Film Analysis

Home AloneThe film is introduced to us by a plain back screen with names of the people who helped make the film, then it zooms out so you can see the name of the film in bright blue which makes it very bold and clear to see.
The first scene of the film is a still shot of a brightly lit house with the sound of people talking from in the house, there is also some festive background music, the lights and the music signifies the Christmas period.
The next scene is in the house with a police officer in the front view and many other characters passing past the camera, this is the first introduction to the characters. The noise at this point is still talking and lots of footsteps, this gives the impression of rushing and chaos.
The camera changes many times showing some of the characters rushing about from all different angles this is effective because it makes it more interesting to look at rather than a still camera.
The camera keeps going back to the police officer the signifies that he is a main character because the camera is focused on him.
It then cuts into the bedroom where there is a mid shot of a lady on the phone, this is the first mid shot of any characters therefore showing she is a main character.
The camera pans around the room showing a long shot of another two characters who then come closer in the shot, we then move into mid shots of both of them showing that they are also main characters. This is also where the first clear mention of names are which is Kevin.
There is then an over the shoulder shot and a shot reverse shot between the characters making it clear that these are the main characters.
The two minutes end by a close up of Kevin looking straight at the camera with a few lines of dialogue. Mean GirlsAs before the screen is black and then the name of the film is shown in bright bold colours, this makes is stand out and is interesting to look at.
The first shot is a low angle two person shot, it then moves into a close up of the lady where she has a few lines of dialogue.
The camera tracks up the back of the two characters which I thought was unusual as it is normally from the front so you can see the characters, but this showed that they were not the main characters as it went into a double over the shoulder shot and we were then introduced to another character, being the main one.
There is a non-diegetic sound of a camera click then the shot is still, just like the male character has taken a photo.
The scene then changes from outside the families house to school where the camera zooms in introducing another character.
Then there is another cut where it flicks through some pictures of the main family in Africa. While these pictures are being shown there is a voice over of the main character talking about the photos.
It then cut back to the school where there is a back view of the main character nearly getting hit by the bus. This made me jump as it was unexpected because the scene before was relaxing then there is a loud noise of the bus zooming past. The camera then cuts to show her parents behind and their facial expressions.
The next shot is a point of view shot looking round at all the students pushing and shoving past, then it shows the main characters reaction, this sequence is repeated a few times.
The bell then rings and it cuts into the class room where some more characters are introduced and the scene ended with her going to find a chair and sitting down.

Filming My Preliminary Task

Firstly I watched the opening sections of some films to see what the conventions were that made up the opening scenes. I then made a mind map of the main conventions that I would apply to my film. After I had a few ideas I made a storyboard.

The filming ideas were really good but the camera work wasn’t great and could have been improved a lot. To improve the camera work we should have used a tripod, this would have made the camera shot much more steady which would make the quality of the film better. Also there were bits of the film that weren’t needed which we should have edited out.

My team worked together well but each person only had one role, for example one person filmed and another acted, so next time when we film again I think we should all have a go at filming, acting and all the other aspects of putting a film together. I think this would improve the quality of the film as everybody would have an input of all the different areas of making the film.

The problem that occurred was when we were shooting Steph walking towards the camera then walking into the classroom, because we realised there were no free classrooms upstairs were we had just been filming so we then had to shoot the next part in a different location so there is a continuity error because the location changes.  

There are a few things I have learnt about the preliminary task:

-          Using a tripod for the camera shots and maybe experimenting more with different camera angles.

-          The mise-en-scene, so everything that is in the shot in our preliminary task didn’t need to be there but next time we will plan that carefully

-          We need to make sure that the lighting is perfect all the time so it’s not too dark or too bright.