Today, we were put into groups and asked to make a short clip of a meeting of our choice, using different camera shots. To do this, we used 'FlipCam' and a tripod in order for it not to appear shakey.
My group of 4 chose to do 'School Apprentice' which is a parody of the show The Apprentice, showing three pupils fighting for a place at university. We filmed this 'meeting' in an empty classroom, and rearranged the tables and chairs in order to make it seem more like an office. No props were needed, apart from a folder at the head teachers desk in order to make it seem more formal. The four pupils were sat at a long table, whilst the head teacher had her own desk. This made the situation appear more real.
It was the first time i'd used a FlipCam, but I found it very easy to use. I had used a Tripod before, and this was useful to make it steady. Also, it was easy to get the filming straight onto the computer, as all you had to do was plug the camera itself into a usb port.
We used various shots including: an establishing shot, close ups, mid shots, long shots and panning from side to side.
I thought it went really well, as we got to experiment with different shots ourselves, and overcome problems. For instance, one of the problems we had was when we filmed a part of our meeting on a bus. The bus was noisy, with people talking in the background meaning it was a distraction. To overcome this we tried filming on three different buses, and the last bus we tried had fewer people in it, meaning the noise was less distracting. However, in future I think we realised that filming on a bus would take more time and effort.
When editing, the first thing we changed was were we filmed the bus coming towards the bus stop. People, including ourselves, could be heard talking in the background. We decided to mute the sound, and add a sound effect of a bus pulling up. This was effect as it sets the scene. Due to time, we didn't get to edit the first part of the meeting which was in the classroom. However, we didn't think this needed much editing as the shots were in the correct order and it run smoothly.
