4&5. Preliminary Task & Evaluation - Continuity Editing (James O'Rourke)

Preliminary Task - Continuity Editing (James O'Rourke 6124)

Original Video 'Stalker Boy' 

Brief 

We were tasked to produce a short film that showed specific skills and actions. We were informed that the film would need to show continuity editing, match on action, 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot. These were included in our short film.

Match on Action 

This is where one shot seemlessly cuts to another. Here we can see the character walk through the door and then the camera cuts to the inside where we see the character walk through the door on the other side.

180 degree  rule

The 180 degree rule is where the camera stays on one side of a conversation so it wouldn't interupt the flow of the conversation and also wouldn't confuse the audience as the characters don't change sides. We used the 180 degree rule with shot reverse shot. Shot reverse shot is when the camera switches between two characters while they are in conversation with each other.

This is an example of shot-reverse shot which we used within this task.

Pre-Production 

Due to the fact that we had such a small amount of time for this task we had very limited planning and the Pre-Production was very quick and rushed.

Storyboard

Due to the short time frame we were unable to create a storyboard for our preliminary task so we decided on an idea and put it together before we started shooting the task for real.

An example would be like this:

Story

Initially we decided to do a horror, psychological narrative but during the filming stage we found that a more romantic comedy style would work better with the footage that we had shot already. On the way back from filming we decided with the footage we had how we would edit it together to look more like a romantic comedy.

Location 

Due to the fact we were limited to our school grounds, we suggested using locations which were familiar to us so we could get the scenes shot quickly and that we prioritised finding a few locations which would be noticeably quieter. This led us to use the main strip in the car parking area and the toilets within one of our school blocks. This enabled us to adapt our script and story to the surroundings so we could get the perfect shots for shooting the footage.

Post-Production 

This consisted of using editing software (Final Cut Pro) on an IMac, where we proceeded to put together our short film using different clips that we had previously shot.