Practical DV FilmMaking

if you have found better ways to shoot a scene while filming, use them. This is a good indication of the way your ideas are evolving about how to convey a scene, even during production.

1 Did you convey the brief plot adequately using the most economical shots? If you compress infor­mation to a smaller number of shots, the overall effect is more professional.

2 Did you manage to show more than one aspect, or view, of the action in a shot or did you find your­self having to constantly cut to close-ups to show what was going on? Maybe you moved the cam­era to new angles now and then to make the movie more interesting to watch.

3 Have you found it relatively easy to consider a number of different elements of filming simultan­eously? Did you, for instance, find that you could think about the framing of the camera, the light on the subject and convey the right information at the same time?

4 The sequence of the shots is also important. Were you able to show the progression of events in order so it looked smooth and realistic?

5 You may also have noticed, when watching your movie later, that the length of each shot makes a dif­ference about how the film works. It is very difficult to cut a shot correctly when using this sledge­hammer approach to filmmaking, but you may have noticed how some of the more successful shots were the shorter ones. This is why cutting away to different views of the action is a useful technique.

In general, success for this film, however, is to be judged simply by whether you enjoyed making the film and found yourself with a short film that says what you wanted it to say. In a very short space of time, you have picked up some valuable skills in using the camera, telling a narrative and sequencing shots. And by planning on paper at the start, you help ensure that these areas work well before you pick up the camera.