Practice filming session 15/12/08

For our filming practical we were asked to film someone reading a newspaper in a thrilling way making sure that we included an over the shoulder shot, point of view shot and an extreme close up. The first thing we done was to make up a storyboard so that we knew exactly what we were going to do before we started to film so that we didn't have to waste valuable filming time on planning and also to make sure that we included all of the shots required. We then watched a presentation given by Mickey the technician on how to use the camera and then went out to start our task.

I was quite happy with the camera work of our practical because even though the majority of the time it looked quite shaky and sometimes out of focus we used it to our advantage and made it so it looked like images caught on CCTV. The shots which were the most successful were those that were done at a high angle from the third floor of the college because it added to the effect of Miles being on CCTV because CCTV cameras normally give images from a high angle due to being mounted on walls and buildings. A shot that I found particularly hard to do were the panning shots of Miles running down Goswell road because I didn't seem to be able to get the speed of the camera right so most of the time he was dipping in and out of the shot instead of being in it all of the time.

The editing of the shots was straight forward and made easier from having the "bait" tutorial which got us familiar with all of the editing software. Although, at times it was a bit confusing due to there being so many takes of the same thing. I think that our continuity editing was quite successful the majority of the time and the short film seemed to make sense. There was also a point in the editing where we could add in this thing that made it look like the footage was coming from CCTV camera, we put this in because during filming I recorded over some of our footage by accident but when we watched it back it actually looked really good with one shot running into the end of another shot.

The mise en scene in our short film even though it was just college surroundings and the street was quite interesting because we didn't just stay in the same place, we could jump between the two which hopefully is interesting to watch.

My group did try to create an element of suspense through using the efects of CCTV footage so it looked like someone was watching or spying on Miles and also when Topaz drops the newspaper there's a camera tilt towards the floor and the camera lingers on the newspaper which would hopefully make the audience wonder what is in the paper. More suspense I think is then created through the camera panning around Miles as he is reading the paper so that we get a chance to see what is written in the paper and his reaction to it. The shot where Miles is running also creates suspense because the audience hopefully wants to know who or what he is running from.

One thing that we (when I say "we" I really mean "I") forgot to do was to start filming from where we left off so as not to record over what we already had and also when we was filming from the third floor window we forgot to think about whether we would be able to see the reflection of the camera and tripod in the shot, which we could but it wasn't to bad.

I don't think that we used any conventions from real thriller films except for perhaps at the end where Miles is running because at the end of most thriller films you kind of have that feeling of panic and how the protagonist has to quickly work out what's going to happen next so that they can prevent it.

The feedback from our teacher was really good and she thought the camera work and editing was great. I think that the practice filming session went really well and I am looking forward to starting the thriller opening.