Prelim Task

The prelim task was a short film to show how well we could use editing and cutting techniques. We had had a few lessons towards learning about camera angles and the way films edit, how much time is spent between each edit and how easy they make it look.

We were put into groups of 3 and 4. My group was a 3 and consisted of me, Ellen and Katie. The first thing we had to do in a group was come up with an idea, after much debate we chose to do a mini action sequence about a hit man. There are two actors in our prelim, Alec and Katie. Alec played the hit man and Katie the person who is giving the contract out. Both characters remain nameless during the text.

After we completed the story board we showed it to Alec so he could get an idea of how we wanted it to turn out and how he had to act in it. Katie who took part in the creation of the story board already had an idea of how to act in it. This helped immensely because it allowed us to communicate better with the actors chosen and made shore we were on the same page when it came to the production of the text.

After we had shown everyone through the story board, we got a camera and tripod and looked for a location to film. We already had the college in mind when we were creating the story board, so we decided to go with the college hallway and a class room near that hallway. We were lucky with the location we chose because no lessons were taking part during the filming which meant we didn’t have to worry about people coming in and out of classes or the classes making any noise during filming.

Alec and Katie worked quickly and well together, we were able to quick successful shot as well as getting the feel right for the film. Our total filming time was around one hour, we were pleased with how long it took to film because it showed how well we could work together. In the film we had to show at some point someone walking through a door. This helped us learn what shot types worked best and helped us improve on our continuity.

After we had finished filming we uploaded the shots on to the college’s editing computers and used Adobe Premier Elements 4.0 to edit the text together. We had filmed several different types of shots some of which during editing we decided not to use because they didn’t feel right when watching the text.

Our prelim opens with an establishing shot of an unknown building, it then cuts to an extreme long shot of the hit man walking up towards a door and opening it. After this shot it cuts to an inside view of him opening the door, this is a medium shot. It shows our first piece of continuity editing and also a character walking through a door, which was the main aim of our prelim task. After this shot it cuts to a shot of the hetmans legs as he walks through the corridor. This shot is followed by an extreme long shot of the hit man walking down the corridor and into a second door. It cuts to a second medium shot as the hit man walks through the second door, this shot is also the point of view of the contract giver. We then cut to a two shot of both the characters this shot is also a medium shot. The next shot is an over the shoulder shot of the contract giver handing a note to the hit man were our first line of dialogue is said “ are you ready for this?”. We then cut to the reverse shot where the hit man picks up the note which reads “kill him!” and says “it’ll get done” which completes the two lines of dialogue needed for the prelim task. It then fades to black and the text ends. There are 9 shots used in total.

I am very pleased with the text we produced as a group.