Continuity Task

At the beginning of the year when we were first getting to grips with the course we were set to do a continuity task with the briefing;

Filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whoem she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180/degree rule.


Evaluation:


We first came together as a group to decide where we wanted to go with our continuity task and it was pretty unanimous that we wanted the back story to this task to base itself around death and romance. This helped us create the script that was used within the piece, which can be seen on Ellen's Blog[click here]. There is also a series of shots that Jessie took in preparation for our continuity task which can be seen [here]. As you can see the main aim was sticking to the 180-degree rule which we achieved as there are no points within the short film that positioning of characters swaps around or flips because we crossed the line within the rule with the camera. The second aim was to feature match on action which again we achieved as you can see at the beginning where our first female walks through the door and although it is interrupted by a reaction shot of our second female, she is then shot coming through the same door following on from the action of her hand twisting the handle. The third aim was to feature shot-reverse-shot which can be seen when our first female looks down at our second female and the camera then represents her eyes looking the second female up and down starting from what she first looked at - her feet.

As I hadn't previously studied GCSE Media or used a video camera I wanted this to be a learning curve for me so we expanded our task beyond the original brief in a way that also helped us understand the genre of film noir also. We featured other camera techniques within our continuity task such as tracking when the camera is behind me and the first female walking down the corridor which intrigues the audience immediately as their view is forced in the position of following the characters. My previous studying of drama helped me in bringing angle ideas within the piece and towards the end when the camera is looking very dramatically up at the first female who has just murdered the male, it was my idea to show her in a very strong position and because the audience are looking up towards her she is immediately in a position which has much more status. Composition was also something we looked at with framing from the hole in the wall giving the effect as though the audience begin as outsiders in the situation and eventually follow the characters into what is really going on. Where my face falls into the frame after being killed has a dramatic effect as it interrupts the empty view and forces the audience to look into my dead eyes making them connect with what has just happened. Editing is obviously another aspect we wanted to experiment with and although it was very basic to add the letterbox effect and contrasting black and whites we went a step further and chopped the final clip of the female leaving the room into different pieces and faded them into each other discarding the bits of film where she disappears. It gave her a very sinister feel about her as if she strolled out of the room achieving what she wanted to do, we put it into slow motion as well which signifies the importance of this bit allowing the audience to really take it in.