Preliminary Exercise Evaluation

Our Preliminary Piece Overview:

Who was involved?

Alex: Actor/Sound Effects

Ian: Actor

Ellis: Actor/Editor

John: Actor/Writer


We were asked to produce a conversational piece between two people, with a variety of camera angles to be incorporated. Other than the initial linearity, we had great freedom in the final production that we would produce. We settled upon a comedy-based piece, wherein my character would meet a celebrity, realise that it's not a real celebrity, and then humour would ensue. We started off outside one of the classrooms within the college, and I noticed a poster on the door. It read that I could meet a celebrity for £50 a minute, but the drive was that any celebrity could be met. So I entered the room and paid the fine, approaching the table and meeting my first guest. Both Angelina and Tony Blair were played by Ian, and he did a great job in keeping to the script and not laughing during scenes. He remained far more collected than the rest of us, even when he had to climb through the cupboard. The effect that we used here was my favourite part of the piece, followed closely by Nelson Mandela at the end. When Ian entered the cupboard, we removed everything inside, so that it was possible for him to climb through. Interestingly, the cupboard scene where he enters one way and leaves another is one continuous shot, right until Ian is leaving the door. We had to incorporate another shot at this point to allow Ian to change masks to Tony Blair.

We made a couple of mistakes on our preliminary piece, which we would have to deal with during our final production. For one, there was a lack of continuity at two key points. During one scene, after Ian leaves the cupboard and is returning to the desk, I had to move out of the shot, which means that for a brief couple of second interval, I was not present in the shot, and the tripod was in my place as we performed an over-the-shoulder shot on Ian. I don't exist in this shot, yet when Ian sits back down, I magically reappear. This is only obvious after a couple of viewings, and upon showing our production to other members of our class, nobody realised until we told them that I wasn't in the shot.

The other lack of continuity came from a change in rooms near the end of the piece; we were given one lesson to film our preliminary task, and we found that near the end of the production, we ran out of time when a class needed to use the room we were in. Therefore, during the scene where Ian speaks of meeting his friends, and Lassy and Nelson Mandela are shown (John and Ellis respectively), we were actually in a different room to the original one. This is only really an issue when I storm out of the room at a low-angle shot, as I leave through a different door to the one I entered from. This is quite noticeable, but doesn't really detract from the humour of the piece.

Another minor issue was sound, where we did not place a voiced track over the top of the piece. We feel that the only place where this makes a real difference is during a couple of scenes where a faint sound of laughter can be heard (mainly the cupboard scene spoken of before), and where I storm off, as it's quite difficult to hear what I say. Nevertheless, we do also achieve a successful finish, we feel, and all music placed upon the film is from a copyright free resource CD, given to us by our teacher.

There are several points that we feel were good about our preliminary piece, however. For one, the idea is quite original, at least for the extent of the brief we met. It wasn't just a regular conversation between two people; instead we gave a surreal twist to the piece that makes it more engaging. We also think that the production itself was rather good, especially when Nelson was dancing at the end to the music. The pictures and credits were all edited in afterwards by Ellis, and he did a great job of making the credits last for the duration of the images. We also feel that the music cuts in at very appropriate times and fades out when it should, and ultimately we achieved what we set out to do; to meet the brief, and to generate humour in our production.

We're happy with how the preliminary piece turned out, and we will use some of the response we have received during our final production. For one, we will try and add any audio on afterwards, so that we don't pick up distortion or have any sort of interference. We will also make sure that everything is continous, and as we plan on filming our final production over a three day period, we'll keep everything in place as it was. As the rooms we are filming in will be used, we'll make a note of how everything was positioned between days, so that we can return them to their original state during filming on later days. We will also wear the same clothing and such to continue with the continuity. Our thriller opening will also be far more focused, having more time to edit and play around with effects, and hopefully we will create something special at the end of our filming.