Paman Uppal Year 12 AS Media Studies Blog : Edit Workshop

This week we were given a task to create a short scene called 'The Encounter'. We were told that we would storyboard, stage and film the scene together, but edit it individually.

Somewhere in this scene there must be; a character opening a door, they cross a room and then sit down across from another character and exchange some dialogue. It should also demonstrate knowledge and understanding of match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. This must be between 30 to 60 seconds long.

First we (Simran Bhatti and myself) had to think of what would be the storyline that centres the scene. We wanted the scene to be funny, so we decided to make it a fashion interview, where the interviewer is a self-centred camp male who exaggerates his actions and the interviewee is a geeky small town girl who thinks she knows a lot about fashion. During the course of the interview, he makes fun of her and she just sits there nervously. It ends with him dumping lots of fashion magazines on her.

After we came up with the idea, we were given a sheet to plan everything. We had to write down our idea in 25 words or less, how we will include shot reverse shot, the 180 degree rule and the rule of thirds. The short reverse shot will be shown by his reaction of her when she walks into the room, the 180 degree rule will be shown during conversation and the rule of thirds will be implemented through out. Then we had to write where we would film - Mrs Lowndes office, who will we cast - Naveed Rahman as the interviewer and Simi Mahil as the small town girl. We decided to name the interviewer - Sam, it's a typical name, but he pronounces it 'Sahme' as he exaggerates everything. We named the small town girl, Bailey as it's a typical farm girl name. We then had to discuss what props and costumes we would need. For Naveed we suggested he would have lots of rings and a bandana. To give Simi the geeky small town girl look, we decided she would wear a button up shirt and thick rim glasses and have her hair in pigtails. On the walls of the office we will place lots of pictures of Naveed, to fit in with the image that he is self-centred.

The next lesson we started to plan out the shots for our storyboard. We wrote down the shot number, the shot type and angle, how long it would be on screen and a brief description of it, e.g 'over the shoulder - straight on - Bailey knocking on door, see Sam inside - 2 seconds.' In the end we had 19 shots, so we divided them in half and I took the responsibility of storyboarding the first half and Simran storyboarded the other half.

When I started the storyboard, I also had to write down what type of lighting it would be (Natural/Artificial and High Key/Low Key), what type of sound we would have the background and the location of the shot. The sound was either music, SFX or what dialogue would be spoken. The location of the shot is where the shot would be on screen, for example we're shooting the scene in Mrs Lowndes Office, but for location we would write 'Sam's Office'.

Below is the completed storyboard, the first three are mine and the following three are Simrans.