Class Exercise Reflection

Write about a recent class exercise: your approach; the experience of shooting and editing.  Analyse the result.

On Tuesday’s class, we participated in a shooting exercises in mini film crew teams that consisted of actors and crew roles of director, first assistant director, camera operator, continuity keeper, and audio operator. Each team was given a script and instructions to shoot three to six perspectives, and edit this footage into a cohesive scene.

We each had out own roles to focus on, so our approach was for everyone to first prepare the material they needed for their specific job and then come together to form a shoot plan. I was assigned the role of first assistant director, which meant keeping track of the time, deciding a shot order, and keeping track of the shots whilst operating the clapper board.

Meg as the director formed a quick story board of her vision of the script, whilst Rob and Brian set up the camera and audio equipment and Matt drew up a continuity sheet.

Meg came up with five main shots: a mid shot of Leon and Lucinda in the train, a medium close up and a close up of Leon’s face as he reacts, a close up of Leon’s hands as he removes the dirt from Lucinda’s eye and an extreme close up of Lucinda’s eye. As we spent a bit of time planning, we didn’t have much time left to shoot. I decided to shoot in chronological order all the shots except for the ECU as they were all from the perspective of being inside the train so they required similar setups. Since the ECU was to be shot from outside the train window, it would have required a different setup that could have been time consuming, so it was left until last.

The actual shooting went smoothly, which Rob setting up the shots according to Meg’s direction. Each shot was recorded for continuity details and marked by a clapper board. In the end we were able to finish on time and get all the shots we wanted.

When it came to editing, putting the clips together was quite easy as Meg had a clear vision of what she wanted the scene to look like. We found it to be effective that most of the scene was covered in the mid shot, but we had some options to play around for when to insert the close ups of Leon’s reactions. Our only problem was getting the opening ECU of Lucinda’s eye to match the rest of the scene, as it was shot from the opposite angle outside the train window. Even after horizontally flipping the shot so that Jamie’s face was the same orientation as the rest of the shots, it still looked disjointed and out of place. Through this I realised that although the ECU seemed like a great creative decision, it won’t always work when it comes to actually shooting and editing it on a practical level.

Whilst it’s always helpful to go through the motions of creating practical works, the main takeaway I had from this exercise was actually the importance of the the continuity person. In previous class ‘crew’ type exercises continuity was never something of focus, yet having someone jot down all the information regarding camera setups and shot details proved to be extremely useful both during shooting and during editing. This further solidified the idea for me that no role within the film crew is insignificant. No matter how small or unimportant a job may seem, there is always someone who can benefit from it.

yutingxiao

Hello! I'm Jess and I like pizza and marathoning TV shows.

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