Filming and Editing the Preliminary Exercise

Although our filming was quite successful in a lot of ways we still came across a few problems. Originally, when we first looked at the room, everything was more or less where we wanted it to be and the black brick wall was perfect for the location background that we wanted. However, on the day of the filming, the room was a lot more cluttered with the walls covered in large wooden blocks. We still used these though as they were still black and still gave the room a broken down feel to it.

The second problem we came across was the actors. We had found who we wanted a long time before filming so didn’t think about what we’d do if they didn’t show up. Unfortunately, one of our two actors we chose dropped out in the last minute so not only did we not have an actor, we didn’t have the dress codes we were going for. Luckily, we did manage to find a girl to fill in. Although the original idea was to have two men, it still worked well as a film and allowed us to then play around with the dominance a bit. The dress codes were not what we originally planned as we were going to have them dressed in smart suits but as our dominant character was still dressed in black, I think that it still worked out well.

Lighting was a big issue in our piece as none of our group had any experience using key lighting. There was a small amount of help though which gradually helped us get an idea of which light to use and how to brighten them more on the actors faces. It was not as well done as id have liked as throughout the filming we had to constantly change the lights around to make sure that we could see everything clearly through the camera.

Other than these issues, the filming still went pretty well after sorting them out. We had the right props such as the briefcase and had no trouble getting them whatsoever. The room was big enough to move the camera around the 180 degree angle and was able to use some extra equipment for the camera to move around better.

Once we had our actors, they did exactly what we needed them to do which helped us a lot when it came to filming as it was a lot less struggle to get through it without interruptions. They learned the script quickly and listened to the director well when we needed them to move around.

The representation of the women being the dominant hit man was still very effective without the dress codes. This was because all the shots that we had previously discussed all had that women in the dominant part of the rule of thirds and was always in a darker light than the other hit man to give her a sinister and powerful look. However, next time, I think we should sort the dress codes about way before filming.

Whilst filming, we made sure that we had plenty copies o the script so that everyone, including the actors, could see what we needed in our film. We also had our storyboards to help us with the camera shots. We mostly stuck to the script that we had already written, however, when we all felt that something should be changed we used the script and the camera to see if it would work better or worse.

We had a few problems when it came to editing as the cameraman had used his own equipment. This meant that the film couldn’t be uploading onto the computer. We changed the clips to avi but when they still didn’t work we used one of the group member’s laptops instead.

When it came to editing, our group decided that it would be best if we discussed how we wanted each clip and then have the editor make the final decision. Our communication was very good which helped us complete the editing very quickly. We had some help to advise us on how to make it flow better and eventually finished a short film that we were all pretty happy with.

We now know what kind of troubles we are likely to encounter net time so we will probably be using the cameras provided for us by the college so that we don’t have any problems with uploading the clips onto the computer.