Continuity Editing Exercise

For the first part of my Media AS coursework, I had to create a short video clip of somebody moving up to another person, and then having a short conversation. My group and I (Satveer Degun and Muhammad Rahman) were asked to be very imaginative with the project so that our creativity skills could be improved for later parts of the coursework.

There were also some certain aspects of the work that we were attempting to put in our work so that we can try out the new skills that we had learnt; these would come in very handy in later pieces of work, so by having them in our early ones, we could get to grips with them now. These aspects include the following:

• Rule of Thirds: Dividing your screen into nine squares, and including the actor's eyes within the top ones.

• 180 Degree Rule: Keep all actors in a conversation on one side of the camera (one on the left and the other on the right, etc.) so the viewer does not get confused with who is on which side; the only way to break this is by having the camera show the movement.

• Match On Action: To display continuous movement in two (or more) different shots.

• Shot Reverse Shot: To have one shot (shot 1), followed by another shot (shot 2) and then followed by the shot you used originally (shot 1) so that continuity is apparent.

With my grouping, I had found that my team and I had worked extremely well together as we all understood each other's thoughts and views on the work. As most groups were put into two, my group was a three, meaning that we had to split the shots even more, as oppose to having two even sets. This was a challenge for us as we felt the need to create exciting yet challenging shots in all three storyboards yet remain the level of continuity that we were expected to follow as well as the four rules above. I found that we had split the rules fairly and by looking at all of the requirements and what we have done, I believe that it was created successfully. As well as following all of the requirements, we each offered our own improvements to each other which we had discussed through and followed if it were relevant. Overall, I would say that my group and I had worked very well together and I would be pleased to work with them again.

When it came to creativity, the first thing we thought of was the setting. We believed that an indoor scenario that happened in the school building would've been very typical, thus losing the creativity that we initially wanted; taking this in mind, the location that we had chosen was outside of the park, as it was a quiet place that allowed sound to be recorded properly, and this setting was also an outdoor area that was close to the school, so we did not have to go very far to record. Also, the park was not used very much by other students, so we felt that we did not have to worry much about whether or not anyone's work (or our own) would be interrupted, so we could get to work very quickly and complete it sufficently.

With my storyboard, I felt that once it came to filming, I needed to change a few parts of it. For example, I intended to include a 'cutaway' that had a character's arm stop as soon as it covered the entire screen, and move afterwards, leading to a completely different part of the location. When it came to filming this scene, I found that it did not make much sense to include it in that way, so I had turned the camera position around. Other than that, I had not changed anything else from my storyboards.
Below are two images of my storyboards: