First practice filming task – Reading a newspaper

As a practice task, we were given the task of filming someone reading a newspaper in an interesting way that creates suspense. We were set this to get us used to using the camera for our final thriller films.
The camera work was not particularly great, as it was often shaky and unclear. I was also unhappy with the fact that we did not leave space between the person on film and the environment, so when it came to editing it looked very squashed. This made our piece look unprofessional and amateur. The most successful camera technique we used was filming from behind the plant, this worked well as behind the plants we could see a bit of Daniella reading the newspaper. It also looked good as it created a tense atmosphere as we didn’t know exactly what Daniella was doing there and why she was there. Filming behind the plant created suspense as we wanted to know more about the scenario and it conveyed that someone was watching her or even spying on her. This really set the scene and created an interesting effect on the person in the scene.
After we were happy with all the shots we filmed, we then had to edit it. At first, the editing was hard to grasp and get the hang of. However, when I got used to it I found it interesting and fun playing around with the different editing techniques on the computer. Editing the film itself was hard, as some of it did not make sense, this was due to the narrative not being clear. Although most of it ran smoothly some of the shots were jumpy, so this highlighted the bad filming.
I learnt that the mise en scene was very important when it came to filming as it tells the audience where the character is and what they could be doing. The use of mise en scene in our short film made it very boring, as the person we filmed was not placed in an interesting setting so this made the film itself very slow and not at all interesting. The set and scene we chose to use was our own media class itself, so the audience could see desks and tables, which did not look at all exciting. It also did not help us when trying to create suspense. The element of suspense was very little due to where we chose to film it and also because we didn’t use a range of camera shots. The camera shots we used where very repetitive which didn’t help at all when trying to make it interesting. The only time we created an element of suspense was when filming from behind the plants as this created anticipation, but other then that it was a drag to watch.
We hadn’t used conventions from different thriller films, as we had not properly analysed one before this filming task.
Personally, I felt the filming went ok considering it was our first time working together as a group and also with the cameras. The only thing I would change for the next time was to come up with a wider range of settings. After our first time of practice, we all know how to film properly making it look professional rather then amateur.