Day 7

Video Diary - Day 2

                                                               Day 2 of my video blog. See group blog for details of todays production

Video Diary - Day 1

Me hours after our first shoot. I briefly review our progress. Next shoot tomorrow. (Saturday 12th)

Costume Check - Video Diary

Abiding to Lewis' drawing of my characters costume I review my props and equipment for my shoot

Video Diary night before first shoot

My video Diary from Thursday night, the day before our first shoot.

Prelim Evaluation

1.My group 2C was smaller than the others, it consisted of Jess Wilson, Phillipa Dodi and myself.


Despite our small group size I believe we have been very successful in creating the prelim sequence which was required from the brief.

2. First of all we arranged a planning meeting and brainstormed ideas before settling on the narrative of someone being in someone’s seat. We then allocated different tasks but helped each other with all of them for example first I wrote the script where as Phillipa then drew the storyboard (shown below).
Phillipa Walking Along the Corridor

Below is a visual representation of camera shots in a sequence that join together to build a narrative flow. This particularly useful as if provides everyone from the director to actors exactly whats going on in the shot. Below the pictures are short captions detailing specifics such as action, camera angle and directions as well as lighting. One key reason why storyboarding is essential is because it allows the director to see whether his ideas are going to work on screen and another is so that he can decide the sequences of all shots. Most importantly the storyboard illustrates how the narrative will flow from shot to shot.

We then all helped to create a shot sequence so that we knew what order to film the shots in, this was important as we had a time limit and if this was a real film time is money.



We have been studying many theories so far during our course, however the one which we were trying to take into account was continuity theory. The are 3 parts of this theory that we included, the first of which was the 180 degree rule this keeps the viewer on one side of the action making sure they do not get confused. We used shot reverse shot as well to show convocation progression in a continual way. The final one is match on action, I feel we were especially successful with this one as we perfectly change between shots keeping the action flowing. Another theory we took into account was Toderovs theory of Equilibrium, this is theory is about a disruption that drives the story along and can me applied to ours. The boy sits happy in the classroom and the disequilibrium is the girl storming in and shouting at him.


3. As this was only a preliminary task and the main target was to achieve continuity the amount of technology we used was very limited. In production we used a video camera, tripod, clapper board, a microphone and headphones. Headphones are important as a camera picks up sound differently to our ears so wearing them tells us exactly what the shot sounds like.

While editing we used an editing program called adobe premier pro

4. When planning we had to think about what locations were available to us, travelling outside of our media block could lead to unwanted noise during changing lessons or people walking in the background of our shots. We planned to film inside in case it was to rain and didn’t want to move to far away because of our time limit. When shooting we had to make sure that the clock was not in shot as obviously this would have confused the viewer, another factor was our use of props. Our sequence involved the movement of props so it was essential to make sure they were in exactly the same place to achieve continuity.
5. I would say our sequence is successful however, there are a lot of things we can take away and learn from it. For example, the sound levels change for a few seconds during the pan, this disrupts the flow of out sequence and if there was a re-shoot we would be sure to fix this. Further more there were some deleted shots that didn’t quite work as we wanted, for example in one shot a reflection could be seen on the window, where as in another shot we didn’t quite achieve continuity, because of this we did not include it in the final edit. If done again we would take more shots to make sure we get the desired shot perfect so it fits our sequence.
6. One thing I have learn is that continuity is a lot harder to achieve then I first thought however with careful planning and organisation it is possible. I have learn that lighting is important as it can cause unwanted effects such as shadows and reflections and will defiantly

Roland Barthes Five Codes

Enigma Codes: Who is the man being watched? Why is he running? Will he realise he is being watched? Is he the protagonist or antagonist? Why was he there before they chased him. Why does he have a gun? What does he have to hide?
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Action Codes: We see the man being watched looking ‘shifty’ and we know that the man watching him is a good guy because he is working with James bond who we know is a secret agent for Britain. We see him checking his phone, and read a word saying ecipse. As an audience we know wonder what narrative is behind this word, could it be a literal meaning or is a secret code for something much bigger and exciting. We start to build up an alternative narrative for the man, this could be that he is planning a deadly attack or he has already committed a crime and is trying to keep it a secret.
Where is the man running to

Semiotic Codes: The first semiotic code we notice is two men spying on a man straight away this s suggests that the film is going to be an action fulled film. This is further connoted by the gun that one the men draws when confronted by the man being watched. The first shot is a master shot of a crowd at some sort of event, the crowd is rowdy and loud. They are waving money in a bookmakers face, suggesting that money is a key theme in the film. Once the man is spotted he begins to run which connotes that he has something to hide or that he is scared. His backpack suggests that he carries something important and the way he eludes 007 suggests that he has been trained very well. The presence of military and guns further connote action.

Cultural Codes: There are many cultural codes in this sequence, for example The presence of military and guns connotes the action genre where as the fact the man is being watched suggest the spy genre.

Symbolic Codes: 007 seems very committed to capture this man, is he doing his job or does he want revenge. We hear him say I need him alive, as if he wants him for himself for not a group of people. However we see him kill him at the end of the sequence which questions his character, is he a good character or is he a murder?