Written Assignment

AS Media Studies - Written Assignment

In the short video that our group produced we decided to use an element of dance.  The story involved a dancer (Andrew) coming into the hall and being told what to do for his audition in front of some judges (Ruby and myself). When the music begins and Andrew starts dancing the judges stop him to tell him what he was doing wrong and say that he is not good enough for what he was auditioning for.  He agrees to train harder and come back when he has improved and thinks that he will be able to pass.

In our film we tried to include as many shots as possible such as a pan, close ups, a long shot and a tilt.  These were used because they were able to show emotion, such as Andrew’s sadness when he was told that he was not good enough, by the way the camera was close to his face.  Some shots were not used such as crane, low angles shots and high angle shots because this would not have been appropriate for what we wanted to film. 

When using the different shots we had to think about why we should use them.  At the start of the video we used a tracking shot; this was so that we could film Andrew walking up to the teacher and talking to her.  Next we used a vertical pan to go down to Andrew’s feet to show his outfit for the dance and to show that he took off his shoes just like Ruby said.  The next two shots were used to show the anger on the judge’s faces and to show the hurt and sadness on Andrews.  We used a close up on the judges but the tilt was used to show the devastation caused to Andrew.

I think that each of our shots were successful, however the tilt could have been a bit smoother.

Some of the shots used were steady such as the long shot and the close up.  This was because a tripod was used to steady the camera.  However, when the tracking shot was used it was hard to keep the camera steady because the camera had to be moving to keep up with the character.  Also the tilt was unsteady as it was a hard shot to do.

Overall I think that we did a good job when thinking of the different shots to use and the filming of them.  The person behind the camera (Sophie) did find some elements difficult such as the tilt but was very good with using the tripod.  However, some improvements could have been made such as the characters slowing down so that using the tracking shot would have been easier to do.  Also, we need to get used to using the tilt shot and other camera positions such as low and high angles.