Match Cut Tutorial 12/01/09

The focus of todays lesson was match cuts. We started by identifying what a match cut is, a match cut is a cut that literally matches something usually action. For example, if you was to see a character reaching for a door handle and the next thing you see is a close up of the character's hand opening the door that would be a match cut.

We were then given a task to do in which we had to create a shot list for a sequence using no more than 20 shots. At first I thought that to come up with 20 shots would be difficult but once we started to break everything down I started to think that it would actually be really difficult to not do more than 20 shots. After this Mickey showed us how he filmed the sequence and asked us to spot the match cuts. What was really good about seeing the clip was that we could identify some of the shots that we had put in our shot list. Also that way that time and location were shown, with it coming up on the screen letter by letter as the character was typing it was really good because it was effective and an easy way to tell the audience where and when it is set something that we perhaps could use in our thriller.

We were then given the match cut task that would make up our preliminary film. The brief was that we had to film a sequence where a character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue making sure that we use at least one match cut, an example of shot/reverse shot and show our understanding of the 180 degree rule. Due to not planning very much for the last filming exercise we decided to plan this one carefully, even though the last clip turned out really good we were running around all over the place and it was stressful so we wanted to be more planned and organised ready for filming next lesson. Through planning we came up with a lot of good ideas like setting it in the media storage cupboard and positioning the camera so that it sits in between the shelves so that it looks like the audience are watching something that is secret.