Ideas

When we were given a task of pitching a film idea to our teacher we got together to decide on what genre we would focus the foundation piece on. We initially agreed that we should either do a horror or thriller as opposed to a comedy, drama or romance. This is because those genres would require more dialogue which would be more difficult to film and with a horror or thriller we can rely on silence to create the atmosphere. One of our main ideas was to do a sort of crime thriller and create a scene where the main character was to be kidnapped. We can use the schools location to its maximum potential and because our dress code is quite smart it would make the costume work easier and less of a hassle because of the common representation of gangsters being dressed in suits.

[Continuity Piece] Analysation

First of all we tried to find a quiet area in our school to do our first piece of filming, we then later made the decision to film the scene in the sixth form area, however this should have been avoided as it is a very loud part of the school considering it is next to the common room where a lot of loud conversing took place whilst filming and therefore affected our piece. Before filming our media teacher, Mr.Mcmanus, introduced us to the 180 degree rule which gave us a greater insight on how to keep our piece fluid and realistic. At one point we had broken the 180 degree rule at a specific interval but thankfully when editing we were able to cut the scene out to make our piece seem continuous.

[Continuity Piece] Decisions

We chose to film using only Rene's hand held skills with the camera, we opted for this as a group as it gave a more realistic view of the scene. While filming we faced a variety of issues such as the background noise level of other students around the Sixth Form block, we also has a few interferences from surrounding students while we were filming. On the other hand the positives of filming in the Sixth Form block include the new innovations that were recently made to the building which allows us to project a modern and well lit environment to the audience. This of course made filming easier and less of a hassle of having to adjust the lighting when editing. When editing the piece we used the software 'iMovie' which was quite good for a basic piece as it was simply to use and therefore allowing every group member to take part in this process as it was the first time editing videos for some members.

Continuity Piece

This is the continuity piece we did as a group. This helped us to work together and better understand how to create a media piece, when filming our first set of shots were not good enough to use because of the many problems such as background noises and other individuals entering and ruining the shots. When filming for the second time we made it as simple as possible and decided what shots we were going to use before shooting, we also made sure we were filming during lesson time so sound would be at a minimal. When it came down to the editing we unfortunately broke the 180 degree rule and had to edit out a shot in order to allow the piece run smoothly, because of this error we had a first hand experience of the rule and now know how to avoid it.