Continuity Exercise Story Planning

We were set the task of making a short video, keeping continuity specifically in mind. First we decided on a storyline. We went with something simple that would allow us to experiment with camera angles and positions and get a feel for what the camera could do. We decided to go with a short comedy film about a man who walked down an office corridor into another mans office and asked him for a pen. He then gets thrown out of the office, but is proud of having gotten the pen.

We would open with an over the shoulder shot watching the main character walking down an corridor. He would walk away from the camera.

We would then have a shot facing alongside the corridor, through a gap in the wall. We were able to plan this as we had decided on locations as we decided to do this piece all in school, as it was a practice exercise.

The next shot would be in the opposite direction to that which the character was walking in, so we could see his front.

For the next shot we decided to do a high angle shot, creating a CCTV like feel. We got this shot by placing the camera and tripod high in a window and Mike climbing up with it to adjust it.

Not shown in the storyboard, as we decided to do it as we were filming, to improve continuity, was an over the shoulder shot of the character opening the door form behind. This shot shows the character coming in through the door and closing it behind him. It was a mid shot from across the room.

This shot was an over the shoulder shot as the first character asks the new character for a pen. The second character is at first hidden behind the first character, but when the first character has spoken, he sits up and is visible.

In this shot, the second character shows his anger at being asked for a pen, and stands up and grabs the first character. We used a mid shot and a 2 shot to show both of them fully.

In this shot, the first character is thrown out of the office. It is implied that the second character did this by his anger in the previous shot, however we did not actually have him throw James over, as this would create potential health and safety hazards. Instead we positioned the camera facing down a wall, and had James roll backwards from behind the wall, to appear as if he'd been thrown.

We then had a sequence of close up shots on the first characters face as he walked away from the office, gloating from his success in getting the pen. For this we had to have one person hold the camera pointing at his fave and walk ahead of him, whilst another person guided him around the corners to make the shot as smooth as possible, which was quite difficult to do. We then placed the camera in a few positions as He walked towards it, to allow us to do several cuts.

In the final scene, the character walks towards a set of stairs. He then jumps off them and we froze the image in the editing and used a fade-to-black.