PRELIM TASK : Swede Film

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.


Match on Action -
Match on action occurs when an action that begins in one shot is continued or completed in the next. In an exterior shot Julia Roberts opens the front door to a house. In the next shot the camera, now indoors, photographs her entering the foyer and closing the door.


Shot/Reverse Shot -
Shot reverse shot (or shot/countershot) is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other


180-Degree Rule -
The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.

Micro Drama Deconstruction

Deconstruction of Ben H and Oli P's Microdrama

Aspects of Narrative
Propp's theory is used;

• the zombie being the villain
• one of the 'fleeing' characters being the hero
• the 'wizard' being the magical helper

Todorov's theory is used;

1. people sat around table (equilibrium)
2. zombie come and wrecks havoc (dis-equilibrium)
3. zombie is killed and comes back to life (new-equilibrium)

Mise-en-scene

Bright lighting connotes that it is day time. The use of a light-saber suggests that the film is fantasy based.

Audience

I think that their target audience would be male teenagers and young men because it is a horror and all the characters (other than the wizard) are teenagers. There may also be a secondary target audience of younger children, as the use of a 'wizard' and light-saber makes the film edge towards the fantasy genre.

Sound

They used a low key, but fast soundtrack which connotes that the film is going to be scary but also fast paced.

Another non-diegetic sound that they used was the sudden drum/string combo played when the zombie presses its faces against the window. This makes you jump.
The wizard's dialogue connotes that he is very old, he greets Jeremy using his full name and the full expression of 'hello'.

Lesson from my Microdrama

Shooting and editing our micro-drama has laugh me to bare a few things in mind when going out to shoot something.


The first being that i need to have planned what i am going to shoot on a screenplay document so that we have all our shots organised with the correct scripts. This enables us to shoot all the shots that we need from one area before moving to the next, meaning we don't have to keep returning to places in order to shoot scenes in the order that they come in the screenplay.


The second being that we need to film scenes at as many different shot angles as possible, incorporating lots of different types of shots so that the audience does not get bored/sick of the repetitiveness of the same two shots jumping back and forth.