Preliminary film- Evaluation

The purpose of this preliminary task is to understand and become familiar with continuity editing and to successfully use it in creating a short production. While also learning how to use and film shots correctly in a scene, these include match on action (which we used in our production where the character enters a room) and the 180 degree rule which we clearly abided by throughout the sequence, to not confuse the audience.

We faced many difficulties when producing our short film, our main problem was in the editing were the footage was not continuous, demonstrated when the character had there hood down in one scene and up in the next, disrupting the flow and possibly confusing the audience. We also struggled to match up the shot correctly as they had been filmed multiple times and in alternative ways, this therefore made it more challenging to order the scenes correctly. Furthermore, we found the editing programme limited what we could do with the clips as it was too advanced, therefore we were unable to achieve what we wanted, for example changing the footage into black and white to create a sad and atmospheric mood. Following on from this, due to the advanced programme we found the audio very hard to make flow when fading out the non-diegetic music and introducing the dialogue from the character, disrupting the continuity.

To plan out the shots we created a storyboard before we began shooting to clearly structure our ideas and make sure we all knew what to be filming, rather than wasting time aimlessly filming irrelevant clips. However, when filming the storyboarded shots were not always kept too and things were adapted for convenience. We also took the shots several times, for example the POV shot down the corridor, to ensure that when it came to the editing there was plenty of different shots to chose the best and most fitting in the scene to improve continuity.

When shooting and editing this preliminary film I learnt many things to help improve my production next time. One of which was to check that all the shots are accurate and there is nothing obviously out of place, before editing to save time trying to make the images connect through the editing. I also discovered that it is important to have invisible editing, meaning there are no harsh or obvious scene changes which the audience may become aware of. To achieve this is would cut out any pauses at the beginning of scenes, where the actors begin a new action, which may disrupt the flow.