Week 2 - Recording & Filming

What we did this week
This week we started on our recording our scene, we decided on the story last week as well as creating the storyboard for it. This week we would use the assigned SD cards for our group and assigned equipment which consisted of a video camera as well as a tripod stand to record our shots. In total we recorded on a multiple number of days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We spent most of our lessons recording and often continued on into our free time. 

We also had to decide on where to record, which was a bit of an issue as most rooms had a lot of items inside where as we needed a blank and empty room. We did finally come to a decision to record in our schools conference room as it had very few things inside other than chairs and multiple tables. We ended up moving around them all to suit our scene the best.

Finally in addition to recording video this week we also recorded a wild cat soundtrack and wrote a script for our scene. The script would just outline everything that we needed to say in the shots and the wild cat soundtrack is a recording of ambient (atmospheric) noise. This in our case was the recording of a projector and some sort of electrical whirring. This will be used as a background noise throughout our entire final piece, but subtle and not too loud.

What Techniques we used
This week in Media Studies we were working on recording our one minute sequence using continuous editing. We used a variety of different techniques and camera language whilst filming this week. We had to follow as many of the recording rules as possible, for example throughout filming we made sure to follow the 180 degree rule, this is to make sure that the audience isn't confused by a sudden camera flip during the final piece. To follow this rule we mades sure to keep the camera on the left hand side of the scene at all times. 

Another rule that was important to consider was the Match on action, this means throughout the scene that all locations and positioning of objects or people are the same in all shots unless there is a shot partway through showing the movement of that object/person. Fortunately for us there wasn't too much of this to consider as the setting for our recording was in a empty room, however we did have to include it in our piece, so to do this we used match on action to show the door opening and then cuts to show the door open on the other side of the door. 

We also used the shot-reverse-shot technique when we were recording, this is a type of editing that involves 3 cuts to 3 different shots, the first one has to be the same as the last shot in terms of camera language and character in the shot.
Of course we also had to follow use a wide variety of camera angles and shot types, this we included in our storyboard and also recorded, we used high angles to show weakness and close ups to show the emotion of how someone is feeling.

Evaluation
This week was a mixture of both good and bad, varying from the point in the week. The first 3-4 days were much more negative from my personal experience as they were a lot more stressful for me as we had to record and in some cases re-record many shots which was difficult in such a small time scale of only a week. This was further worsened by the difficulty in finding a time where all of our group could record at the same time, often we found that the best time to record was during lesson as we were all there for the most part, however since we needed extra time that meant it was tricky.

Although it wasn't all bad this week, when I wasn't worried about recording the footage we managed to be able to relax a bit and we did manage to finish all of our recording this week.

In conclusion I think that this week could have gone a lot better, however it was difficult to control as it was due to a limited time scale and people having to leave and do something other than recording in our free time.