Preliminary Task Final Cut

Evaluation of Preliminary Task:

Our first preliminary task involved us all trying out a lot of techniques as a team, whether that be with editing, sound recording, filming or directing - it was all totally new to us. Considering these factors I think that as a group we all worked to the best of our ability and came out with the best production that we could have at the time. Our preliminary task was titled 'Sisters' - it was the story of two sisters, caught between family rivalries with their mother - whilst trying to the best of their abilities to still see each other.

The first clip opens with one character Sarah rejecting a phone call from her sister Hannah, in this clip we used one of the cast members iPhone and edited over it the sound affects for an iPhone ring tone, we found this online under a royalty free youtube account. I think that this section worked well, it helped to work with editing side of our production by trying out how to add a sound effect over a clip, and how to sync it with the clip etc. The idea of Sarah rejecting the call from Hannah was meant to show the frustration of the family rivalry and how it was affecting the sisters relationship, however now reflecting on it I feel like this adds confusion for the audience as to why she's rejecting the call  and is slightly unnecessary this early on in the production.

The next clip however cleared up any confusion from the audience members as it continued to Sarah in the middle of a phone call with her mum, she explains why she's upset etc. This was shot in our media studio with a black background down, however now reflecting on this section I do feel this doesn't look like a natural setting - it feels slightly 'staged' and this is something the audience may pick up on. It was shot on a tripod in a mid shot and I think that in terms of the recording it doesn't look too bad, however a criticism is that the lighting in this clip is slightly off, the majority of the production is shot with natural day lighting and this clip is far too dark for the rest of the production - perhaps a way we could have improved this would be to used the studio lights to brighten up the clip. 

Next is a sequence of shots of Sarah walking to see Hannah. We filmed these using several different styles of shot including a couple of long shots, a pan shot and at one point we used a film dolly. I think that these shots were fairly successful - we used a tripod to film these and made sure we shot them a couple of times in order to perfect them, one criticism is that the pan was maybe a bit too fast however the editing and the use of fading between each shot helped to clear this up. This is also the section where the music for our production kicks in, when choosing what music to play over our production we decided to keep it slightly soft, the use of the guitar riff repeating itself could help to show Sarah's growing frustration with the fact that she hasn't seen her sister in so long, I feel that the music was edited in at a perfect time and ran really smoothly with our production. 

When it came to the dolly shot of Sarah walking down the corridor I feel like this wasn't as successful as some of our other shots. It didn't run smoothly at all and was almost shaken making it look more like a 'hand held' affect rather than being filmed on a dolly - later i realised that the reasoning for this was because I hadn't placed the camera on the dolly correctly, thus making the shot look very shaken. We didn't have time to refilm this clip, but on reflection if I were to do it again I would make sure the camera is secure on the dolly and perhaps get a couple of shots for reassurance. 

In the next shot we see Hannah studying in a class room, for this shot we tried lots of different styles of such as a pan shot and we also tried to zoom in on her. In the production we decided to use the zoom, however the camera was angled too lowly on a tripod, meaning that when I zoomed her face was slightly out of shot - I tried to avoid this by moving the camera up, but as it was attached to a tripod it jolted meaning the shot looked unprofessional as the jolt was noticeable. On reflection I would defiantly refilm this shot again, and test out the zoom and how far to zoom in so that her face is in shot. However, when we were filming this a difficulty that we faced was that Hannah was only available for this one day, this meant we had no opportunities to refilm the shot.

As Sarah approached Hannah's classroom we wanted to capture Hannah's expression, we filmed her dropping her pen then standing up, in a mid shot, to see Sarah. At the moment she stood up the music changed to a more upbeat sounding tune, and Hannah began to smile. I think that we did a really good job on this section as it got to portray how the sisters feel when being reunited and it really made it clear to the audience how happy the sisters were.

Next we filmed another sequence of shots of Sarah opening the door and running in to meet Hannah the pair then hug as the title 'Sisters!' is shown. I think that the sequence of shots ran really smoothly and were some of our most successful shots from the production - they were edited really well to also ensure that this section ran smoothly. The use of the 'Sisters!' title being shown as the pair hug really helps to show their close bond to the audience, proving that despite any family rivalries the pair are still close and happy to be together. 

The final scene was a conversation between the two sisters sitting at the table facing each other, in this scene the pair talk about their family problems and try to resolve it. As Sarah and Hannah were sitting facing each other it was important for me, as the camera woman, to bare in mind the 180 degree rule this meant that everything that was placed on the table and the way the two were sat had to be correctly replicated if we were to do an over the shoulder shot - it was also important to make sure their eyelines matched, for example if we were to do a mid or close up shot the eyelines had to be in the direction of the person opposite. These were all factors that I bared in mind when filming this scene, and in my opinion I think it was executed quite well, we tried out various shots such as an over the shoulder shot and a zoom and they were successful. A struggle we came across when editing this clip however was that we decided to refilm the scene 2/3 times in order to get the perfect shot to use in our production, Sarah forgot her lines however, meaning that the audio and the film were not synced perfectly. We fixed this problem by refilming the clip with Sarah, as Hannah wasn't available on the day we refilmed we zoomed into Sarah as she said her line, meaning that it wasn't totally obvious that Hannah wasn't there.