Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

"Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action,shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule." OCR Specification

This preliminary task allowed me to start out with filming methods. In fact, I have been acting in this product but since it was a team work, everyone could give ideas on how demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. We used a tripod all the time, the camera was never 


Match on action, as I talked about it in my previous article "Preliminary task", has been improved when we shot me entering the room from two different camera angles. 

There is not too much match on action in my final product since I wanted to give this impression of incertitude, vague memories, so by definition something discontinuous. The only scene where I abided by the match on action was when the characters go in the toilets: we see the feet entering the room and then the hand locking the door.

The 180-degree rule and shot/reverse shot taught me a particular filming method. We shot first one character saying all his lines, without moving the camera. Then we followed the same drill for the second character. Editing finished the job through putting one sequence after another. 

Editing has been a big part of my learning: I had first of all to become familiar with iMovie. I used to edit videos on Windows Movie Maker previously. I learned the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound, some knowledge about camera angle.

One of our biggest issue has been the mise-en-scene. In fact, our director has been directing Evil Dolls' mise-en-scene with our participation. We had to conform to the actual 'mise-en-scene', which was the office of our vice principal. We changed some things in the set, eventhough we could not transform entirely the room. 

I learnt then that every mise-en-scene has its limits. If we had had some more possibilities for the set, in other words if we had the funding and the time, we would have added some particular items that determine the genre, like for instance a gun on a table. The costumes as well do not match the genre of the film! It was supposed to be a kind of film noir and we do not really look like it...

I also learnt that the director has to consider the actors' availabilities, if they can manage to be present for the shooting or not.

In order to shoot in our vice principal's office, we had to ask for the authorisation. She gave us some advices and asked us not to change too many aspects of her office as well !

I used all this knowledge in the construction of my media product.

Actors' availability, time, funding, mise-en-scene, set, costumes, authorisation of shooting in public places...

Credits:

www.youtube.com

www.ocr.org.uk