Group 20: Preliminary Match Cut Exercise!

Last lesson was really fun! We did something new and unexpected, which most of us enjoyed doing.

We had to do a preliminary match cut exercise! Most of you reading this, probably have no clue what I’m on about, but don’t worry; everything would become clearer in due course. :)

This was out brief: film the following sequence, making sure to use as least one Match Cut, and example of Shot/Reverse and showing your understanding of the 180 Degree Rule (bye not breaking it!).

This is what we had to film:

“A character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue”

I’m going to give you the definitions of the shots I mentioned above, I’m sure most of you know the shots, but it wouldn’t harm me reminding you. :D

Match Cut: A match cut is a cut in film editing between either two different objects, two different spaces, or two different compositions in which an object in the two shots graphically match, often helping to establish a strong continuity of action and linking the two shots.

Shot/Reverse: is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other

180 Degree Rule: The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states those two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line.

Im sure you understood all of that, but to simplify it, I’m going to explain it in my own words what we actually did. :)

Basically we talked through the new shots we just learned about, and then we were all given jelly babies to work with. Yes jelly babies! :P

We had to create a storyline, then with the jelly babies we had to place them the way we wanted to, and then we took pictures of them. So basically it was like a storyboard, but instead of pen and paper, we had jelly babies and a camera! ^_^

This was the most interesting and fun part of the lesson, because we all enjoyed playing around with the jelly babies and drawing up the set.

Our story line was that, there were two friends which had an argument, so they weren’t talking. So they decided to meet up and sort the difference out. The scene becomes tense when the two friends are in the same room.

After we finished having our fun, and taking pictures of the jelly babies, we had to put it into a short clip.

We opened up FINAL CUT PRO then we got all the pictures, edited them to make them shorter, then we put it all together.

After we finished editing it and making it into a short clip, we then went onto YouTube and searched for ‘Tension’ Building music. We thought that would most suit our clip.