Dominic Media blog: September 2013

In this report, I am going to be talking about the short film that we recently produced to show off our media skills. For this preliminary task, our brief was to make a short film, at least 30 seconds long, in which a person must walk through a door, cross a room and exchange a few lines of dialogue with another character, but the rest was up to us.

In our group of 4, which included myself, Sophie C, Shannon H and Lester L, we quickly decided that we were going to create a film that was both adventurous and comical that would show off the range of camera skills that we have recently learnt. Our final plan for our film came in the form of a storyboard which we all contributed to. The idea was that we create a film about a boy who gets summoned by a Guru thousands of miles away. The boy then runs all the way to the Guru to carry out his wishes, only to be told that all the Guru wants is a pizza. We all really liked this idea because of the way it covered both the adventure and comedy genres, we also believed that we could show a lot of technical skills with the camera while creating this film.

During our film, we were also instructed to include the following 3 shots:

Eyeline Match - When the character looks at something that is out of view from the camera, and then the camera shows what it is that the character is looking at.

Shot/Reverse Shot - Usually used during a conversation, the camera switches from one character to the next and back again.

Match on Action - When the action from one clip is carried through to the next so that it looks as though it was shot in one continuous clip.

During this film process, I developed the dialogue, and acted in the clip. I really enjoyed this because I was able to use my acting skill, and be a part of the short clip. I also enjoyed developing the dialogue between the two characters in the clip; this allowed me to get a view of what each character was saying before it was acted out. Actually being a part of it and doing the dialogue allowed me to think of what stuff could have been improved during the clips before we filmed it. And by doing the dialogue also allowed me to suggest some camera angles that we could have used during the clip, and think more about the 180 degree rule, which was used during the dialogue scene.

After we had finished filming, it was time to edit the individual clips together. We did this by uploading the clips onto iMovie in the Apple Mac suite. Once uploaded, we were able to put the clips into the right order so that they made sense. We were also able to trim the clips so that they ran fluidly from one to the other without jumping - this is where we were able to make the edits necessary to complete the "Match on Action" shot listed in our criteria.

Once all of the clips were trimmed and in chronological order, we muted the sound on all of the clips that did not include dialogue. This was so that there was no unnecessary background noise in our final film, e.g., wind, footsteps and camera noises.

We then decided that we were going to add some sound effects and music to our film, to make it more dramatic. We did this using the sounds and music available in the iMovies library so that we were not subject to any copyright laws.

We decided to use dramatic music because it built up the idea of the film being an adventure film, which also made it very funny once you realise that the main character had run all that way for nothing. This also makes the viewer feel sympathy for the main character, as they watch him run for so long only for him to be let down at the end.

Once we had finished editing the main film, we decided to add a small funny clip of a boy dancing to the end. This was because we wanted to include a clip that we could scroll credits over, which was also funny (to keep with the comedy theme). We then uploaded our finished film onto YouTube. I think we all made equal contributions to the editing, we all listened to what the other fellow group members had to say, and we were all involved in the final decision making, when we had to finish the editing.

For this preliminary task, I have learnt the importance of having a clear plan, so you know what you are doing before the filming starts. One good thing was we prepared well with already having already agreed on a rough idea before we began planning the storyboard. As planning went on we made other adjustments to ensure that everyone was happy with their role, and so it made more sense to the viewers. I think one thing to improve on would be time management. We planned well in the time given, but when it came to filming we lost track of time, and took longer than the given time. As well as the editing, it took longer than expected. One thing to improve on for future filming would be to prepare before we film to ensure we use the given time wisely, and the same with the editing.