Edit Workshop Evaluation

The brief clearly states: This task should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. So we made sure to prioritise these when filming.

We used the 180 degree rule throughout our footage so that the audience does not become confused, this is most obvious in the over the shoulder shots between the teacher and student. The teacher is always on the left of the student so the audience's view is not disorientated. 

We applied the rule of thirds by the characters eyes being on the top horizontal line, so that each persons eye line is in the same place as the other. It was hard to get the positioning of the camera in the right place at all times, but managed to apply it to all shots. We made sure the rule was precise in close ups such as 0:36

Match on Action

We used match on action to show a continuous flow between two shots. We used this  firstly as the student opens the door to her Head Of Year's Office at 0:13, this then cuts to her walking into the office to talk to the teacher. We filmed this shot a few times so that I could chose the most accurate shot to use in the footage as it was hard to get the door in the exact right place.

Shot Reverse Shot
I used shot reverse shot when the teacher and student were talking, at 0:38, the shot goes from the teacher talking, to her reaction, back to the teacher. This shows a clear relationship between the two characters as the audience see's the little respect she has for him. 

During production, we faced a few problems, because Naveed, who plays the teacher, was also committed to another group, it was hard to share days to film, especially as we only had a few days to complete the task, but we overcame this by splitting the time equally so both groups had the opportunity to film with him. Also, as the office is quite small, it was hard to film long shots as we was not able to get the whole of the student's body language in it. If we were to film again, I would use a different office which offers us more space to film as it would not be as crowded and easier to place the camera. Also I would make sure to be more careful with the 180 degree rule as during

post-production, we found that the rule had been broken in several shots. Such as at 0:44 and 0:54-1:06, the camera had crossed over the line so we decided to film these shots again. Also during editing, it was hard to find music that suits our footage, we wanted a quite dark but chilled vibe to set the mood and atmosphere and give a hint to what her personality is going to be like. We decided on the beginning of 'Arctic Monkeys- Do I wanna know' we felt this song really suited it. If I were to edit again, I would make some of my shots run more smoothly, but as it was my first ever time using iMovie, I was very happy with the outcome.

The strengths of my work was my creativity, the only storyline the encounter gives is 'A character opens a door, crosses a room  and sits down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.' From this, I created the storyline of the teacher and student. Also, we came up with the idea to use a new shot we learnt, the cross-cut. This includes going from a shot of the student saying 'I ain't even done nothing' to her in a previous class shouting at her teacher and throwing a chair across the room. This makes it much more interesting than just being set in one room.  Creativity is also shown with the varied the shots used throughout, I included an establishing shot, over the shoulder, long shots, mid shots, two shot, close up, extreme close up, low angles etc. We made sure to use appropriate shots that would represent the characters in the way we planned for example, the first view the audience see of Vicky at 0:08, is from a long angle, this shot is mostly used on antagonists to make them look bigger and scarier than what they are, which is why this was used on Vicky, as she is a rebellious student, this shot makes her look more patronizing than a straight on or high angle would. The long shot also allows us to see her whole body language which tells us she doesn't care about going to the office, she isn't scared at all. We used this shot because her face is not the only thing that tells the audience how she's feeling, her whole body language does.

The weakness of my work was the planning, as I was editing my draft,  I found that the 180 degree rule had been broken. Whilst filming, we didn't plan at which point the camera could not cross over. Another weakness was occasionally with the digital technology, one of the shots was shakey towards the end, due to the lack of space we had in the office. These errors meant we had to re film these, giving us less time to edit.

During the editing process, it was hard to find places to insert our chosen song, I wanted the music to fade out in when going into dialogue instead of just playing then coming to a full stop as it would sound jumpy and wouldn't go well with the footage, as I had never used iMovie before, this was quite difficult to place and time it correctly, but I managed to overcome the challenge and fit the music with each shot correctly.

Overall, the improvements I would make to my final version are to be more careful with some shots, making sure they are steady with no shaking. I would also film in a different office, although this location set the atmosphere well, when we were filming the two shot, the reason for the shaking was because of the tight spacing, so we could not fully extend the tripod to its full length, the given space limited the places and angles we could film from in that room.