'Have you fed the fish ?' Preliminary Task analysis

For the preliminary task we were split into groups of 4-3 people and given a script which gave us some basic outlines to what we had to do. Using the script we had to draw a storyboard and decide how we are going to film the sequence that we were given. We agreed on a location which was in school in an empty classroom, we wanted the location to look like an office of an important businessman, unfortunately we did not have much time to shoot the sequence so we had to settle on the empty classroom, we moved the desks around to make the room look more professional and organised. The protagonist was played by my friend Lauren, and the other character, the 'Boss' was played by me.

The first shot was of the building, this was meant to set the scene, the camera then panned down to the entrance where Lauren entered the building, we then used a matched cut to show the continuity of the direction Lauren was headed in. Next we decided to use a POV shot, this was basically me walking up the stair with the camera, and this was meant to make the viewer feel like they were experiencing the same thing the protagonist was experiencing, this also added tension and suspense to the sequence as the viewer didint know where the protagonist was going.The following shot was was of the 'boss' turning aroung when Lauren entered the room, when shooting this we forgot to shoot a bit where Lauren was on the other side of the door of the room, so the viewers could clearly see where she is and where the next bit was set, but this was resolved in post production edting because we managesd to edit the shots together to make the sequence look ok. During filming we also didint notice that the camera was out of focus at times, and that caused some trouble because if it wasnt focused on the characters the audience did not know what they were meant to be looking at and they also could not see the characters expressions and thus this caused confusion for the viewer. The lighting is inconsisitent through out the sequence, at one point you cannot even see the 'boss' becuase the source of light was behind the character where as the camera was infront and this caused a shadow where you couldnt see the person in the shot.

Overall, from the preliminary task i have learned how to edit footage with imovie, and that when filming it is important to check that everything is looking good, for example framing and lighting, its important because the audience needs to be able to see what you are trying to potray and it counts towards teh overall quality of the product.