Advice from the Year Thirteens

The year thirteen we had been helpful in getting us started with the use in cameras and the tripod, however his advice was brief, but what he did talk about was the main points about using the equipment. We had a different year thirteen for learning editing. Editing seemed to look extremely complicated as most things never viewed before, but because one of the year thirteen’s was usually around, we continually bugged him on how to edit and make the getting started easier. When we first set off with the tripod and camera we went to the common room to film certain shots in preparation. Panning the camera on the tripod proved exceedingly difficult as the tripod was stiff to rotate, however the main idea of the task was helpful for our prelim task.

However, when the group of year thirteen’s came and gave us general advice about how to do our prelim was a lot better than the single person giving us advice. There advice was:

>Don’t use much dialogue; the cameras don’t pick up much sound
>Base your thriller on setting and location
>It isn’t character based, so acting isn’t important.
>Film in the same seasons for continuity reasons
>Don’t go over the top when it comes to props
>Lighting is very important
>Don’t shoot your footage on recognisable territory as it doesn’t look good

>(Prelim) it’s only a prelim so keep it simple
>Always shoot more footage then you have to
>Joke around for about ten minutes, and then get some serious work done
>Don’t smoke on camera because you look like an idiot
>Use the 180 degree rule for many shots in the thriller
>Always get everything you need before shooting on that day
>One camera shot can change our grade
>Have lots of creative input for our blogs
>Share out the work
>Take the tripod everywhere; it’s a rookie mistake if you forget it
>Plan it all out properly before hand
>Editing makes all the difference; don’t worry too much about bad shots >Don’t rely on people to act in the thriller. They are very unreliable and probably won’t do it
>Weather conditions are always a problem so be prepared
>Don’t lose anything
>Try to keep stuff the same on the next day of filming
>Don’t leave shooting till the last minute
>Always have more than 1 of each shot in case things go wrong, and finally
>The prelim will be an example to next year’s year 12 students so make it worth while

When we watched the other prelim tasks from last year’s year thirteen’s, it set the boundaries in our group. They mainly taught our group what to do and what not to do. We also saw the effects in which editing can have on a prelim, which in turn could affect the standard of the main task. Some prelims were very simple, yet at the same time some were very well done as the footage looked fluent and professional. Many of the ideas for our prelim came from watching the prelims from last year, so they seemed extremely helpful for our group in terms of preparing for our prelim and thriller.

- David Huxford