Prelim Task

The prelim task was a short scene in which was given to us to film. In this film we had Elisa and Gustavo as the actors in which they had to learn the script and maintain their characters roles. The job of the directors, this being Rory, Jake and myself was to guide the actors in where they are placed for certain shots, and to do this we used tape to mark the certain set areas for both actors to walk to and to remain in, as this was important as we had a set vision where we needed the actors to fit into the frame. This was particularly important for the 'over the shoulder' shots as we needed to rearrange them to fit in correctly in the frame and to follow the 180 degree rule. I think we were able to work well as a group towards the end as we felt more comfortable in our roles but to begin with we were confused as to which person should be in charge, which in the end we learnt that we all had to be equal partners to make this scene work. We also had to film more takes as the placement was wrong or the actors had trouble memorising their script. The important thing that we did was to always keep the camera rolling and to never look back on takes as we would be persuaded to delete and crop things which would not give us enough film to edit. 

The actors had to portray a lot of emotion as well as following directions from the director which was sometimes difficult as they wanted to really get involved in their character but our directions made it difficult to do so, which is the reason we wanted to film some scenes again. We also had to come up with some shots that we wanted to add ourselves to make the scene different and full of diversity from other groups. For our group we used close ups of Gustavo's shoes as he walks in to create a sense of ambiguity as the audience are not revealed who the character is or what he looks like, it also looked good in a frame as we captured the shadows created by his shoes and his movement giving a sense of mystery and building tension. Another shot that I wanted to film was Gustavo walking through the door as the audience would be able to see his character through different gaps of the broken door, creating suspense as the audience would not know when he would appear in the frame. An aspect that we could have improved in was that when we filmed the scene again the characters didn't always do the exact same movement or go to the same position, this is important as when we edit these shots they need to be the same so that the scene looks as if it was taken all in one shot and not over five different takes, for example small things like Elisa's position when she is sat on the sofa and when she jumps up from the sofa. This could be improved by making the tape clear and to practice the movement until it is understood and memorised.