Video Review of This Years Continuity Project compared with Last Years Attempt

Since I now have both last years Continuity Project and this years, I will be able to see what skills I have improved upon or learnt. As a result I will be creating a video review comparing the two which will cover areas such as:

-Framing
-Quality
-Set Choice
-Music Choice
-The Continuity Aspects
-180° Rule and How closely it is followed
-Relation to the Screenplay

As well as anything else that may come up, I hope this exercise will help me to be more critical with my pieces in the Future.

Continuity Project Video

Here is my completed Continuity project video. In terms of what I think about it I do enjoy certain aspects about it, yet I still have a number of problems with its composition.


AS LEVEL CONTINUITY PROJECT - Clean Start from David Smith on Vimeo.

Firstly, I find that the music at the start makes it a little more interesting to watch by appealing to more than one factor. However, there is a noticeable change in the screenplay and exactly how we recorded this part. Originally the main character would walk down a hallway with different shots from a moving camera, we found this too hard to achieve and so we decided to shorten this sequence on the day to save time for editing. The original idea of having the character talk on the phone was also scrapped as it seemed very dull and lifeless when it was actually placed in the piece.

Secondly, the continuity portion of the piece is relatively well done except for one noticeable error I only noticed a short while later. Due to editing a particular editing problem involving clip timings, we see our main character start a piece of dialogue, sit down and then in the next shot he once again sits down, I would have removed this had I noticed it earlier but it slipped my mind. The rest of the features hold up moderately, such as the action matching with both the doors and with the money exchange regardless of the dialogue error of stating "Can I borrow a five" where upon the other character hands him a twenty pound note.

Compared with last years attempt however I find this to be a much stronger piece as we kept a straight forward approach instead of veering the focus halfway through production.

The Difficulties of using a moving pan to follow a character

At the start of my piece there is a rather annoying issue of getting the camera to turn smoothly to instigate a pan, the main problem comes from the issue of it being such a delicate process and the grip on the tripod itself is just a solid line of plastic, making it slippy at times. I think that in future I am actually going to use some gloves when operating the camera or having others operate the camera, even simply golfing gloves should provide a tight grip to allow smooth flow. The second problem I have with this is how increasing the height on the camera by extending the legs also makes the tripod a tad more… ‘Spindly’, it is a little bit more prone to knocks and shakes as you can clearly see in the piece. To counteract this, one should keep a tight hold and locked body position when turning, be very tight with the control and perhaps press one hand on the base when turning so no shake can ensue as the base is firmly pinned to the ground.

Corridor song music

There is a mild change, instead of Huey Lewis's Power of Love, I am instead going with Hip to be Square, simply because its much more punchier and a large degree more catchier.

Set Change

While the Corridor remains the same in the piece I have changed the room used for the conversation, simply because the light levels dont change as drastically over time as they do in the new one, the sound quality is also better in the new room.

Ending Title Music

For the Ending title music I have decided to go with something that is still light hearted yet also has something of a kick to it. The song that I have chosen is 'Itchycoo Park' by 'The Small Faces', I find it to be very interesting as an ending song.

Shooting Method

In order to make sure that I can get a clean edit, I am recording the scene from three seperate points of view, one after the other, what this allows me to do is eliminate the risk of seeing another camera in the shot and also it gives me more editing options to work with, with more footage I can make a more interesting piece with a cleaner shot reverse shot as opposed to one where the camera just keeps cutting at the end of a sentence.