Evaluation of Continuity exercise

In my continuity editing piece i had to include:

the 180 degree rule

the rule of thirds

Match on action

Shot reverse shot

I used the 180 degree rule throughout the piece so the shots would be consistent and from the same point of view every time a scene is shot. I used the 180 degree throughout my piece. One of the main shots that i used where you could clearly see this, was when the two Hench men were pushing him down the corridor and into the room. When he pushes down on the door handle i made sure that the handle was seen on the correct side for the audience so that it wouldn't confuse them.

I used match on action in my piece to make the piece flow. I did the shot where Gurtej opens the door and the shot continues to when he pushes the door open and they all enter the room. This shot shows a continuous flow between the two shots, we had to make it accurate so that the first shot of him opening the door was at the exact same position as it was when the door was flung open.

I

 used a shot reverse shot in the conversation between the two characters. This shot had to go from one shot of one character to the shot of the character that he is talking to back to the exact same shot that was used before. In my scene i used the shot reverse shot in the conversation; I had a shot of the "boss" which went to a close up of the other character and back to the same shot that was used previously.

I had to make sure that throughout my piece I used the rule of thirds. This meant that the eyes had to be a third of the way down the shot and i had to make this consistent so the eye line is at the same level for every character that was in the scene. Even if i used a long shot the eyes had to be at the same level as it would look better to the person that is watching it if the eyes were in line the whole time.

When filming this i found something’s quite challenging. Some of the shots that we had planned to shoot in the pre-production stage we were unable to use as they didn't fit correctly or they was just too difficult to get right. I think that some of the shots were quite vague even though we used a variety of different shot types, as some didn't really turn out how we expected them to. The location that we used in our production was meant to be a dark room, we had a problem with that as at the time we filmed it was still light outside and that there were no blinds on the windows so light still got through. We wanted the room to be dark so it was more mysterious for the audience and it would have fitted our storyline better. If we got too shoot it all again, i would have made sure that the windows were covered or that we shot more in the evening so that the light wasn't as bright as it was and we could create a good eerie atmosphere.

When i came round to edit my piece i also had some issues. Some of the shots that we had previously filmed didn't really fit in with what we was trying to show, this meant that the continuity of my piece was not as precise as it could have been. I found it quite difficult to make the editing exact, for example if a shot was too long i would either crop it too much or not enough so there was always a space before or after the shot which made it less flowing. Some shots had dialogue missing so i had to edit the audio onto another shot to make more sense for the audience. If i got the chance to edit my piece again i would have maybe re done some shots so that the editing process was easier for me or i would have taken more time to make the editing more precise and so that my sound effects or dialogue matched with the shots.

The strength of my piece was that we used a lot of creativity. In the brief we was told what we had to do, as a group we developed this by creating a better storyline behind it. Instead of them walking into a room, sitting down and conversing with the other character we made the characters more specific and gave them a more interesting role to play. When we was planning our scene we created a storyboard, this helped us to plan what shots we were going to film, the edit, the location, the dialogue, the lighting, props and any background sounds. By doing this it helped us go into production with an idea of what we wanted to do, if we didn't plan this we would have been a bit lost and i don't think it would have been good. As we had to use new technology such as I movie on the mac's we had to learn from scratch. I think using a HD camera was much better as the shots were clearer, and more defined which makes it better for the audience. When i came to do my editing i found the software quite difficult at first, but then realised that it was making my work look alot better as i could try and make it as precise as possible with the new trimmer on I movie.

The weaknesses of my piece were that the location that we had planned to use wasn't as suitable as we had hoped. We wanted to location to be dark so we could create a scary atmosphere for the audience. As there wasn't blinds in the room and it was still light outside we couldn't create that atmosphere that we wanted to which may have confused the audience. I think we made our piece creative but at the same time we had our downfalls as we couldn't shoot all the shots that we wanted to in our pre-production stage. By having to alter shots so they would work made our actual scenario for the brief not as successfully as we had hoped. By having to use new software on the macs, it took me longer to get used to how to use different effects, trimming clips, adding in audio and adding in graphics. In my editing i think some of the shots weren’t as clear as i had hoped them to turn out. If i could have had the chance to spend more time on some of my editing i could have made it more precise or even selected a better order for the shots.

If i had the chance to do this again I would have re shot some of the shots that i had put in my final piece, which would have made it look more flowing and continuous. Some of the shots also had some mistakes where the characters weren’t in the same position as they were in the previous shot so it didn’t match as well as it could have. I also think next time i would have picked a more suitable location due to the lighting not being correct and how we wanted it or we could have filmed it more into the evening instead of after school. I think if we did this we could have built the atmosphere more and so the audience could have a better understanding for what the back story was.