Single Camera Techniques: Preliminary Task

Last Tuesday, our preliminary task was set by Ms Pemberton.  It was to film:

1. A character opening a door
2. Sitting down next to/opposite another character
3. Exchange of dialogue

We needed to have a match on action, shot reverse shot and 180 degree rule edit in the film and we had to make it as interesting as possible, with as many unique and interesting angles as we could fit in.

Freds Dead from BDC on Vimeo.

I was put in a group of 3: me, Roisin and Rochelle.  We made all the necessary checks: the settings were on manual and all of the equipment was in the bag, so we headed off to film last Thursday.

We decided to film a sequence where Rochelle walks to the bathroom, the camera tracks her and she enters.  Then Roisin follows and the same camera techniques are used for Roisin.  Our filming required me to go in the girl's bathroom because I was the camera man and the setting was in the girl's bathroom.  In the story, they had an argument over mints.  Roisin, in the story, stormed out of the bathroom and Rochelle followed her, Roisin hit her and Rochelle fell down.  

We used a good variety of shots and the camera seemed to work when we filmed with it, but when I played it back over on the camera, it paused.  We tested it on the computer.  Initially, we thought that there was something wrong with the way we uploaded the footage, but on handing the camera over to the technician (Ashley) we came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with the camera.  

The next day, we filmed with a different camera and it worked well.  The story was far more interesting and light-hearted in tone than the last one was: Rochelle's fish (Fred) had died.  Roisin came over to console Rochelle, and while Rochelle was crying, Roisin called her a "bitch", so she pretends to care but deep down she doesn't care about Rochelle's dead fish.  We used a good variety of shots and adhered to all of the editing techniques that we were asked to use, but when we filmed it, there was one key shot of Roisin and Rochelle's face that I, as camera-man, missed out.  All in all though, from a visual aspect it cut in all the right places, our music undermined the sad tone of the film, which we wanted, to make it humorous and it wasn't "too OTT" as Ms Pemberton remarked when she watched ours.  

Roisin, Rochelle and I worked well as a team.  We all exerted equal amounts of effort in to the task set and agreed, took in to consideration each others' views and pulled aside our differences to make a very good preliminary piece of work.  I found out that I like working with different people and I appreciate their unique ideas  -some of which I never thought about.  Ultimately though, I feel I want to work by myself on the actual short film so that I can make my own idea reality without it being challenged by someone else.