Preliminary task

Preliminary task
For my Preliminary task I was put into a group with two other people. We were given a task to do and had two weeks too complete it. Our task was to re-create a scene from 'The Godfather' in an original not by copying it.

What will happen?
In this scene we had to include 4 things:

• A character opening a door
• The character crossing a room
• The character sitting down in a chair opposite another character. 'match-on-action'
• The two characters exchange a couple of lines of dialogue. 'Shot-reverse-shot'

Blocked plan
After discussing with my group we moved on to make a blocked plan of what will happen in the scene we create. This helped us see exactly what we wanted to see in our scene.

• Shot of character walking towards a door.
• Shot of door and two guards standing by it.
• Close up of characters hand pushing the door.
• Match-on-action, Character walks through the door
• Character walks across the room and sits in the chair
• Cuts to 'The Godfather' and two guards standing behind his chair
• 'The Godfather' starts talking and they have a conversation, Shot-reverse-shot. 

Story board 

After the blocked plan was sorted out we proceeded to create a story board from it. The story board helped us see how we wanted to structure each shot whether its a long shot or a close up. It also gave us something to work off when filming the actual scene as we knew exactly what we wanted.

Story board-page 1

Story Board-page2

Pre-production- Mise-en-scene
By looking at mise-en-scene we found out what needed to create the right setting for our scene and to make it look more realistic.

Props

• Black pillows
• Fake cigar
• Black cloth
• Chairs
• Table
• Glass

Location

• Drama Studio

Costume

• Black blazer
• Black trousers
• Black tie
• Black shades
• Black shoes
• White Shirt

Lighting

• Dark, but face and body should be visible.

Production schedule

The Production schedule helped me see exactly what I needed to be filming at what time and what kind of shot it's supposed to be. This saved time during the filming as I dint have to think about what I needed to do as much and just sped up the whole process.

Risk assessment

This was done before we started filming so we understood as a group all the possible things that could happen that would set us back. Possible injuries and damage to equipment. As we all understood this there were no problems and the shooting was risk free.



The Final Piece  -The Godfather

My part in this was cameraman/director. I did all the filming and helped position the actors/props on stage to look the best on screen.

Feedback
The good thing about this scene was it flowed well, which means the editing was done well as the different shots were fitted together to look like one whole piece which is exactly what we wanted.
The framing was also very good, the lighting helped set the mood that we were looking for similar to the original scene. As we used a different range of shots it showed we were being creative and original with our ideas. For example the low angle shot of 'The Godfather' made him look bigger which makes him seem more powerful. The high angle shot of the man asking for help showed he was small and weak compared to 'The Godfather'.
Also we didn't break the 180 degree rule, we used match-on-action and the shot-reverse-shot successfully.

Match-on-Action

Shot-reverse-shot

The things that weren't so good and that we should improve on was the continuity as we used the same actors that were guarding the door to be standing behind 'The Godfather' as his body guards. This may have looked odd to the audience as first they were at the door and suddenly there behind the sofa and it wasn't shown how they got there. So for next time I should show them walk in or use different actors.
The music was a bit to loud so may have slightly drowned out the dialogue, some of the audience felt that the music should have stopped completely when they began to talk as it didn't fit in with the mood so we need to be more careful with that. Lastly the scene was too long, we need to be more careful with timing.