Continuity Exercise Evaluation

First video - BTEC Continuity Exercise 2014 - The Package
By me (Robert), Connor, Mikey and Leonie

'The package' was a 2 minute short film about a transfer of a briefcase which the audience has no idea what is inside and still doesn't find out at the end. (spoilers!) It's a very mysterious video that involves two and only two characters. Both of which are completely different to each other, one dressed formally in a suit and the other one dressed in casual clothes.
This video is part of a challenge set by our Media tutor in which this short film had to be shot in no more than 20 shots. It had to have the following shots...
- At least five close-ups
- At least one extreme close-up
- At least two matches on action
- At least one eyeline match
- At least one POV
- A shot-reverse shot sequence
- Once (but only one) camera movement
- Some establishing shots and re-establishing shots
- At least one non-cut transition

We succeeded but were left with some good points and some bad points. Below is an analysis of our work constructed by my own group and the audience who has watched our film in class.

Continuity - What is it?
It is a system that's used to create flow with an audience, it's something the audience would never question as like a transition from a shot into another shot. We had some good continuity used in and between shots however there were a few mistakes...

First off, there was a reflection of the camera and crew in the sunglasses that the man in the suit (me) was wearing. This was at shots 0:16-0:21.
Secondly, My head was positioned differently between the shots. For example; at shot 0:24-0:25 you could see I was turning my head to the right. The shot that follows I was doing the same action again.
Then Leonie's legs were in one of the shots. This was at 1:25-1:28
Next, the weather dramatically changed between 0:32-0:37 (foggy) to 0:37-0:38 onwards. (sunny) We couldn't do anything about that. It was something we couldn't control.
We also broke the 180 degree rule... just between 1:00-1:04
Lastly, the briefcase is opened at shot ... 1:16-1:24 but then in the next shot it is closed again.

mise-en-scene
mise-en-scene translates to 'what's in scene'. We start off in a foggy field, where we are introduced to a shady male character appearing through the fog dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase and wearing sunglasses which hide the characters face slightly suggesting that there may be he's hiding something. We next see him stop and look around which he could be looking for someone or trying to see whether someone is watching him. He continues walking until he reaches a container, from there we are introduced to another male leaning on the side of the container; he is dressed in casual wear. Then we realise that the shady male character is meeting this casual guy in which they quickly transfer the package (the briefcase). They walk away and split; this is the last time that we see the shady character and we are left with the other guy who stops to see what's inside the case, when we see him opening it, it is unclear what is inside because of the camera's position. We then see his reaction, The film just ends there. The last shot is of the guy smiling - his reaction to opening the briefcase before fading to black. Leaving one question on everyone's mind... what was in that briefcase.

Camera work
Most of the shots in the film are close-ups. We filmed this with a DSLR with an 18-55mm lens. Most shots were filmed with automatic focus turned on however this is evidently a problem because if you look closely at some of the shots, you can see focus shifting every now and then, so we won't be using that again! We'll stick to manual focus, it will just mean it will be a bit more harder to operate the camera with. However with using the DSLR we had some really nice shots and some with some real good depth of field which is a bonus of using DSLR's as apposed to camcorders. 

We shot with a flat picture profile - this means that the colours in the recorded footage looked unsaturated as well as the whole image looking not as sharp as what it should of been. Our intention of doing this was that we were going to apply saturation and sharpness during editing but we ran out of time, this will of given our film a much higher quality than the inbuilt sharpness and saturation in the DSLR.

Overall most of out shots were either close ups or medium shots, we still met the requirements and used a range of shots. Our overall length of our short film was 1:32 but it lasted longer because of a mistake in the editing leaving you with a blank screen and ambient noise for another 20 seconds. The shot between 0:31-0:37 had a lot of camera shake caused by a dolly we were using to side track the subject as he was walking along, this was due to uneven ground. We were going to stabilize it in the editing process but again we simply ran out of time.

Sound
To record sound we used a Rode VideoMic. All the sound used in the film was recorded separately; we didn't ever use any natural sound from the video clips but there was a mistake in the film where you here no sound at all; this was between 0:27-0:29. Overall I think our film uses convincing sound that people will think was recorded with the video and not recorded separately (excluding when the sound stops at 0:27).
The whole point of us using external audio was because of 2 reasons...
- The main being that while we were recording shots, Connor was directing me by talking to me about what I should be doing while it was being picked up from the microphone.
- The second was that while I was walking (the guy in the suit) my footsteps weren't heard as loud as I'd like, we therefor used some recording footsteps that boosted the volume of me walking. This gives it a bit of atmosphere. There was at some instance a point where the footsteps were cut off where there should of been some such as at 0:12-0:14. This was because the recorded footsteps did not match to my footsteps in the video slowing down to a stand still as they were out of sync. Had I had more time, I may of been able to fix that.

Overall as a first video, I think we all did pretty well and look forward to the many more videos to come. (which will be better!)