Continuity Editing Exercise

Continuity Editing Exercise

We were asked to work to a scenario called;' The encounter' which basically had to include the action of a character entering a room and sitting opposite another character having a conversation. This mini film had to be roughly about 60 seconds long, connoting that each shot that we planned out on our storyboard were no longer then 5-6 seconds long. The storyline that me and my fellow group member Halima chose was; A Girl and a Boy having a conversation about a certain individual, Which then happens to walk in and get bullied by the first two characters.

During this process the key media language skills we were asked to demonstrate our knowledge and understanding of were; Match on action, Shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. I made sure my short film established all of these key media language skills precisely, as i was aiming for the best grade that i can possibly get.

Match on action; A match on action is a cut in which two parallel actions are mirrored in order to suggest a strong relationship between two shots.

Shot/reverse shot; A shot reverse shot is when two characters are looking at eachother and the camera switches from one character to the other. 

                                                                            

 180 degree rule; 180 degree rule is an invisible line that connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of its axis for every shot in the scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always left of the first.

I had worked with my friend to plan and film this piece of work, her name is Halima begum. I would say this grouping was highly successful. Considering Halima being one of my close friends made it alot more straightforward and preferable for me because we knew exactly what sort of storyline we wanted to do for this piece of work almost instantly, as we do have similar interests. Me and Halima both split the amount of work into half so that we both got to do the same extent which was also fair and equal. The storyboard was split, so that she done the first half and i done the second half although we did come up with the storyline together, we both gave our similar ideas and developed on from that. To develop the scenario we used heaps of creativity ideas rather then having a simple,boring film based only on one character entering the room and coversating with the other character. We had alot more going on to make the given scenario much more interesting and exciting for the audience. Even though its a short clip I would say it can be rather captivating for viewers. We created a dramatic scene where the victim trips up recklessly and falls down to the ground were all her belongings/food splatter everywhere which may have a shocking effect on the audience as it was not expected. Me and Halima both done media GCSE so that gave us an advantage of being quite familiar with a variety of camera skills. We tried using a range of camera shots so viewers get different perspectives and its not almost much the same throughout. The camera shots and angles we got to include where; High angle, Low angle, Side angle, Mid shot, Close-ups and a establishing shot.

The Storyboard was extremely useful when filming as it gave us a head start and a basic idea on what we needed to include in the short film. This also helped us get to the point rather then wasting much of the filming time. Having the storyboard there gave us a rough estimation on time and how long we had to film each shot and kept us reminded of the different type of shot ranges. We kept to most of our original storyboard and did not change much of it although couple of shots had to be mixed around and changed a tiny bit as we couldn't have the specific shot types in the right order. At first some of our lighting didn't manage to work out how we wanted it, as different angles would have unequal lighting which sometimes didn't flow properly. Eventually we got to fix our problem and portray a natural lighting which fit in with our expectations.

Overall i think this piece of work was quite successful and i would definitely work in the same group again. Knowing that me and my partner both kept eachother motivated and focused on the work proves that we worked well together.

Below here are all my storyboards.