Preliminary Exercises

Main Preliminary Exercise:

Camera Movements:

Left To Right Pan:

A left to right pan like the one above is often used for dramatic effect and helps portray unease it also builds tension because when used effectively it almost looks like a point of view shot of someone looking left to right and this usually creates a uneasy/scary atmosphere. The clip above shows Toni's laptop screen covered with confidential information and clips such as surveillance cameras and password crackers, we could use this in our film opening to show the technicality of the software that Toni uses which would make him look very experienced.

Shot Types:

Close Up:

A close up or an extreme close up is often used to show people's emotions or feelings towards a person and/or situation. In the clip above the use of close up is slightly different as it is focusing on a specific aspect of Toni's laptop, it shows the software scanning and identifying a criminal, many believe it is criminals that will be modified into AI robots in the future so this clip could be used in our film opening to show that Rick is not the only AI robot that they plan on making.

Camera Angles:

Low Angle Shot:

A low angle shot is often used to make something look larger or more grand, in the clip above it was used to make the laptop screen look more grand and the software more complex, I think the use of this low angle shot pointing at all of the different hacking and modification softwares makes them look more technical and in a way it makes the screen looked more packed as the top of the screen seems farther away than if it was filmed straight on, we could use this clip in our film opening when Toni first opens his laptop this would show that when he turns his laptop on he is straight back on from where he left off.

Editing:

Text/Titles:

I think using the title transition as shown above is effective because it shows the name of the location and the time, it is also a smooth transition that looks professional which reflects Toni's job.

My Preliminary Title Sequence:

I created a short title sequence based on a similar plot to Robotica, I wanted to show slight differentiation from our film opening as to show my sound knowledge of the topic and how I can adapt my skills to create a different form of moving image. I put the (A) and the (I) in a red colour to show the danger that lies ahead and the differentiation from the white writing makes it obvious that this is the subject matter. I slowly followed a selection of technological items that I placed around my desk, I went round slowly with my steadiest hand as to not show shaking, I used a slightly fast paced backing track to match the tempo of the filming and I used a small title box in the bottom left to show the creators name (Richie Batey) I made the text black as it showed best against the white table.

The Task That Was Set For My First Preliminary Exercise:

A pizza delivery takes place. Person A delivers the pizza to person B.

The Shot Types And Camera Movements We Included:

•             Tracking shot of person A on the way.

•             Pan as person A enters room.

•             Over the shoulder shot to show person B greeting / talking.

•             Over the shoulder shot to show person A's response.

•             Shot reverse shot to show person B.

We Showed That We Can:

•             Use a tripod to keep shots steady (bubble the tripod).

•             Focus the camera.

•             Take care of the camera and tripod.

•             Observe the 180 degree rule.

•             Edit the sequence to make meaning clear.

My First Preliminary Exercise:

An Overview Of My First Preliminary Exercise: 

On Monday 25th September Luca, Tom, Max and I filmed a short film opening about a pizza delivery that goes wrong, we used a Cannon 550D and a manfrotto tripod, during the filming process I learnt how to bubble this and the importance of getting my shot in focus. The opening with Luca walking to the door of where myself and Tom were with his hand in a pizza box. Luca then proceeded to knock on the door and I opened it and said "Come in" and then there was a pan shot around the room and tom said "You got the stuffed crust" and Luca said "Yeah I do" in a thick Italian accent and then there was a close up of Luca revealing what was actually under the pizza box and it was a gun he then shot tom, then there was a stand off between me and Luca and he said "Put the Gun Down Rick."

We then started editing the clips we filmed in class, I started by filtering out the clips that we would not use in our opening, once I had all the clips i was going to use I put them into iMovie and cut them down to the relevant bits. Once I had my film cut down and all the clips were in the right order I proceeded to edit them.

A challenge that we faced in the filming process was that there was not enough room to do a proper establishing shot and we needed to do this because we wanted to introduce Tom as a very high ranked character and a way that we thought would do this would be by a establishing pan shot and we didn't have enough room in our first location to do this so we moved locations to the male changing rooms and then we managed to move the benched from the corner of the room to a more central location so our cameraman managed to get into the corner to film this and we managed to get the right shot.

A problem that I faced while editing my opening was in the backing track that I used there was the noise of a baby crying and it clashed with the scenes we had filmed and the backing track was perfect so instead of changing it I put in a heartbeat sound effect over the sound of the crying and this worked very well.

Something i learnt from this experience was a lot of new ways to edit before this i hadn't had much experience in editing and now after this I know a lot more and I am confident I could edit another film opening on iMovie.

Editing My First Preliminary Exercise:

We watched an editing tutorial and then started editing the footage taken on Monday.

Each individual did their own edit.

Robotica (Five Minute Version):

We also made a longer version of our film opening, with a slightly more detailed storyline, please feel free to watch it if you are interested.

(For the HD version version click here)