Homeland Continuity Task

1. What was your role in the task and what did you actually do?

Within the group, we designated roles to different people in order to make the task run smoothly. I was in charge of the props and the costume for the actors as well as being an actor myself. I played a CIA Analyst, interrogating a suspected terrorist sympathizer, who was played by Zain. We had to learn the lines to make the scene more authentic and natural, which in turn made the final product a bit better. Additionally, I also made some suggestions to the shoot, which turned out to be helpful. Alongside myself was my partner/ boss, who was portrayed to be a more laid-back due to him costume and him being late to the interrogation. Whereas I came across as more organised and professional due to the full suit and tie and punctuality.

2. What factors did you have to take into account when planning, filming and editing?

When planning the shoot, we had to take into account the positioning of the characters in the master shot of the interrogation, as sometimes Harvey was blocking the line of sight to my character from the camera. Therefore in order to solve this issue, we had him more laid back on the chair, which was more useful due to the connotations of his character of being more relaxed. Furthermore, we also had to take into account the framing of the characters due to the height difference between myself and Harvey, as it would look unnatural to pan up too much when the characters stood up hence leading to the solution of cutting out Harvey's head when he stood up. The process of filming was much easier due to previous planning therefore we just had to follow the shot order and script which we had made beforehand. Moreover, when filming we had to keep acting the whole scene to make cutting the clips much easier. When editing, we had to take into account the match on action to have a good continuous flow. This was achieved by the use of sound bridges as well as cutting certain audio out to make it easier. 

3. How successful was your sequence? Did you manage to demonstrate match-on-action, shot-reverse-shot and the 180 degree rule? Did you achieve continuity overall?

I thought that the sequence turned out quite successful in the end as the clips that we obtained from filming was sufficient enough to make a good final video. The match-on-action was quite well done I think for example, when i was entering the room with Harvey the match-on-action was successfully done with the close up on the handle to the door being opened. Another example is when the file was presented to Zain, the slide across the table was nicely done as it matched the movement of the camera. Also the shot-reverse-shot was done well as we have CU of the characters therefore being able to build tension and see facial expressions. Overall, I think that the continuity was well achieved although it could've been better with better footage. For example at the end when the characters walk out and it cut to the door but we can see the chair tucked in whereas in the shot before, the chair was left out. 

4. What have you learnt from completing this task?

From completing the task, I've learnt the importance in planning as it helped us a lot in the filming as we already had everything organised. Also I learnt the importance of camera work as it really helped with the continuity in the editing as well as having the roles split up so that we were able to complete the task in the time available.