Preliminary Task - Match Cut (#7)

Following on from Monday's lesson, today we had to continue our preliminary exercise. The task was continuity task involving filming and editing two characters engaged in some basic 'thrilling' action as described in the synopsis on Monday's blog. Our storyboard consisted of character A walking into a room with a bag. Uncomfortably greeted by character B spinning around on her office chair telling character B to "Take a seat." Character B sits down and hands character A the bag. Character A begins to open the bag before Character B quickly snatches it back stating "That's not what I had in mind." This was our last shot as we decided to leave our thrilling action with a cliffhanger.
We began the filming making sure to allow 5 seconds before and after each shot. To begin with was a tracking shot involving following character A's feet. We placed a camera on a chair with wheels to create this effect however the filming looked very unsteady. We repeated the shot using hand-held technique and to our surprise, it looked much better and how we were hoping it would turn out. This was one lesson learnt from our practise task.
Another thing that we learnt from this task was continuity of mise-en-scene. As we approached the end of the filming we realised that our first few shots did not contain the most important prop (the bag). Unfortunately we did not have enough time to re-shoot these few shots and as a result of this, we knew that it would pose a problem during editing. This was definitely a major lesson learnt and next time we film it would be a good idea to rewind and play each shot after we have filmed it rather then wait to the end to spot our mistakes.
During the uploading of our footage we came across another mistake that we had not noticed during the filming. In a few of our shots we had very bad frame work. The type of shots such as over the shoulder shots worked well however, the way in which the camera was positioned showed a lot of surrounding space that was not needed to be seen. We did not pay enough attention to the framing due to time that we had but, again, this was a major fault that we will have to spend more time on during our thriller openings.
Other then the frame work, mise-en-scene and continuity issues, the overall editing went very well. We produced some very good match-cuts and despite the props problem, it still made sense. We managed to create an element of suspense by the narrative, camera work and the background music.
The feedback from our teacher was quite positive although they picked up on the bad framing instantly which shows that this is something we will have to think about on our final piece. On the other hand, we were told that our match-cuts were very good which is also something we were pleased about.
To conclude, I personally feel that this preliminary task was very valuable in terms of understanding our strengths and weaknesses and how we will avoid our mistakes in our thriller opening. I learnt a lot from this exercise and also found it very enjoyable. Whilst filming, me and my group had fun and cooperated well which is always nice when working with others. This is now the second practise task that we have completed and I feel that I am starting to become more confident with using Final Cut Pro to edit as well as using the camera to film. I have not yet done any acting which is something I might consider in the final piece. Overall, I am happy with what we have produced but I am more excited to know what our thriller opening will be like now that we have picked up on our mistakes and I am sure we could produce something much better.