For our media preliminary task my group and I had to film and edit a conversation between two people. In order to undertake this, we felt we had to make a plan, a sort of structure so we know what each individual shot will include. Our initial planning involved the combination of three main features; 180° rule, match on action, and shot-reverse-shot. We thought that this would be easy to do due to the fact we had experience with these shots on similar tasks.
After planning the various things which will take place in the individual shots, we thought it would be necessary to practice our camera skills in a reserved lesson time. Doing this showed us how to work the cameras in a more effective manner. This also proved to provide useful knowledge for tasks which we will later have to complete, telling us that when filming it would probably be best to use a tripod for shots, or even a dolly for moving shots. Furthermore, my tripod usage has also improved. I can now judge how high or low to have a tripod (if necessary) in order to have the best perspective in a shot. This proves useful in filming and saves time.
Our next task was to find the ideal class room, with the correct layout which is most fitting to the plan we originally made. After looking at various media classrooms we found the right layout. It allowed us to have a person entering the room and a close up of the other person in the same shot, without having to drastically move the camera.
After doing this it was time to edit our individual shots so they fitted together to produce one whole continuous sequence. In order to this we had to have good transitions between them and had to make sure that the lighting and darkness in each of the shots were the same. By doing this it will make our clip more consistent.
If I was to undertake this task again, I will try to focus on the conversation more in depth. The individual pieces of dialogue a character uses has proved to be significant when watching the sequence as a whole and I will undoubtedly look at this more closely on future tasks.
