Continuity Task Evaluation - A Day in the Life of Craig

We have now fully edited our short movie with all the continuity elements present. We would have finished the project earlier if it wasn't for the computer crashing and not saving our work completely but we managed to get it back up to scratch. Overall, the movie was of a much higher standard then our last one as we planned the scenes out a lot more by using storyboards to make sure we have all the scenes we need whilst taking more then one take of each scene so we can choose the best one or mix and match the best elements of each. Also we took the improvements given during our verbal feedback to include more varities of shots to help improve the overall quality of the movie and create a specific tone or atmosphere based on the present scene like the point of view/close up of Craig as he lunges at the camera, creating a much more frieghtening feeling then if we used a long shot for instance.

However, while the movie maybe an improvement in some areas there are still major problems. The most obvious one being the quality of the footage. We underestimated how quickly it got dark and as a result, our shooting could have been seriously effected. The picture below shows the extent of the effect the poor light had on our clips.

We did manage to improve it somewhat by using a decently lit tunnel near the arnison center which compensated for the poor lighting so we still got our clips shot on time. Another problem was the slight continuity error during the final scenes of our movie. As you can see below, Craig on the left has his hood up as he slams me against the wall but in the next shot he no longer has it up in the next screen. Unfortunatly we didnt notice during filming and couldn't fix it during editing so this is something we will make sure to look out for in our final project as this could seriously affect our mark.

Another slight problem was during our reverse shots between me and Peter. We wanted to do something different from the usual shot/reverse shot by doing a phone conversation to help bulid tension as Craig stalkes Peter on his end of the call. While we got the dialouge right and the quality was good, we notcied that we were both facing the same way not like reverse shots are meant to be. It was easily fixed though by adding a horizontal flip effect to the clip which reversed my parts of dialouge so I was now facing to the right of the screen while Peter was to the left.

In all, our project was an improvement over our previous one with more varied types of shot and flows a lot more smoothly in terms of narrative unlike the types of shot video. We completed each one of the continuity takes, reverse shot, action match and the 180 rule. The reverse shot was mine and Peter's conversation over the phone and the action match was done twice when I closed the door and when Craig threw me against the wall. The 180 rule was done when Craig walked behind Peter as we kept on the left side of him and made sure not to cross to the right hand side otherwise the rule would be broken. In general, the video is a much needed improvement to help achieve the high levels but there are still a few bugs and careless mistakes that could be easily removed and not hinder our mark.

Continuity Task - First Shooting day

Last night, me and my group went out to film some of the shots we needed for our project. We made good progress with the amount of shots we completed and managed to get different scenarios of each scene so we can have a lot more room to choose and craft the project the way we want to. However, we did experience some problems whilst filming. We underestimated how quickly it got dark and during filming, the quality degraded past the point of recognition so we had to find some area with better lighting. In the end, we did find a suitable spot and shot the scenes we needed. So in today's lesson, we are currently looking through each shot to see if the quality is up to scratch.

The Prisoner Final Cut

Here is our video which was made by the group and consisted of me, Craig Mullen and Peter Chivers. Throughout the production, we encountered a few problems. Some shots were missing which were so simple like actors entering the room or establishing shots which lack certain continuity elements (one including with me with my hands in my pockets but a second later I didn't). We also picked up a lot of diegetic noise when filming certain scenes s we had to think up a work around which we did by playing some music over the top. It in fact added a much better atmosphere to our film, creating a somewhat creepy and fearful tone as the character who is the integrator walks towards an apparently abandoned area which contains the prisoner. Also, our interrogation scene was nicely filmed by Peter which gave a very good atmosphere with the low angle, focusing on the prisoner while Number Two is in the background who is much higher to show the difference in power between the two. So overall, we did a decent job at filming our scene but simple problems like missing shots and less planning brought it down. It does however, show us what we need to improve on for our next project and make it much better then our last.

The Prisoner - Editing Process

We started editing our shots and sorting them into order of how we wanted our film to go but now we can see the various problems arise. Some simple shots are missing which have dramatically effected our editing but we are finding ways to reduce the negative effect its having on the project and some major continuity errors are popping up during cuts which are harder to fix without basically reshooting certain scenes. Still, you can't get it perfect everytime and we did give a good effort with some of our shots and acting hitting the mark. Tomorrow we will be finishing off the editing with fixing some of the problems we can and adding music to help increase the overall quality of the final movie.

Movie Progress

So far, we have taking every shot we needed for our movie extract and sorted through the ones we are using last lesson. In the editing process, we are focusing on getting all the scenes we needed cut to the desired length and will do the music and effects later on.

AS Media Video - Camera Movement Shots

Here is the video displaying all the various camera movement shots that were editied and taken by Craig Mullen, Peter Chivers and I, using a camera with a tripod attached. Some of the edits used in this movie was freezing some shots to display the members of the group and speeding up some of the slower shots that were taken.

AS Media Video - Types of Shot

Here is the video of shots made and taken by Craig Mullen, Peter Chivers and James Corker.