PRELIMINARY TASK : CHINA TOWN CASE

As a group of 4 (me, Demi, Sophie and Agatha), we devised an under 1 minute short film and edited it. Our film involved a shot, reverse, shot with a context of a murder in China Town, London. We had to consider different camera angles, different camera shots such as tracking shots and background noise such as door being opened and closed. We filmed on a Canon 550D and edited on iMovie on an Apple iMac

Positives

1. We successfully worked together as a team sharing each persons ideas.
2. We shared the responsibility of holding the camera, directing, setting the props and acting.
3. We worked quickly and efficiently, finishing our prologue in the estimated time we had planned.
4. We used a different selection of props including a police scarf/neck tie, chinese umbrella, chinese lantern and folder belonging to the head detective. Using these props created an authentic atmosphere believable to the audience, believing it to be a real police case and set in a real police office.
5. We used a shot reverse shot - it was fluid and easy to recognise.
6. We found a variety of music from the internet, especially sound tracks and openings of television programmes such as The Vampire Dairies and CSI and added them to our short film.


Negatives

1. When editing we realised that a lot of our shots were out of focussed, we were not paying attention to the camera or weren't speaking loud enough. We realised that next time we film we have to take into consideration these factors.
2. We chose a location with a lot of background noise such as people talking, doors being opened and closed as well as people's footsteps on stairs for example, resulting in us having to mute the background noise and add a voice over (at the beginning of the short film - 'Please come in PC Sophie').
3. We maybe should have worn authentic police uniform making us easier to recognise as a MET police officer and head detective.
4. We should have used a microphone as our voice recordings from the camera footage were hard to hear and understand. Using a microphone would also level out the interference of background noise, level out the tone and volume of our voice.
5. We should have used a tripod in all sections of filming as some shots were not balanced or steady causing us to cut them from the original footage or have to merge them with other balanced shots - causing us to use valuable time.

What have I learned? 

1. Working as a team is better than working as an individual as you can complete the task quicker, have a wide range of ideas (bouncing ideas of everyone) such as different locations to film at, shot types as well as plot ideas.
2. A shot, reverse, shot is a great shot to create tension, suspense or fast paced interaction. For example showing direct eye contact and facial expressions to the co-stars face instead of directly to the camera.
3. Using iMovie is an easy software to edit short films and film openings on as it is quick, simple especially when dragging different shots into position and cutting footage.

Vampire Diaries Theme Tune with used throughout our short film

Process of editing

Our final completed preliminary on iMovie