Prelim Task Comments

The first part of my coursework was the prelim task where myself and 2 others had to record a short 2 minute opening of a film involving a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.

Our prelim film was about a distraught man who was struggling to overcome the loss of his girlfriend. As he seeks help from a psychologist, he begins to start dipping in and out of the dreamland and not knowing if he can control his actions. The sequence filmed begins with the protagonist, the man, walking into the office of the psychologist and they exchange several lines of dialogue revolving round how the man feels and his current mental state. However, at the end the man can be seen holding a gun; but in a black and white frame to help the audience make a possible judgement of what is real and what is not.

During this project, several aspects of filming and camera had been conditioned into the way I film including shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. As I filmed this prelim task, I discovered that I had made several errors like the ones listed above. Along with those errors, I also left a camera tripod in shot during a handheld shot creating a continuity error within the frame.

I feel as though this short experience of film making has helped me to know what has to be improved in my main task.