Preliminary Task

This week we have been doing our preliminary tasks. I worked with Della, Gemma & Sarah to create a short clip involving a character opening a door, holding a conversation with another and then leaving. We had to include a number of things in it; match on action, the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot.
Doing this has helped me by allowing me to learn how to hold a camera steady with and without a tripod or dolly and how different shots and ways of filming create different moods and impressions, for example a low angle shot would give the implication of power of authority and a long shot could create an impression of how big an area is.


I learnt the definitions for the three terms; match on action is when you use a variety of different shots to show one action. We used the opening of a door to demonstrate this. Firstly we filmed a midshot of Gemma walking to the door, took another close up shot of her hand reaching for the door handle and a final shot of her walking through the door from the other side.
The 180 degree rule is basically keeping the camera on one side of the actors, we did this by selecting a central point and making sure we didn't film beyond 180 degrees of this point. Our example of this was in the conversation between Gemma and I. By keeping the subjects on one side of the camerait may make the viewer feel more as though they are there.
Finally, shot reverse shot is when you see the orginal shot, and then see the exact reverse of it. To demonstrate this, we took a shot of Gemma speaking over my shoulder, and then filmed my response over her shoulder. We had to ensure that we kept with the 180 degree rule whilst doing this though, however we did not encounter any problems with it. We did this so you can see both characters inital reactions to what was said previously, allowing a better connection with the audience. We also used it in Sarah and Gemma's conversation, to show more emotion and let the audience see both points of view.
We also used panning, when Gemma was opening the door, walking to the stairs and whilst she was walking to me. We did this so that we could see her moving into the situation clearly.


I loved how the match on action looked on the film, and may try to incorporate it into my actual coursework piece if I can. I thought that we were sucessful in our attempt to film, although there were some slight issues with framing the subject and getting everything central. We now have to edit the shots we have taken using an editing programme, which will help us to use it later on for our main tasks.