Evaluation Question 7What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the

Preliminary Task to full product?

There are three main continuity techniques. Firstly, the 180 Degree Rule. This is used to show the relationship between two characters on screen. If the camera moves over the guideline, it breaks the continuity of the scene and causes confusion to the audience. We were careful not to

break the 180 Degree Rule when filming our preliminary task by ensuring we filmed the conversation from the ‘same side’ of the line. When filming our final product, we again ensured we didn’t break the

180 Degree Rule when filming the conversation between the two government members to make it as easy to understand as possible. I feel we improved between filming the preliminary task and the final

product as we filmed the conversation between the government members in one take, whereas for our preliminary task, we kept moving the camera from one over the shoulder shot to the other. The benefit of

filming it in one take is that the film has a better flow overall and it prevents confusion amongst the audience.

The second continuity technique is Match on Action. This is when, for example, you see a character walk through a door from the outside of the room and then as they enter, the camera angle changes to inside the room, and you see them enter from that view, which we used in our preliminary task as the student enters the classroom. I feel we did this relatively well in our preliminary task, however we improved dramatically by the time we created our final product as we accumulated a lot more footage, which

meant we had more options when it came to the editing process. This meant we could be incredibly specific when creating Match on Action for our opening. For example,

when the main character pulls a towel off of the hook, we were able to edit it almost perfectly so the transition between the two angles was hardly noticeable. However for

our preliminary task, we only took one shot for when the student walks through the door from outside the room and from the inside of the room, which made it more

difficult to edit and make it appear to flow. There is a section in our final product that we could improve as when a member of the government walks out of a room, he is filmed from behind and once he’s walked through the door, the angle changes to a

front view, which wasn’t a very smooth transition.

 

The final form of continuity is Shot, Reverse, Shot. This is mainly used for conversations between characters and involves over the shoulder shots. We used this in our preliminary task between the teacher and student

talking. When filming this, we began by filming all of the teacher’s lines first, over the shoulder of the student and then we moved the camera

and filmed all of the student’s lines, over the shoulder of the teacher. We did this so that the camera was in the same position throughout their

conversation. However we now know that it would have been better to film the lines as more of a conversation, alternating between the two

characters instead of filming all of their lines in two separate pieces. To ensure that the camera stayed in the same place, we could have used

two camera’s and set one up with an over the shoulder shot of the student looking at the teacher and vice-versa and clicked record at the same to make it a more natural looking conversation and improved the

continuity of it.

In conclusion I have learnt a lot between filming for our preliminary task and creating our final product. For example, I have learnt how to improve mise-en-scene. Our preliminary task was supposed to be set

in a school, so it didn’t matter if school related things were on the walls or not. For our final product we had to film in school as well,

however this had to appear to look like government offices so we had to make sure we removed anything school related from the walls and

make sure they were out of the shot. I have also learnt the importance of continuity techniques, in particularly the Match on Action shots, and that it is better to too much footage than not

enough. It is easier to edit Match on Action shots using more footage as you have more options and are then able to pick the bits that fit/flow best and can crop then down as much as you need to.