The Preliminary Exercise

From this image to the next, it presents our use of match on action, which was one of the necessary criteria needed to be shown in the preliminary exercise. To do this we filmed Celine walking down the corridor and then into the tv studio. Then we fimed from the inside the tv studio, Celine looking and then walking through the door.

We were very careful here not to break the 180 degree rule. We had done it earlier, and found out only later when we were looking over our work on the camera. In the first shot you can see that we only let celine come up to a certain point, not letting her to start walking in another angle, because in the second shot, we have a long shot of Celine walking towards the table from a completely different angle and so if we had let her to start walking towards the table then it would have broken the 180 degree rule.

These are two over the shoulder shots which are examples from our shot-reverse-shot sequence. This was also one of the techniques we needed to use in order to complete the criteria for the preliminary exercise. Our method of doing this was to start the conversation over one persons shoulder then when we need to change over we cut and moved the camera. This worked well, however we could have filmed the whole conversation over one persons shoulder, then do it all over again over the other person. Then we would have edited it all out. What made this shot slightly different to our other shots was that the camera was at a lower angle, this was mainly to make the over the shoulder shots to really work.

THis is an example of a wide two-shot. By including this different shot it shows that our group tried to do a variety of shots and how successfully we can handle the camera because they came out well.

3.1 What I learnt by doing the preliminary exercise.

During the filming process, as someone who as never had any experience with media, I found it very beneficial. Through the preliminary exercise I am now confident with setting up the camera, filming and editing.


As part of my job, of being in charge of sound and props I made sure that everyone came in with the right costumes and brought in any extra things that may have been needed for the film. For example we had to bring in some pills and open them to create something, that on camera would appear as cocaine. Also I learn that it is crucial that any background noise can be easily picked up by the camera so I had to make sure that there would be nobody around and that anyone not acting had to be silent.


After a quick tutorial, I was able to help the group set up the camera successfully and use it appropriately. For different shots we had to put the camera at different levels and arrange it in a in a certain frame. After our first session of filming, we looked over what we had and realised that we had missed out on a lot of the things we need to include in our preliminary exercise. We had broken the 180 degree rule and had missed out the shot-reverse-shot that was necessary. So we booked another slot to re-film everything. However, although the camera was obviously recording, we couldn't find our filming on the tape later on and so yet again we had to film everything from the beginning. By this time, as a group we were a lot more confident in what we were doing, so everything was done quicker and more efficiently. With shot-reverse-shot we had to keep on cutting and moving the camera so it faced a different direction which sometimes could be tricky to get just right.


As nobody from our group had ever done media before, it took a little longer for  us to do the editing process. Uploading our clips onto the mac wasn't extremely difficult, however when it got to the cutting and selecting part, in Final Cut Pro, it got a little more tricky and took a little longer for us to get the hang of. The cuts were pretty simple though we just had to cut the bad parts out and put the scenes in order, then making the title and credits were simple enough.

Overall, I am personally glad that we had to do this preliminary exercise as it gave me the chance to learn a few basics and the whole process has made me more confident with the camera, filming and editing process.