Preliminary exercise full evaluation

In this post, I will do a full evaluation of our preliminary exercise.

We have the link to our video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfyRMVIzWrU

To begin with, the establishing shot isn't great, Sajjad doesn't fully fit in the shot. Half of the shot focuses on Sajjad, but it also focuses too much on the background. We could've filmed this better if Sajjad appeared bigger in our shot, this would make the audience focus more on him rather than the objects in the background.

In the next shot where we see Sajjad look up at the camera, there is a problem with the camera work because it is a tiny bit shaky. The other problem, (the major problem!) is that we can see our teacher in the background! This is a huge issue since our teacher is not meant to be in our preliminary exercise. The audience also may focus more on our teacher because he is moving in the background. This was the disadvantage of filming our preliminary exercise in an active classroom.

in the next shot when the door is being opened, there is a continuity error soon after. While the door is semi opened in the first shot, it is suddenly fully opened in the next shot. This will confuse the audience because the film is meant to be continuous, and when a shot suddenly cuts like this, it will be seen as a major mistake.

There is also a similar mistake when I sit down in the chair, the camera then cuts to a different angle, but it doesn't look continuous.

Aside from these problems, the preliminary exercise wasn't that bad. We learnt from our mistakes here, and in my opinion, we did much better with our main production.