This is my essay....
The task was to create a video, presenting someone entering a room, moving to the opposite side of the room, sitting down at a table and vocally exchanging a short passage of dialogue. In order to get the appropriate Camera shots, by experiencing and testing the possibilities of different angles of the camera, to achieve the maximum potential of positions. The Camera shots achieved in capturing the short continuity sequence was; the match on action, shot/reverse shot, and the 180% rule.
The match on action is when the camera shows a different view from another perspective. In this case, when the two characters, Becky and Jess converse a short piece of dialogue, it is viewed from either side of each characters focus. This also leads into the use of the one hundred and eighty degree rule, which has to be used accurately so that the perception of the audience within the placement of the characters remains consistent. If the one hundred and eighty degree rule is broken, the audience can become confused and assume and accuse the characters into changing places.
Finally, a shot reverse shot also known as a counter shot, is a technique used in the media industrial, where one character is shown looking at another character , usually off screen, and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character in another shot. In this case, after Becky enters the room as she stands at the door, you see her focus develop suddenly to the opposite side of the room; this causes a tense atmosphere to who is lurking the other side of the room. Eternal emotions can be gained at this stage of the sequence.
As well as the camera techniques already being mentioned, there was also evidence of a left to right pan being featured and the use of zoom, allowing a further visual distinction of the character and the narrative. A left to right pan was used to fully focus on Becky as she walked across the room, successfully allowing the audience to visually recognise Becky has she entered the room.
The use of diegetic sounds is very successful in the way in which it has been used and not been worked on so much. Natural sound in the background such as the door opening, people in the background talking as the door opens has not been improvised on, forasmuch creating an almost reality to the atmosphere. The audience is viewing in order to believe the happenings which are taking place and to receive emotions which will entitle their beliefs and attitudes towards the sequence. Non diegetic sounds have not been included into the editing, as it would ruin the atmosphere and tension and almost the whole reality of the sequence, and therefore the audience’s perspective may not be achieved.
The mise en scene has been frequently used, as straight away, props are seen in the first 5 seconds. As the preliminary task is set in a classroom, the aim was to keep everything the exact same, and place props, such as folders, pencil cases and paper onto the tables in order to create and present what a classroom in real life is. With the classroom being set as the location, the theme is based on a school, in which you view Becky characterising the student, and Jess characterising the teacher. As Becky plays the student, her costume has been thought deeply and taken into consideration, to just the basic ‘everyday’ clothes a student would wear and stereotypically afford, e.g. a hoody and tract suit bottoms. With Jess playing the teacher, her costume is more matured in a way, with her glasses and formal clothes representing a higher status and higher age and class.
To edit the sequence, a programme called Final Cut Pro was initially used in order to edit and cut the unwanted clips of footage. Final Cut Pro is a software run on Apple Macs, which gives the opportunity for users to log and transfer videos onto a hard drive, where it can be edited, processed, and output to a wide variety of formats. A lot of emotions were received during the editing, as it was a first time experience with the software. The group decided whilst editing, to include a wide use of fade between each camera shot, to create the effect of continuity. With the transitions being simple, they also had to be effective to create a realistic tense atmosphere; therefore the fade was the perfect effect for this.
The whole experience of the continuity task was overall successful, achieving the goals set as a group at the beginning. When the filming had been done, no time was wasted as it was consumed reasonably throughout each lesson which as a group, brought them together and built up their knowledge which in the end was very useful. The editing was thought about wisely and overall as a whole, the group altogether believed they worked well, but there are some improvements they need to make in order to develop the preliminary sequence to their highest standard.
Today when watching the opening sequence to the thriller Seven, in a group of 4, but working individually, we were all given a title each in which we had to observe and write down what we could achieve from the sound, mise en scene, editing and camera angles. My role was to write down what I could see from the Mise en Scene category, and this is what I observed: