Preliminary Task Analysis

Preliminary Task Analysis



For our preliminary task, we had to create a short film, with the main focus being on continuity and editing the shots to create a smooth end result.

Our sequence was about a sixth form art student, who clearly has not spent enough time on his art homework, creating what he calls “a beautiful piece of abstract artwork”, insulting his art teacher in the process. As a consequence of his actions, his teacher ends up threatening to call his parents.

In our first scene, we used a tracking shot of the student walking down the stairs and to his art classroom. Using this shot creates a sense of suspicion and tension as we are wondering where he is going and what he is doing. We then used a mid shot to close up shot of the student walking through the classroom door. The audience becomes more familiar with the character and gets a sense of how is feeling at this point. We track the student fidgeting while he is walking through the classroom, showing his nervousness to the audience. He sits down and avoids eye contact with the teacher, prompting the teacher to create a very serious and tense atmosphere for him. We then see the teacher asking him if he knows why he has been asked to see her. He finds the whole situation comical and rudely replies “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me”. We then get to see an extreme close up of his “artwork”. The teacher then says that it is not good enough and threatens to call his parents. The student then becomes very scared and jumps off of his chair.

We encountered very small problems with this task as the camera had a very low battery and we resolved this problem by charging the camera while filming.

The editing was very quick and easy to do and smooth transitions were created.