Today Saskia and I edited together our conversation shoot, that we filmed last week. We did this as another practice for our opening sequence. On the day we took turns with who oversaw sound and who oversaw camera etc. Then on editing day we made sure we both understood the steps and had a go each.
When setting up the camera we followed Mats rules, when we passed a piece of equipment we would say ‘mine’ or ‘yours’ to make sure the camera was always being looked after. While on set we needed to consider the 180-degree rule which is an imaginary line between the two subjects. The camera must stay on one side on the line to ensure the continuity is correct. We learnt about this at our previous camera workshops. We also considered rule of thirds and how much head space we should leave above the subject's head. We decided that less was more effective. Another technique we used was the call outs before filming. We would have one person say, ‘Stand by’, ‘Rolling’, ‘Action.’ This is to ensure the shoot is efficient and runs smoothly.
We ran into the problem of how to adjust the white balance. Our shot was looking way too dark, after some time we managed to remember how to adjust the white balance and exposure and had a play around until we were happy with the shot and brightness.
I think for a first attempted at a dialogue scene it wasn’t too bad. In a few of the shots we could have taken some more time to consider the framing. Some shots hold a lot of dead space above the subjects' heads. I also think we could have extended ourselves further by including some over the shoulder shots, to experiment with depth of field.
For next time, I think we are all a little more confident in how to smoothly film a dialogue scene, this exercise was good because we can apply this to our opening sequence. It was also useful to work under timed conditions, because we don’t have too long to shoot our opening sequence
Editing
Saskia and I began by sorting through our rough footage. .......
We refreshed our memories on how to cut, drag and place footage on the timeline. I learnt about unlinking audio tracks to visuals and adding audio transitions to make the background noise less jarring when cutting to different shots.
I also learnt about how in a dialogue scene a character can ‘win’ the scene. This essentially means that whatever character has the most screen time is the more important or dominant person in the conversation or scene.
I often made the mistake of cutting too early so that the subjects face would quickly jump to a different position instead of swiftly moving through. After some practice I think I managed to fix my wrong doings and learn from my
I believe with all the dialogue scenes we managed to keep the 180-degree rule, however at the very end of the day we did some quick shots of some cut aways where we slightly crossed the line. We didn’t end up using those shots because of this, however we all understood where we went wrong.
After looking through the footage I think we could have tried to capture some more cut way shots (that used the 180 degree rule) and over the shoulder shots. I think we slightly played it safe and maybe could have benefitted from doing other angles or playing with depth of field to make it more interesting.
Therefore, on the day of our filming for our opening sequence we will we get all our basic shots, using the rule of three. However, we will put time aside to capture some more interesting shots and think outside the box.
Overall this exercise was useful for how we approach our actual opening sequence, not just in the filming but also in the editng.
Our dialogue shoot.
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