Prelim Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluate your prelim. What could be improved? What is already good about it?

Me and my group decided that there were a few things that could of been improved in our prelim. These were things such as continuity; the 180 degree rule; and the actors vocals.
We had many problems with continuity throughout our prelim. For example we had to film in two different rooms for one scene which caused the location to look different, the lighting in the shots are different, the door is a different colour and the desk is a dfferent size and shape to the one in the first room. This causes the audience to notice that there is a continuity problem in our prelim as it is very noticable in our film. If we had shot all of our film in the meeting room, not only would our film of looked better and more professional, but no continuity would have been caused, not so obviously anyway.
Our 180 degree rule was going very well in our filming stages. We were aware that we needed to film every shot on one side of the shots and we were doing this very well. This was important in our shot counter shot as we needed to focus on the conversation being shot all on the same side. We did this successfully. However, when we came to editing our film we noticed that in one shot which was an over the shoulder shot, we had accidentally filmed on the opposite side to ever other shot we had done. This was a disappointment to us as we tried our best to obide the 180 degree rule. This could have been improved be reshooting that one shot, then our 180 degree rule would have been perfect throughout our prelim.
Finally, we had a problem with the actors volume of their lines. For example, when Mr Smith enters the room and says his lines, we then cut to a close up to him, but once he says his next set he becomes more high pitched. This could of been improved if we watched back over his last shot and notified him to speak in a certain way which would of matched his first pronounciation and pitch. Also, when Miss Cook enters the room, she is facing away from the camera when speaking. When we watched our finished piece we realised that it appeared muffled and you couldn't hear or understand what she was saying. This could of been improved if she raised the volume or rotated her head slightly to face the camera more, therefore the speaker would have picked up her line alot better.
Our group believe that our prelim has some elements that make it good already. For example our editing and certain shots chosen to use.
I believe that our editing towards our film was done very well. We cropped each shot to precisely the right part we needed for the film which incuded the entering of the shot and the exiting. the timing had to be perfect for each shot and I believe we did this extremely well. Another editing technique we used was transitions for shots. We used this for the ending, our last shot fades out to the end credits. We believe that this is very cleverly done and looks quite professional. We also added music to play over certain shots. This gave the film certain surroundings and atmospheres which make our prelim more exciting and fun. Our Opening titles and credits are well done as they appear on a plan black background before the film actually begins and after it finishes. However, we have made the title appear over our first shot so it makes the audience not only notice and look at the title, but they will also look at the first shot ans familiarise themselves with the setting and character. So overall, i believe our editing had made our film alot better then we hoped, making look alot more professional.
Lastly, I thing that we had chosen some good shots to include in our prelim. Our group wanted to try lots of different types of shots that we liked for example; over the shoulder; panning; point of view; etc. A good shot that all my group were proud of was our panning shot of the room. This also combined with a point of view shot. We were pleased that we included two types of shots in one shot. We were happy with each shot taken and it made our prelim less of a beginners work. Poor quality was affoided and the outcome of the film was good and my group were happy with our film.