The document provides an evaluation of the cinematography, mise-en-scene, graphics, and editing used in a preliminary documentary task. It notes that the cinematography made good use of framing and shot types but could have been improved by ensuring eye level focus. The mise-en-scene was simplistic due to time constraints but provides lessons for better planning props and setting. The graphics were hastily implemented and lacked relevance, signaling an area needing more attention. While cutaways were generally well used, limited time resulted in some that did not match the audio or appeared staged.

1. Preliminary Task
Evaluation

2. Cinematography:
 Within our preliminary task documentary,
our use of cinematography was one of the
highlights as when setting up our
interview, our interviewee was to the side
of the screen using the rule of thirds also
making sure a slight amount of head space
was left and the shot used for the
interview was a medium shot. However
this could have been improved by ensuring
that the interviewee always looked at eye
level as at certain points he looked
upwards. Also we could have zoomed in
for a close-up to emphasise particular
facial expressions.

3. Mise-en-scene:
 The costume for our interviewee was very simplistic as he is a
student and it would be difficult to find something that relates
to the topic of the task (mobile phones) on such short notice,
for the actual documentary, the mise-en-scene will be pre-
planned to ensure it links to the person or the documentary
topic. The lighting was kept pretty bright to make sure the
interview was clear and also a darker lighting wasn’t necessary
or linked to the topic of mobile phones. Within the task the
props we used were the chair for our interviewee to sit in, a
mobile phone and sheets from a homework task. The use of the
phone is self-explanatory as the topic is about them, the
inclusion of a homework task was for a cutaway of him using
the phone to help him. The setting for the interview was in
front of a poster for Priestley College as it relates directly to
our interviewee since he is a student at the college. However
this could have been improved as the setting we used can be
seen as quite boring.

4. Graphics:
 The graphics used in the task was
something that could have been vastly
improved. We ran out of time before
being able to add a title sequence at the
start of the interview. We did manage to
superimpose text over the start stating
our interviewees name and relevance,
however we should have taken more
consideration of what font and colour
text we used as they had no relevance
to the person or the task topic. For the
actual documentary, more care must be
placed onto this as they are an integral
part of a mixed documentary otherwise
the audience doesn’t know who is
speaking and why they are relevant.

5. Editing:
 Overall the cutaways that we used were
pretty good, however due to a lack of time,
we couldn’t spend much time on figuring out
which cutaway went where so they were
mixed up and didn’t always make sense with
what was being said. Also one of the
cutaways can be seen as being slightly
‘staged’ due to the expressions used by our
interviewee. In terms of hiding jump cuts by
placing a cutaway over them was of a decent
standard except for one instance where a
cutaway finished early showing a jump cut.
We also managed to ensure no questions
were left in as that was the first thing we did
when we began editing the video.