EVALUATION OF THE EXCHANGE

For 'The Exchange' exercise I worked in a group of four consisting of myself, Dianne Hamilton, Kirsten Day and Courtney Smith. We each has responsibilities for the exercise; Dianne and Courtney were to be doing the acting so in scenes including both of them Kirsten and I shared the filming duties. In scenes where it was just one of the, the other actor would film it in order for everyone to get a chance to film. We all helped out with the costumes and props, bringing in different things that we knew would help with the Mise-en-Scene. I feel I made a good contribution to the group, and although I struggled a little with the zoom on the camera I think I did well.

Before being able to start shooting we had to fill out all the pre-production sheets. We had to first come up with a synopsis, treatment and storyboard which we did as a group. Dianne drew up the storyboard as she is the most artistic out of all of us. We then filled out location and H&S sheets together, making sure everyone agreed with what was being put down. We worked very well as a group because everyone gave each other time to speak and share ideas.

Our exercise itself came out quite well, and our feedback and critique was quite positive when we screened it to the rest of the class. We used good framing the whole way through and stuck by the 180 degree line rule. Our technical production values were on the whole quite good, however there was one seen where there was a double zoom giving a jerky effect which weakened the piece slightly. It would have been fine if our whole exercise had been filmed in a jerky and uncomfortable way, but the rest of it was quite smooth so this mistake really stood out. I was the one who filmed this shot, meaning that the mistake was mine. What went wrong was the zoom on the camera is quite sensitive and it is hard to get a perfect zoom without it at some point speeding up or slowing down. I also had to try and catch up with the actors, meaning I panicked and clearly messed up. We watched all the footage before we left the location but obviously didn't pick up on it at the time, if we had we could have re-shot this part in order to make the whole piece a lot cleaner. Apart from that, our technical factors were considered very good. The piece was described as 'simple, but well done' and someone said 'less is more' in this case. The only editing issue was some people thought the scene where Dianne is walking up to Courtney was too long, we had already broken it up into two parts but people still thought it was a little slow compared to the rest of the exercise. They did like the cross cutting we used to break it up thought. They also thought the high contrast black and white effect we added in the editing worked quite well.

In terms of stylistic factors, we got good feedback. Our piece used slower camera work, and a tilt up of Courtney that was quite Film Noir and the class voted yes to the question of ours looking like a Film Noir/Thriller. The Mise-En-Scene was good because we tried hard with costumes, making Courtney look shady and Di like a femme fatale. The location was good, especially with the frozen icicles and the billowing smoke. We chose a royalty free song from the internet which was a slow, jazzy through back to Film Noir. Someone said this could have been a little bit more dramatic when the handover happened, but apart from that it was good and fitted with the piece well. We had quite clear narrative, although there was no close up of the handover so no one actually knew what was being passed from Courtney to Dianne. We story-boarded a close up, but must have missed it out on the day.

Overall, I am really proud of our Exchange piece, even with the jerky zoom. I think our stylistics were spot on and we had minimal mistakes. The only thing I would have done better, looking back, was shooting a few more shots so we would have had more to work with in the edit.