Short Conversation Evaluation

Our brief was to create a short film of a conversation between two people showing the 180-degree line of action rule, shot reverse shot and match on action.

In filmmaking, the 180-degree is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. A shot reverse shot is a technique where one character is shown looking at another character, often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. The viewer assumes that the two characters are looking at each other since they are shown facing the opposite direction. A match on action is a technique often used to hide editing. It refers to the editing technique where the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot’s action.

The planning for this piece included writing a script on celtx, which was quite hard to get used to using however it became easy once we learnt how to use it properly. The next step was to create a storyboard to give us a vision of what things would look like once we had started filming them/filmed them. We then did location research so we could find a place that would be suitable to have someone walking down a corridor, opening a door and then having a conversation inside with another actor who was already situated in the room. After this we wrote a shot list so we knew what type of shots we would be using for each clip, we used an over the shoulder shot, two shot, mid shot, long shot, medium long shot and a close up. Finally we did a risk assessment to make sure that the room we used was safe to set up the camera in and safe to use without risking hazards to the people involved in filming our short conversation scene.

Whilst filming the piece we had a few difficulties as we broke the line without realising. After we realised that we had broke the line, we then had to re-film several scenes so that they were on the correct side of the line. We also had to re-film a few scenes due to bloopers. However once we got into the filming we found that it was quite easy to stick to the filming and we worked out how to get the correct shots quite easily.

We edited the film using final cut and we then selected our main clips to make sure that we used the best versions we had. We also used a sound bridge to make the edit smoother. We used a fade in/fade out effect after the title and at the end of the scene to show smoothly the start and end of the scene.

In our film, you can see the use of a 180-degree line as the over the shoulder shots have been filmed from over character A’s left shoulder and over character B’s right shoulder and then when the medium two shot is shown we can see that it has been filmed from the same side of the line. Shot reverse shot can be shown with the use of the over the shoulder shots and match on action can be shown with the use of the close up on the door handle.