Preliminary Project

Made by: Thach, Leo, Marco, Holly and Anna


In order to facilitate the shoot, we had lessons on learning the cameras, preparing for a camera, communication during a shoot and we did have a practical lesson on shooting a scene applying the 180 degree law. Therefore, minutes before the shooting, we actually got used with the cameras and other basic requirements for a shoot such as: communication, setting up, story board... We were also divided into small groups of 3 or 4.
The story board was already designed for us, including the script. All we needed to do was choosing an appropriate content to the script and the shooting part. We were also prepared a full pack of camera, tripod and tape to serve for the shooting.
Due to the fact that there was not plenty of time to prepare, we came up with limit idea to satisfy with the script and the story board. Despite the lack of time, at the end, our group all decided to choose the most appropriate content and after that, everything went pretty well. However, if we had some more time to prepare and to shoot, we could have been able to shoot better scenes, the actors would have had more time to learn and feel the expression from the script and better ideas could have had came up to make the shoot more interesting and attractive. Nevertheless, we were all satisfied to what we had done.
What we did was shooting a sequence of shoots from a given story board. There were 4 persons in my group, 3 boys and 1 girl. After choosing the right content which was meant to be appropriate to the given script, we then decided that 2 persons took the acting bit, 1 boy and 1 girl. The rest would take the director part and the camera man. My role was to be a director. I think I did pretty well as a director. At first, I did not get used with speaking out “Stand by” or “Rolling”. However, as the shoot went on, I gradually got used with it and be confident in saying that. We decided to shoot the whole story board in 4 ways: wide shot, close up of the first character and the second character, over shoulder of the first and the second character. This means that for the whole story, we had to shoot 4 different times at 4 different shoot angles. Everything went quite well. The communication between the groups was clear. People understood each other. Thanks to that, the production stage went quite well and fast that we had more time to get on with some extra angle shootings such as: eye-line of the first character to the other one and opposite and the low-angle shooting...
Even though we did quite well during the production, we were unprofessional in some ways. Sometimes, we had to shoot again because the actors forgot their script. However, this was caused due to the lack of time. Sometimes, the camera man did forget to bubble and I, a director, sometimes did not know what to direct the actors on how they could express themselves more in order to show their professionalism. On the other, I think that as new people in the making film production stage, we did quite well.
I could understand more about the 180 degree rule and apply it on the right way. I also knew how to be a director. Now, I am able to communicate with people during the shooting confidently and had some experiences in using a camera. Also, in a film production, I learnt more about the importance of a story board. I did not only help the director to follow the production easily, it did help other people such camera man and actors to follow the stage of production. It clarified for us where we were, what we had done and what we were going to do. From that, the time taken for the production is shortened and therefore, we had more time to do more productive stuffs. However, compared to the other groups', I think that our video is less interesting as the works on the camera and angles need to work on more. The video could've been better if we worked on more about zooming, focusing of the TV for example or about blurring and sound effects of relative props in the video.