Half Term Homework Assignment - Sean

In our first camera excercise out of college, the filming in general was alright, however their were quite a few problems that could  be spotted in our 30-second sequence.
All shots were steady, but the continuity was quite poor and it jumped quite a bit (editing didnt help a lot on that one) but our composition and Rule Of Thirds was brilliant and we used them to good work when doing our filming, everytime we planned specifically where to shoot it from and where the actors should be. The 30 degree rule was extremely awful as it was hard due to our surroundings. We also just copied the same shots as the film we were actually doing in which there was a fair variety of shots. Infact, we missed out one shot and im not entirely sure how. Due to the 180 and 30 degree rules, our continuity was very poor and this also contributed the the jumps between scenes. Another good point is that our characters were never randomly cut off in scenes and were never cut out their joints.

Our editing was extremely limited due to the bad composition in the outcome of our filming, so it would of looked jumpy no matter how we edited it. However, we managed to edit it quite well enough to reduce the jumps, but we didn't 100% succeed. Our transitions were as close as we could get to the original – especially the part when we used a fade blur and a true blur to white white to make the the effect of a camera flash.

Our content was probably one of our strongest points. The make-up, face paint, make-up and fake blood we used to good effect and made it actually look quite zombie-like. The location was Canning Circus Cementary and it was perfect for our filming and suited our appropriate actors because they could all reach this location easily and were happy to do so. Our actors were apropraite becuase there was not a lot of messing about which would of put us off our filming, and we all knew eachother so we had chemistry, which could help during the filming and help produce a finer outcome. However, the major weakness was the fact that no one was available until around 7 and by then its dark (when the original was mid-day) so it was practically impossible for us to shoot the film during daytime.

My contribution was quite large towards the planning side. I did all, but my main contributuon was to the planning and organising the location, actors and the scenes. I did shoot a few shots and we all aqually shared out the job of editing together as it was only fair. To improve the film, we should of found actors that would of been available for daytimes (which was too hard) and if not, found a cementary with lighting e.g. lamposts. I would do a lot of things differently in my final coursework but one of the main things is to not waste time and plan everything thoroughly and take my time so that i can outline and weaknesses. Also, i would make sure i pay attention to the 30 degree and 180 degree rules.