Preliminary Work

During the early days of Media studies we were told yo get into groups and create a short video of a conversation. Within this conversation we had to include different camera angles e.g. 2 close ups, 2 mid shots and 1 tracking shot. The whole purpose of this activity is to prepare us for the sort of things we would be expected to do when it comes to actually making our final opening sequence. This gave us a taster into the types of shots we could use, when to use a certain shot, how to cut/ edit and also gave us an idea into the time we needed to film and to edit. 

Here is the piece of work I produced:

I thought most of the shots and editing was pretty good. We used a range of shots from close ups to low angles, this made it look interesting and therefore would do a better job of attracting the audience. Most of the cuts were extremely precise, for example the match on action of the door handle opening. We also used a form cut to to join the shape of the tree to the back of the persons head, as we thought it would be an interesting cut to do and it also adds comical value. We took care in not breaking the 180° rule when filming the stair sequence. The lighting was also good. We were indoors for the most part of the sequence so we had the use of well lit rooms and corridors.

The students in my class seems to really like the video, they thought it was interesting and funny. They did have some criticisms however. They thought the transition shot from the person walking onto the stairs and down the stairs could have been better. They noticed how, when the camera tracked the person walking off the stairs the camera slightly titled. 

I completely agree with the criticisms that I received and while editing the footage I noticed the errors but we didn't have sufficient time to re-shoot the footage so we tried to do the best with what we had. This taught me an important lesson that time management is key in producing a good piece of work. 

I thought we were pretty organised when filming our opening sequence considering we only had 1 hour to finish our script and storyboard. We had two days to film and we made sure for our second shoot the characters we wearing the same clothes for continuity. 

We could improve the sequence by re-filming some of the shots and possibly even improve the narrative and make the acting more believable. We also had a lot of unwanted background noise, so we could find a way to quieten it down or remove it all together.