Monday 5th January

Today we had a match-cut tutorial with Marisa, which was actually quite fun. To begin with we were given a very brief synopsis, a man at home chain smoking while copying confidential files and plans onto a CD. We then had to create our own short film for it, but not actually film it, we just had to shot list our idea. The main idea behind it was that we had to include at least two obvious match cuts within it. We had about 20 shot to do this in which was surprisingly a bit hard. It wasn't until Marisa told us that we had to literally break down everything that it was easier to do it in 20 shots. I kept making the mistake of putting too much into one shot. That was the first thing I learnt from the tutorial. Once we had all created our own shot list, we watched the one that the media department had made as an example. Rebecca told us that if we were to produce something to that standard then we would get top marks. This made me feel a lot more relaxed because their idea was very simple and still worked. I think that when we come to doing our real thriller match cutting might be the trickiest part of editing. This is because if you don't get it right it could completely ruin the thriller.

Once we had finished that section of the lesson we then moved onto another practice. This time the practice filming actually goes towards our coursework. We were once again given another very short synopsis and had to shot list it. The synopsis was very simple, a character entering a room, with the second character already present, character then sits down and they exchange a few lines of dialogue. We had to do this in the same groups that we are filming our thriller in. Once again we found it quite hard to really break down the different shots to make 16 and in the end we only had 12. I think that in the next lesson on Thursday we're going to try and add in four more shots but if we cant then we'll just concentrate on making what we have look really good. 

For homework we had to each storyboard part of the shot list ready for the next lesson because we have to film and edit in that lesson. I think that might be a bit of a challenge for some of us because we're perfectionists and everything always has to be done a certain way.