Filming and Editing the Preliminary Exercise

Our filming took place on tuesday February 4th in the morning and we were all fairly nervous as we didn't know what to expect or have a clue about how it was going to be but we surprised ourselves and, due to brilliant organisation on all of our parts, everything went very smoothly.

The first problem we encountered was expected anyway as one of our actors had already informed us that there was a chance she might still be ill on the day and we weren't too surprised when she was unable to perform in our production. This meant we had to search for a female to play the part which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as she was an A2 student studying Film Studies alongside the male actor who happened to be good friends with her. This meant that both were familiar to these exercises and did not require much direction.

I was in charge of the camera work which at first I found incredibly daunting and I was scared to let the group down but once I got into it, it became easy to frame the actors well especially as there were only two main frames taking place and so, considering we didn't film in a consecutive order, I didnt have to move the camera much at all.

Although we followed the 180 degree rule fluently, the continuity

was disrupted slightly as we didn't follow the rule of thirds and both Steph and Petch's heads were placed in the same part of the frame so that it

didn't look so professional, however this was a small mistake that we have made which has allowed us to build on it and now we know we won't make the same mistake in the main exercise.

The best thing about the production was the lighting which turned out to look very professional and really enhanced our film. It was neither too dark or too light which I thought would be an issue having seen previous productions from last year. We used a recording studio as it appeared like an interview room with a

window that could be passed off as a one way mirror which was important for the mise-en-scene and a semi-circular table to help further the 180 degree rule. We decided to use a male to be the police officer and a woman to be the visitor as this increases the versimilitude of the scene due to the idea of male dominance and you would rarely expect too see a male playing the more subjective role within a scene.

Our filming was over far quicker and smoother than expected which we were pleased with, but when we came to edit it, we realised we had actually missed out a few lines of dialogue probably because, not having filmed in a consecutive order, we must have got confused and missed out parts although luckily we still had the required amount of production to meet the brief. Although it was quite annoying at first we came round to it and began to understand that it was still a good film, especially as it was the first time any of us had actually produced a film production.

Overall I am proud of the way things went and it was due to our ability to work well as a team that everything ran so smoothly. We had already decided who was in charge of what beforehand and who was in charge of getting hold of the correct equipment.

Even though we made a few mistakes they were only small and I would rather have made them now than in the main exercise