learnt about camera. We also included a shot that was not on the storyboard and did a close-up of the phone being passed between actor “A” and actor “B”.
When it came to editing, we found it quite a slow and difficult process as we had to be so quick about the editing between shots as the actors were speaking very fast without much pause between lines. Also, we were new to the software and it took some time to get to grasps with it.