AS Media Studies

From our preliminary tast I feel I have progressed both in terms of my understanding of software, but also in terms of being able to film and act. Initially I had very little experience in actually filming live actors, my previous experience was with recording and taking footage from my own recording of games etc. The difference being I had to learn and adapt to filming in different conditions and getting enough shots. Something that was aparent I lacked the knowledge about when producing our intial preliminary excercise.




Its clear to see in our initial preliminary that the camera work is shakey and the editing is pretty choppy. Throughout the video the camera is constantly shaking, this is a combination of both the schools equipment and my inexperience in operating the camera. Fortunatly we learnt from this mistake and used my own camera, tripod and monopod for the main piece. This meant we had reliable equipment that I had more experience in handling. Plus over time with practice I got more used to handling the camera on a stand and free hand, I helped my group understand how everything worked. But it was a combination of all of us who achieved the final result, Laura had great vision in capturing some of the indoor shots.

Another flaw in our initial preliminary task is the editing and amount of shots we took, the cuts are jummpy and that is my fault in all honesty. I had them cut too fast and it made it look very jumpy, it didn't help that I didn't try and balance the lighting on both sides to make it look natural. This also comes under the problem of not having enough shots, when you see Laura and the guy talking when it's looking from over Lauras shoulder the lighting is vastly different from when it's looking over his. This is because of the changing light conditions as the shoot went on and I didn't have any shots that I could use to make it look more natural. I could also have edited the lighting levels to match up properly but that just shows my inexperience in dealing with such things in video making. We did however learn from these mistakes and when making our final piece took everyshot a minimum of 5 times, some even close to 12 times to make sure we had options if something didn't look right. Also I myself improved my skill in editing videos when taking into account factors such as lighting, balance and colour. The audio was severly hampered due to the poor quality of the schools microphones so that's a hardware problem more than anything.




When comparing our preliminary to our rough cut you can see that I have improved upon keeping the camera steady and limiting shaking as much as possible. But there are still instances where the camera is a bit to shaky such as around 0:20. The shake during those scenes was due to it being freehand and I was shivering in the cold so it was hard to keep it stable. We still have issue with the balance of light, but this was due to the fact I had not yet added the proper effect, it was simply a black and white filter. At this stage we had not finished filming all the shots we needed so the placeholders wern't because of us not taking enough shots but more to due with us not having filmed a few missing components. Overall it's clear to see we have learnt a lot just up to the rough draft, I have become more knowledgable in operating the camera and maintaing a good quality image throughout the video. However the sound still needed work as it sounds a little off, but the recorded sound is much clearer and more crisp due to it being on my own camera.




Moving on to our final piece I have removed almost all traces of the camera shacking, apart from the feet walking due to us not having a proper trolly to mount a camera to we had to improvise with a skateboard and tape. Considering what we had it turned out pretty well all things considered, certain shots wobble more than others but as a whole it is vastly improved from my first tast. The balance has been nicely tuned, the low key lighting and effect applied after creates a very dark atmosphere which was what we were aiming for. It's also appropriately balanced based on each shot and works well with the red shoes being highlighted. I also had no trouble sifting through multiple shots to find the best one, or a mixute of multiple shots if needed.

Overall I have come along way from the preliminary, having a much greater understanding of how to film, frame and balance a shot to get the desired effect. It took a lot of time and practise but we eventually created a solid media product. The video itself speaks for itself in how far we have come from the beginning to it being completed.