Edit Workshop-Evaluation

180 Degree Rule

For the 180 degree rule I made sure to not cross the imaginary line running through the middle of the shot and keep all shots on one side of it. This meant all the shots had to be only on one side for example if we wanted to use 2 different 2 shots we had to make sure they were on both sides. If you cross the 180 degree rule it will confuse the audience as on the screen it will look like the 2 characters swapped positions. In my film the way we used the 180 degree rule was that we made sure to keep the camera on only one side of the table and only place the camera on the places allowed on the imaginary semicircle created.

Rule Of Thirds

In my film we used the rule of thirds to keep the audience engaged with the film as the eyes are a point of interest in a shot.

Match On Action

Match on action is an editing technique used to allow a scene to flow as the shots appear to carry on directly after the previous one has finished, in my film I used match on action to show a character opening and walking through a door. In the first shot we can see the character partially open the door and in the next shot we can see him carry on opening the door from that same position.

Challenges Faced During Production

During production the challenges we faced was that the room we wanted to use for filming sometimes had other people in there as it is used for conferences so some days we could not film using that room. Next time i would make sure we would use a room that wasn't used as frequently so we would have more time to film. Another challenge we faced was that for a large amount of the filming we only had 2 of the 3 people in our group as the third member had to go home for personal reasons. This made particular shots harder to film like tracking or panning shots as a result of this one shot which wanted to be a pan we had to make a still shot we can see it here.

 If we were to film again we would choose to film on days which suited the group best. In our storyboard we used a hammer to try and intimidate the hostage but when we actually filmed we did not have access to a hammer so we had to adjust the storyboard and instead try to make it so that the antagonist would intimidate him with threats, if i was to do this project again i would make it so that we could actually meet our idea.

As we can see in this picture of our storyboard a hammer is used to get the information out of the hostage but in the actual film we used no such hammer. This happened because I had not planned effectively and should have realized the limits of the project when planning.

Challenges Faced During Post-Production

During post production a challenge i faced was that the shots had very little continuity with each other and i felt didn't flow together as a film should if i were to edit again i would make sure the shots had better continuity. Another problem i faced was that we couldn't find any time to re-film as Charlie had an art deadline to meet and the one day he had time to film i forgot to bring the suit, so we couldn't re film. This meant i had to do whatever i could do in editing to try and make it flow better, thankfully we didn't break the 180 degree rule so the need to re-film was minimal.

Overall Strengths

The strengths of my piece were that we followed all rule of thirds and the 180 degree rule and we have good examples of match on action and shot reverse shot. I feel our idea was quite creative as we did something original with the brief given to us.

Overall Weaknesses

The weaknesses of my piece are that there is not much continuity between the shots as you can see the character jump from one area of the room to another with no shot showing him move there, the same works for body positions one shot he would be standing to the left the next he would be facing forward. Another weakness was that the lighting was not how i wanted it as the lights for the room we use were automatic meaning that you couldn't turn them off with a switch. When i had originally planned this film i wanted to use low key lighting to let the audience know that this film had a darker tone unfortunately because of the lighting in the room i was not able to do this.

In the first screen shot from the film The Godfather we can see they have used low key lighting effectively which establishes the tone of the film, from the screen shot we can see of my film we have not used low key lighting and used natural lighting, this gives a lighter tone than I hoped it would have been.

The acting in the film was another weakness but as we don't get graded on our acting so I'm not that worried.

I feel that i did not use the digital technology we had available to its full potential as I could have used iMovie more effectively for example because i would have preferred to have low key lighting i could have used iMovie to chance this but since i didn't have the  knowledge of how to do this i was unable to change it

Overall Improvements 

The overall improvements i would like to make to my work if i got to do it again would be to use better actors as even though our piece is not graded on the quality of acting, poor acting can take away from the overall quality leaving us with lower marks. As we can see in the screen shot I'm meant to look threatening, this does not happen and this actually takes away from the suspense created by the piece.

Another improvement i would make is to make sure that the film runs more smoothly as the final version you can see that the character jumps from certain positions to another this was because when we were filming we didn't film it in chronological order because the room we used was full of chairs and tables and to have the camera at a certain position required us moving all the tables and chairs so we instead just filmed all the shots that was going to be from one position together and then when we moved the camera we filmed all the shots that were going to be in that shot and so on. An example of this which you can see in my film is we see the character stand up and is still in mid movement when the shot is finished but in the next shot he is standing still and facing a different way.