Filming Essay

On Thursday 11th June we had to make a short film about a tour around our 6th form, we did this in a group of 5. we chose to do a short film about a new student at the school who got shown around by the head boy, our film clearly showed that we weren’t very good at holding the camera steady or timing cuts very well as the camera was often shaking and the cuts we made weren’t very good and very quick. Another problem with our film was the sound quality, this was due to using a camcorder outside with wind and not having the chance to edit it out so there wasn’t much we could do about it, this was a common problem with all the groups and films, another common problem with all the films was holding the camera steady as zooming in and out often made it shake slightly. Traffic noise was also a big problem in other people’s films because they were much louder than wind and couldn't hear the speech over it very well. But these are problems that should be overcome during editing. Editing would also overcome other problems that showed in the films such as gaps between cuts and rewinding the tapes successfully. This was very clear fault in some of the films as there was time between cuts where there would be simply and blue screen and no sound until the scene continues, another fault like this was when a scene has been done again but not rewound properly and the scene starts then starts again, these problems wouldn’t occur when we use editing because we can edit them out but we now know how to avoid it. I feel that we have now learnt from our mistakes and next time we film the film will be to a higher standard by using equipment such as a tripod to hold camera steady and iMovie on the Mac books to edit the sound well. One other problem that other films had was that it wasn’t very relevant to having a tour around the 6th form. This was the first time I had use a camcorder seriously or for work purposes and I feel that it has helped me a lot and I will continue to improve on aspects such as holding the camera steady and choosing the correct angle.

With more practice using the camera and more practice choosing how to arrange the shots I feel that the standard of my filming with significantly improve.