The 180° Rule

In filmmaking, the 180° rule is a guideline that means the action should be all shot from one side. The diagram below helps explain this:

 As shown by the diagram, the actors are connected by a line (the line of action). The rule means that all cameras must stay on one side of this line (green cameras are in the right place, whereas the red one is wrongly placed). If a shot from a green camera cut to a shot from the red camera, the rule would be broken and the scene would look unnatrual because the characters would swap places on screen.

We made a short video breaking the rule to learn about it and to demonstrate what it looks like when it's broken:

60 Second Sequence

For this short video my group used Oscar's hair and beard to our advantage, making a video featuring Jesus. I used a range of shot types to connote different things when shooting this video, which incorporated everything we'd been learning about film and sound.

Firstly, it opens with the sound of someone urinating which leads the viewer to wonder where the sound is coming from and who is creating it. Then the first shot is shown (A long shot) and you're introduced to James, which matches the sound with the visuals. The second shot is a close up of James face, which firstly shows the character in more detail and secondly shows his shocked emotion, leading the viewer to believe he can see something. The third shot is another close up, which keeps the level of intimacy and is a point of view shot because it's what James can see. After this the dream sequence starts, showing inside James's head. It uses some clips shot on a black screen, and one shot of James lying on the floor, with the camera looking down at him. I chose this shot because isolates James as he contrasts with the light floor.

When James is waking up from the dream,  I chose to use a long shot to establish the new location and the figure stood behind James. Because it's so wide, it also looks dramatic and helps to build the dramatic tension. To further build the tension, I included a buildup sound effect. We also chose to use a stabiliser in the shot that moves towards Oscar, so that it was smooth and looked intense and cinematic. The last shot shows a close up of James's confused face for comedic effect.

Overall, I think that this video is fairly good, however if we had more time to film and plan it then it would be more effective. I also used audio from the camera footage as dialogue at the end, which should have been recorded separately. What I think went well were the shot types I chose to use and how the tension changes throughout the video.

Adding Sound to My Silent Film

Today in Media Theory I had to record and add sound to my silent film. To do this, me and my group watched the film a few times and took note of all of the sounds going on that needed to be replicated, not forgetting ambient noise. After this we went out to record and did this in a variety of ways.

One hard part of recording was getting ambient noise and car sounds from outside without the wind interfering with the clips. To solve this problem we shielded the microphone, however some wind was still audible. In the end we just waited for it to stop and recorded at those times. Something which worked well was using Max's bag to make sounds in a silent room. This helped us to create realistic sounding effects which we needed.

My Premiere timeline showing all of the
audio clips alongside my silent film.

After we had all our sounds recorded, we had to edit them into our films separately. This wasn't too much of a hard task software-wise, however some of the sounds needed adjustments. To make them fit I changed the speed and pitch of some of them. Lastly, I downloaded some royalty free sounds from freesound.org to fill in any gaps where our recordings weren't good enough. This is the end product without music:




Overall I think this audio has made the film more effective. This is because firstly it gives the story being told more depth and realism because the viewers ears will tune in to the sound alongside the visuals. Another way the sound is effective is that it helps to add pace and drama to the film e.g. the footsteps added to the chase scene make it more fast paced. In the opening of the video the sounds are effective in setting the atmosphere of the film, through the ambient sounds which show its outdoors in the street. Lastly, sound was effective as it made the video funnier. When action takes place like a fall, the sound helps to add impact to it.

Overall, I think that by adding sound, the film has been improved and portrays a better story, although it doesn't really fit as it's a silent film and adding sound doesn't make it true to it's time.

This is the finished product with the added sound and music.