This document provides a self-critique of preliminary shots filmed for a student film project. The shots were filmed either free-hand or without a tripod, making them shaky and of poor quality. While some shots like revealing a character's identity worked effectively, the timing and camera angles could have been improved. To strengthen the final film, the student determined they would use a tripod for stability, incorporate over-the-shoulder shots during dialogue, and film alternate angles to avoid re-shoots and characters looking at the camera.

1. S
Preliminary
Faults and successes

2. This shot I filmed free hand. It is shaky and at an angle so doesn’t look
professional at all. I also did not think about the positioning of the character so
the shot could have looked better. Looking back on it I could have taken the
shot from right behind the character leaving more mystery to who it is.
However, I did establish the shot with this by showing the room number G4.
This implies that the scene is in a school from the start.

3. This shot is effective because it jumps to the other side of the door and shows
who the character is. It was my first time editing so the timing of the character
walking through the door is not perfect. Although it does work effectively. The
camera quality is poor and this is seen here. When we created the real film
this was one of the things we knew needed changing.

4. I filmed this tracking/pan shot free hand which makes it look poor and bad
quality. I could have used a tripod on a table to create this shot. I filmed this
shot without cuts to vary the shot length of the film to make it more
interesting. This I did a lot in the final film to keep the audience excited.

5. To make the next shots I attached the camera to a tripod and kept it in the
same place or the duration of the conversation. This shot looks more
professional. I could have used over the shoulder shots in the conversation to
make the speaking look more real and fluent.

6. The characters in the scene seem lifeless so this is why I took a while
creating the script for my final film to bring my characters to life. I did not
repeat shots in this shoot so some of the shots had my actors looking at the
camera. This meant that I had to edit these out and make the shots shorter
than I wanted. In the final piece I filmed multiple shots from different angles to
avoid too many re-shoots