Continuity Editing Exercise

Continuity Editing Exercise

The scenario of this exercise was to create a scene where the 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. For the scenario we could choose the characters ourselves depending on the personality the character play. A benefit from the scenario was that we could choose any topic for it to be based on with the use of dialogue and acting. 


Rule of Thirds - The picture inside the camera screen is split into six small boxes - the rule is that the persons eyes should be perfectly aligning with the first horizontal line on the grid.
Throughout filming, the characters eyeline match should be aligned consistently as it would make the continuity more clearer. 

Match on Action - is a cut that occurs midway through a shot and goes from one shot to the next but has to end with a smooth finish. This allows the audience to have an immersive experience while watching.

180 Degree Rule - when filming the shot, the camera mustn't go further than 180 degrees and must stay on the same side of the room. If this rule is not followed, the shot will be interpreted differently and it will look like the characters have changed position or not making the correct eye contact. In our scenario the 180 degree was easy to achieve in an interview environment - just had to stay on one side of the two actors.

Shot Reverse Shot - Shot shows character looking at another character in a conversation format. This is mostly used as an Over the Shoulder Shot and goes from one shot, to another shot and then back to the previous shot.

In school I had learnt the above shots as they were mentioned in the Encounter and were a 'must do' to be included, and we were to produce them in our video.

The key media skills that has to be used in this piece of media work is to at least use one Shot Reverse Shot in the scene. We will use two Shot Reverse Shots to illustrate the conversations and also to capture the movement of their emotions and reactions. The 180 Degree Rule will be correctly used throughout on the right side of the room so the angles of characters positions and eye contact would not look deranged. I will successfully use the Rule of Thirds continuously during each shot, so that the characters head does not cut of in the shot. I will have to be certain that all of these shots are included in my scenario to achieve the best possible outcome and the best grades.

I had planned my piece of media with my class member Zahra who had helped me come up with a plan that suited the storyline to match the scenario. In lesson one we were to plan our scenes on Microsoft Excel and was to consider; the camera movements, where we were going to place the camera,  the shot types we were going to be using and the order of the storyline.

Once we had a rough plan of our sceneario, we were then given Storyboards to plan what each shot would include on paper before we started to film. We also focused on what type of shot we would want as different shots can connote different things and so we drew on the Storyboard what we wanted the shot to look like. We focused on the Edit of the shot (Cut,Dissolve and Fade), Angles (High angle & Low angle), Lighting (SFX,Music & Dialogue) and duration of each shot. These are all very important as the choices we made will emphasise the aspect of the genre of our video which is Comedy.

Overall, I think that me and Zahra were successful as we were both determined and driven to finish the work to the best of our ability. My main role was directing the characters on what position to stand and how to act and say their dialogue, whereas Zahra was lovely enough to use the camera to film all the footage. I found this easy to do as i have previously been doing Drama for 5 years and the people that acted in our video have also been doing Drama for several years and so I found it simple to direct them as they listened to my instructions carefully. However, at times it was difficult and stressful as I had to timetable when the actors were available to film, and what parts we could film with just the one actor, as we had scenes where there were two or more actors involved. We were also worried about meeting the filming deadline and thought we would not finish it in time, nevertheless did finish it and all those things aside, we were both very successful in achieving all our cuts and I was successful as being the Director.

Instead of creating a scenario that was just a character walking into a room and sitting down on a chair, we decided to create something more exciting and include a more interesting storyline. I came up with the idea of a stereotypical girly girl who enrols to a school just in order for her to be with a guy she fell in love with at NCS. While being interviewed by the Headmaster, later on the guy she had met at NCS comes in and they then stare affectionately into each other's eyes. I spun this around to be a Comedy as their dialogues and facial expressions I had created developed humour to the piece. The location we had used was a school and it was set perfectly to link to the storyline and also the sound effects of the school bell in the background, that we did not intentionally put in, made the scene look natural. The main character Selin who played the stereotyped girl wore a casual cream top with a denim black skirt and boots which is what any girly teenage girl would wear and for the character who played the Headmaster, I told Kishen to wear a very smart Black suit to portray his character correctly. We tried to use a variety of shots to capture different aspects of the characters and to make it not look boring. The range of shots we used were long shots, mid shots, closeup shots, extreme closeup shots and high and low angle shots.