Filming Essay

On Thursday the 11th June we had to split into groups and make a video of a tour around our school and sixth form. The class got split into three groups of about 4 or 5 people. We chose to basically do a day in the life video with someone from our sixth form and we filmed in various every day school situations doing the sort of stuff he would do in a normal school day. This was our first proper attempt at filming and so we, as well as all the other groups encountered a few problems.

The first major problem that all the groups faced was the steadiness of the camera. A lot of our filming we had to walk with the camera in our hands so it was difficult to keep it steady. There isn’t a lot that we could do with this problem other than trying to get the person with the steadiest hand or for shorts where we didn’t have to move with the camera we could have used a tripod. This was a major problem because it meant that it ruined what otherwise good shots we would have had that had been planned out.

Another problem that we had was the gaps between clips. In our video especially, there was a couple of times where there was a couple of gaps in the video where the screen would just go blue. This happened because we accidentally turned the camera off a couple of times and so were careful not to record over what we had already done. The only way we can make sure that this problem doesn’t happen again is by just getting in practice and getting used to the camera so that we can get to use it easily without making mistakes.

The other major problem that we had was with sound and noise. The narrative was often lost in our videos and there wasn’t much we could actually do about this. The real problem was the other sound that we would have in the background such as traffic and wind. To sort this problem we would obviously need to film in locations that were away from roads, or on a windy day try to film as much as possible inside. This was a problem as the sound quality isn’t brilliant on the camera to start with, so other sounds that aren’t needed make it almost impossible in some shots to hear the narrative.

The last thing we struggled with was the cuts. A couple of shots were cut too quick and so if it came to editing we wouldn’t of had a lot of film to work with. In one particular group the shots being too short also lead to some of the speech being lost. The only way to solve this problem is to allow the camera to run for a few seconds before and a few seconds after.