Preliminary Task: Brief

In this task I have partnered up with Max and Andreas. We have to make a short film showing different camera angles as a practice for the main task later in the school year. In addition, we have also learnt what continuity editing is and how we will implement this into our film. The continuity editing techniques we learnt were:

• 180 Degree Rule - A basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object in a scene. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters, and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character is always frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first. The object that is being filmed must always remain in the centre, while the camera must always face towards the object.

Diagram of the 180 degree rule.

• Match-On-Action - Refers to film editing techniques where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot's action. Although the two shots may have actually been shot hours apart from each other, match on action gives the impression of continuous time when watching the edited film.

• Shot/Reverse Shot - A film technique where one character is shown looking at another character, 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.

Example of shot/reverse shot from Casablanca.