Preliminary Task

For the preliminary task we were given the task of:

Subject A entering a room from a corridor and opening the door. Inside the room Subject B is sitting down without saying anything, A gives a pieces of paper to B. B reads it and reacts. A displays some kind of emotion and leaves.

I was in a group of four with Elle Fletcher, George Jackson and Amber Holt.

Genre

For our pre-liminary piece we decided to do our piece as a comedy, as we would be doing horror as the final piece so we could get an understanding in the differences when filming acting and directing. Also it meant that we could use a good mix of digetic and non digetic sound, camera shots and mise en scene to create an effective piece.

Location

When deciding upon the location, we had to choose a place which was easily accessible, would not change that much in the time we were filing, and that fit into our genre’s specification. For example we would not film our comedy in a graveyard.  Some of our ideas where:
A school classroom

Farm yard/drying sheds

A cinema

Bowling Alley

Restaurant                 

Props

When deciding on props we needed, as it was such a short piece, each prop would have to be used effectively, for example with the piece of paper, there would be shots showing the significance of it, highlighting how it relates to the storyline. The other props would be ones to show the personalities of the characters, for example Amber doing work reading from a book and writing showing her intelligence.

Camera Angles/Shots

When deciding on our shots for the scene, we thought that we would most likely begin with quite concealing shots, only showing part of the picture, leaving the audience wondering what’s going to happen but as the scene moves forward it will show more clear shots, revealing the full story.

Our Idea

Our basic idea was to start with an establishing shot of the school, which would pan across to a shot of the corridor which we would be filming in, this would all be quite slow. It would then cut to three quick close ups, of a hand flushing the toilet, which would move to hands washing, and then to the hands being dried, all three would only have the diegetic sound of the activities, these would all be very fast paced shots.  The next shot would be of George (subject A) walking out of the toilet and as he did a upbeat song would start. The camera would then cut to in the corridor where it would watch George walk away until he came to a door. It would then cut to a P.O.V of Amber (subject B) who would be sitting in the room doing work, she would look up and see George standing in the doorway. The camera would then move to a two shot where both characters are clear and you see George sit down and give Amber a piece of paper. It moves to an over the shoulder shot of Amber unravelling the paper with George looking excited in the background. She opens it up and it says ‘I Love You’ or ‘Hey’, either way the reaction of Amber is the same, it cuts to a P.O.V of George who is looking up at Amber who looks disgusted, and then to a P.O.V of amber who is looking at George and he looks anticipant. It moves back to the two shot and you see Amber throw the paper at George and walk out the room, although the camera does not move so leaves George alone in the shot. George then exits and it moves back to a shot at the opposite end of the corridor and you watch George walk away, and see that he has toilet paper stuck to his shoe.