Amy Leadbitter's evaluation

Individual Evaluation


New Technology
During the preliminary exercise, I learned many new techniques while using the camera and the editing software. I learned about the importance of setting the white balance every time the camera is used, and how to set up the camera properly and safely on the tripod. There were a few occasions I forgot to set the white balance and it showed on the film; it either showed up blue of yellow. I learned from that to always set the white balance when filming, not just when I think it is needed. I learned that even if it doesn’t look like the white balance needs to be set; it will show on the end product when it has and hasn’t been set, and this will make the film look like it has been thrown together instead of carefully planned and worked on. During the editing, I learned many new techniques which will help me further on in the course. I had never used iMovie to edit films before, so I found it difficult to learn how to use it, but once I had, I was able to play around with different ideas and sequences to give the film more suspense.


Personal Input
In this exercise, I was a subject in the film, and I was also an editor. I learned from acting in a film rather that acting on a stage or in front of an audience, one scene can take quite a long time to film, because of filming from many different angles. We were careful to make sure we kept to the 180 rule and that we didn’t shoot on days that had different weather than the day before, or that we filmed indoors if the weather had changed. I also learned how long it can take to edit a film that will only be a minute long, and that all of the different shots must be labelled so they can be found easily. While editing, I could not find a shot that we all agreed would help to add mystery and suspense to the scene, but because the shots were not very easily accessible, we lost the shot. During our next exercise, I will remember to label each shot or groups of shots so they can be easily found, and to make sure to film from more angles so we have more to choose from when in post production.


Understanding Continuity Editing
I paid special attention to the 180 rule, because I know how easy it is to break if you are moving from one location to another. We moved around the college campus a lot while filming, so when we set up the camera, I made sure it was always to the left of me to make sure we did not break the 180 rule. There is one point in the film where we do break the rule, but the camera follows my feet round so the audience sees how the rule is broken, so it is not just one shot and then another shot where it is being filmed from a the other side.
We used match on action twice in the film. The first time was when the male character picked up the phone. This took a while to edit, because we wanted to make sure that it looked professional and it wasn’t an obvious cut. One problem we had with this was the sound of the phone ringing. At first, we tried to match the sound that was filmed, but after realising that if we cut it too much, it would show in the scene and would look very choppy. So in the end, we decided to mute the clip and use a sound effect of a telephone ringing from GarageBand instead. The second time we used match on action was when my hand was filmed turning a door handle, and then the door opening from the other side. We edited the clip like this so it would almost be like it showed my point of view and of the male characters point of view.
We also managed to use shot-reverse shot at the end of the film when the audience finds out the identity of both of the characters. We used over-the-shoulder shots to also make it look like a point of view shot, so the audience feels like they are there in the room with the characters. Before we started filming the preliminary exercise, I didn’t know about continuity editing. When I learned about them at first, I didn’t quite understand how they could be used in our exercise, but when we started filming I could see how it could be used.


Improving for the main task
I personally think there is a lot that we as a group can improve for the main ‘Thriller’ task. In the preliminary exercise, we forgot to set the white balance every time we filmed, so I think that we should make a note of what we have to do every time we film. A lot of the time, we also didn’t shout ‘rollover’ ‘speed’ and ‘action’ when we started filming, we just yelled ‘go’. This didn’t give us much extra film to use in post production so when we were editing, we didn’t have much film to work with, and ended up spending longer than we had hoped ‘fine tuning’ and trimming shots, and we didn’t have as many shots as we had initially hoped to have. This meant that we were limited in what we could do with the film and what angles we could use. In the main task, I will be sure to film from more angles so we will have more to choose from in post production. I have learned a lot from this exercise, and I will use techniques learned here in my group’s Thriller film.