Preliminary task - Miss Miller

For my preliminary task I was in a group of me, Amy Sowerby and Alfie Harris,  the point of the preliminary task was to get used to the camera equipment, etc, it was also used to practice certain camera angles and see how they look, it was also to help me and Alfie get comfortable in front of the camera in preparation of the opening sequence. We had to film a conversation for thirty seconds to one minute, the point of the task is that we had to make sure we got certain shots in from a checklist made by miss miller, we had to edit out certain parts of the film to make it seem like one running sequence and not a number of different scenes, for example we had to edit the phone ringing so that it would sound like one constant ring and not two separate ones,  also we had to cut out certain parts where someone was walking to make it seem like they was walking from the same position, I think my group done this effectively.

The shots we had to do were panning, shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, close up and long shot, all of these are likely to be used in our opening sequence, I think our group used shots well and completed the task as we used all of the camera shots stated before, we achieved this by doing a lot of different scenes and seeing what worked best, we decided this after and I believe we used the camera shots effectively. It was difficult to think of a narrative in the short time given, we had to make up a story on the spot and I believe the narrative was slightly confusing and irrelevant. We should pre-plan the narrative and make sure the story is easy to follow and makes sense, the fact that we have been allowed to get used to, this will allow us to have a better quality film, also we have got used to acting infront of the camera under pressure as we had to make up the narrative as we had not pre planned it. I feel that if we had been able to use more relevant iconography or make the storyline relevant to a thriller it would have helped us produce a better opening sequence. Watching the footage back allowed us to see how we unconsciously acted in front of the camera, for example, we, unknowingly, kept looking at the camera at the beginning of the scene, we should not do this in our opening sequence as it is unprofessional as it makes it feel less realistic, the audience should feel like we don't know the camera is there.

This task was extremely useful to our group as we were unsure on how to move the camera and what shots are effective for certain part of the sequence, we have also learnt from our mistakes on how to focus the camera, before, we did not realise we had to do this but after seeing our live conversation we realised the video was very blurry and poor quality, we have found out how to refocus a camera now and this will be incredible useful to produce a good quality opening sequence. We need to make sure we use the shots as effectively in our opening sequence as we did in the small conversation, this is one thing we done very well, we need to make sure we don't look at the camera, refocus the camera before filming, pre plan the narrative and use sounds/props to create suspense, shock, surprise and enigma.