The Coursework Task

Preliminary Exercise:
Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

• Harry Potter Swede was my preliminary exercise, with the main continuity task at 06:53 - 7:10, there is also other examples of the task throughout the whole production, such as match on action of the characters going through to platform 9 and 3/4s. We used this opportunity to try out camera techniques and to get used to filming. With a short amount of time to film and edit, there is a lot of improvements that could be made, but it gave us a realistic idea into how much time we need to spend planning, and filming, to create a good quality production.

Key Terms:

Match on Action - match on action is a sequence of shots which follow a certain action thats taking place. The example for the preliminary exercise was to have someone open a door-cut-walk through the door-cut-cross a room and sit down. By cutting and changing angle, match on action can make a sequence more interesting than having just one long take.

Shot/Reverse Shot - The main use of shot/reverse shot is when two characters are having a conversation, and instead of a two shot, one person will be in the frame, and it will then cut to the other person. 180-degree rule is important for verisimilitude of the characters having a conversation, because if the cameras were not along the same line it would look strange. Another camera angle rule is the 30-degree rule - Is when the sequence is cut, and the angle of the camera changes slightly to give a varied shot type, rather than having one long take. 30-degrees is meant to make the shot change substantial enough for a change in shot. Jump cut is quite the opposite, in which the change in shot is meant to  break against continuity.

Main Task:
The titles and opening of a new fiction film. to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.

The coursework is worth 50% of the AS and the marking is divided into 3 sections

1. Research and Planning - 20%
2. Production - 60%
3. Evaluation - 20%

The work is marked partially on observations of approach and level of organisation, but fundamentally its a DVD and blog that are marked.