Preliminary Task

Yesterday we shot our preliminary task, the whole class took part in it and we were in groups of 4. A script was given to us which was fairly simple, although for some reason we kept forgetting it and then we put our own meaning to the task. We all used the camera as there were different angles to shoot from so even if you were acting you could still get a feel for the camera when using it. Myself and Harry, another student in my class volunteered to act. It was quite comical as he is a brilliant drama scholar and acted great and I can't act to save my life so the contrast already had a comical feel. Kate and Arabella were behind the camera a lot of the time placing us in the correct position and moving the camera to where it was supposed to be.

There were several shots that needed to be taken which were: one wide - we shot this multiple times so we could perfect it as much as we could. This also saves us if any editing goes wrong we can always go back to the wide shot as it captures everything. Then close ups of each character to emphasise their facial expressions but also including the setting behind. The close ups were filmed by Harry or I filmed him. Another shot we did was over the shoulder, this gives a more interesting perspective because you can potentially see what the character who's shoulder we are looking over, is looking at.

Our group was situated in the classroom, we had to talk together to come up with an idea for our shoot. In the previous lesson Matt, one of our media teachers told us that filming is "10% doing stuff and 90% communication" thus we made an extra effort to communicate with each other. We came up with the idea of not being able to reach the projector, as I am very small I obviously had to be the one who couldn't reach it. We found it very amusing as it was a small thing (turning on the projector) and having such pressure to do!

We started off filming the wide shot with the whole scene, we did this numerous times as we needed time to correct it and also we had to get into the flow of things as it was only our second time using the cameras. Kate was the director for this scene, and Arabella was the camera man. They communicated before shooting with the "stand by", "role camera", "action". After filming the wide shot we did close ups. The camera didn't need to be moved which was a lot easier and by doing this, in the real film world it would save a lot of vital money. Finally we took the over the shoulder shots which we did have to move the camera.

Our group all worked well together and I feel we worked very independently and fairly professionally. It was a good start to my filming experience.