Prelim Task - Evaluation

Firstly, my group and I spent a few minutes, listening to each others idea's. We started off talking about what our main topic of our task was going to be. I remember one of my group members coming up with an idea where one of us would be walking to a room to be then surprised for her birthday. We planned on using camera angles such as; tracking, close ups, and long shots, but we then felt that this wasn't enough. We then mind-mapped  some other shot ideas like - bird's eye view and over the shoulder. Bird's-eye view allows the audience to see that the character is vulnerable and naive because of how small the shot makes the character looks. We used these shots because we thought that it would give more of an interesting insight into what the actor was doing- rather than just watching someone walk with one, simple camera shot, as this lacks excitement. We then decided that we could make the shots even more interesting by tilting the camera angle slightly to disorientate the audience, it gives an illusion sort of affect. Before deciding this, we noted down on a story board, where, roughly we were going to walk and what angles at the different stages. 


This is helped us a lot because we actually had an idea and outline to base our task on so we didn't get lost in what we were doing. We then decided that a 'surprise' birthday conversation would be too complex for this task as it only was supposed to be a couple of minutes long so I came up with the idea of talking about what was in the news at the time - the man who drew the 9/11 picture- before it actually happened. I thought this would be appropriate to talk about as it's interesting and a very ambiguous subject. At first my group and I had difficulties on agreeing with each others ideas. but eventually after working together as a team, we decided to use my idea because of the complexity and relation to media.


When I first tried out using the camera, I felt that my accuracy was poor, as I couldn't figure out why the camera wouldn't focus when I took close ups, but this may have something to do with the camera that I used. However, I did turn the lens onto 'macro' but this only made the pictures a little more focused, not by a lot at all. I also thought I lacked accuracy as I'd never really taken photos seriously before, and I was new to these newly learnt camera shots. After taking photos in lesson, then practising at home, I began to feel more comfortable and understandable of the camera shots. I feel I do need to carry on practising as I feel my camera handling isn't as good as it should be because I think it lacks high skill. I feel I need to learn what is a brilliant shot as a comparison to a good one, so I thought maybe studying filming work in movies would be a good idea for me. After looking closer at shots in films I did notice that tilted extreme close-ups and close ups built up lots of suspense, as you can only assume what is happening by the expression on the characters face, leaving you to only imagine what was happening around them. I hope to use this shot in my thriller!


When editing, I must admit that I really did not get along with the software at all! After it failing to work over a 4 lesson period, I lost trust, and gave up. However, after watching someone use theirs that actually did work on their computer, I feel that I would be able to edit, but with guidance along the way, as I've never used editing software before. I gave idea's on what I felt some of the task should look like, although we all had the same rough idea when we were filming the task anyway. I feel I really do need to learn how the software works so I can gain skill in editing for the future.