Preliminary Task - Miss Miller

Preliminary Task

Introduction 

The members in my group that I created the preliminary task with are Miranda Simpson and Chloe Eustace . The purpose of the preliminary task was to become familiar with equipment such as the camera we will be using and how we are meant to use it appropriately, we carried out this preliminary task so that we would have had some practise for when we are ready to film our thriller opening sequence . Additionally carrying out this preliminary task has also enables our group to get to grips with various camera angles and practise them and decide which we believe will be the most effective if used in our opening sequence and and the ones that we prefer the most we can consider using. We had to film a small 30 second scene about anything as long as it allowed us to use the camera techniques and shots to practise them as we might use them in our opening sequence. We had to quickly edit the sequence together in order to see how they were shot and for them to give the best effect. It also gave us the opportunity to get to learn some of the simple editing techniques such as cutting parts out.

Camera and Camera Shots

 We used different camera techniques during our preliminary, these included a two shot where our group had to make sure that there were two people in the shot and in the camera's focus at the same time. We managed to do this however a two shot generally includes  two people in the camera focus from the waist up and ours was more like a close up on the two people's faces. We also used the zoom, this is for zooming in on faces or and objects. Our small 30 second sequence consisted of two people having a conversation.  We also used a panning shot which we used when one of us in the scene walked into the room this we felt this technique was quite effective as the camera followed the person. When we were filming we managed to work the camera and had it set up functioning properly. Therefore we achieved all the shots needed for our preliminary. Something that we as a group felt that we need to work on is timing because when we filmed there were times when we hadn't discussed when the next person would move into the scene and we would forget to pause in some places which is why when we went back through it there was a lot of shots we didn't even need so we had to cut a lot out. There was also times during filming when we would not have ended the conversation properly and would have jumped to the next part of the scene, this is something that we need to practise and make sure is up to scratch before we start filming our thriller opening sequence. Watching the footage back has helped us to see what mistakes we made as we got to see exactly what bits we had missed out or what things we need to make sure are in our final opening sequence. Before we film our final sequence I think that we need to make sure we know exactly what we want to achieve and how we are going to achieve it. 

Conclusion

From this preliminary task my group and I have learned that we need to make decisions on things a  before we jump into them, for example; the story line and how we are going to make sure that we generate  the effects that we need in order to produce and make the opening sequence to our thriller film. This task has helped me prepare for filming the opening sequence to our thriller film because it has allowed us to gain some experience with using the camera including experimenting with various angles.