Prelim Task Part 1

At the beginning of the lesson, we were put into groups of four and assigned a filming space. I was put in a group with Harry Gale, Daisy Jelley and Harriet Goodall and we filmed our prelim project in the filming studio. We were given a camera, a tripod, a storyboard and one hour to film a scene between two people, ‘A’ and ‘B’ where ‘A’ is demanding ‘B’ to do something. The first thing we did was give our actresses copies of the script which they had to learn very quickly. As soon as we could be set up our camera and tripod for our first shot, the wide shot. Before filming however, we did a few run throughs of the dialogue and made sure that we put markers on the floor of the set to ensure that

our actresses stand in the same places in each shot for continuity and to make sure they'll be where we want them to be in the frame of each different angle we did. The last thing we did before rolling was focus the camera by zooming in, focusing and then zooming out. Before every shot we made sure we utilised the ‘standby’, ‘roll camera’, ‘camera rolling’, ‘action’ and ‘cut’ rules that we learnt in our camera workshops. This helped everyone get focused before and made sure we got every shot we needed efficiently as well as making sure we got everything we wanted out of the shots by not starting the scene too early and missing out dialogue and cutting too early. We filmed for just under an hour and experimented with a variety of shots such as wide angles, over the shoulder shots, two shots, close ups, extreme close ups and high angles, doing as many shots as we could would allow us more flexibility when editing and would allow us to experiment with a range of shots not just the ones required.

I think the main problem we had was at the beginning with focusing the camera. We ran

the scene a couple of times before filming so that we knew where to put our markers as well as to allow the actresses to practise. However, the girl playing ‘A’ kept walking to different places making it hard to decide where to put the marker. Eventually we decided the best place to mark her so that she was well lit and focused before filming.

If I was able to do the task again, I would have wanted to spend more time on the shots that weren't required, the more experimental shots like the high angle. We wanted person ‘A’ to seem inferior to ‘B’ by using a high angle but because we didn't have a lot of time we were limited. I would have also liked to have given the actresses their scripts earlier to allow them to learn their lines quicker and under less pressure because of the time restraint. One of our actresses struggled so we ended up writing her lines on a piece of paper and hanging on the wall above ‘B’s’ head. This was a slight issue because it would mean that in some of the shots, you could see her eyes flocking from the script back to the actress which was very unnatural. However, the close ups were the last shots that we did and were the shots where this would have caused a problem but because we

did them last, our actress had managed to learn her lines so she didn't need the script anymore. Overall, I think the shoot went well, we set the camera up correctly and made sure we were happy with the brightness and other settings on the camera so that in post-production we wouldn't have to edit it.

When it comes to filming our thriller, I will definitely make sure that the actors get given their scripts before the filming to make it seem as naturalistic as possible. I would also consider the location more as the location that we had for filming this short scene was fine but it may not be suitable for other narratives.