Reflection on "have you fed the fish?" preliminary filming exercise

We were initially shown a few different versions of the "have you fed the fish?" task and given a brief rundown of what we were required to do. We were then split into two groups and given 20 minutes in which we were taught how to use the camera as well as begin brainstorming ideas for our own interpretation of the task.

After a while of deliberating our group finally settled on an idea. We went with a hostage interpretation where the 'fish' in question was in fact the hostage and the meeting would be focusing on whether or not the character had fed the hostage.

We began by using a mix of a long and wide shot of one of the school buildings and the adjacent playing fields. We then used a tracking shot to follow our main character as he walked over to another building which was just outside of the frame. We cut the shot there and moved closer we then placed the camera on the floor and got a low shot of the character walking down a pathway we then quickly cut this and moved into another position in which we performed a low tracking shot which ended by a reverse tracking shot of the character walking up some stairs this took a few attempts as there were other people talking as well as we couldn't always get the camera into the right position.

Our next shot was an over the shoulder following shot as we walked through a corridor to a door. We cut the camera and the next shot was of the sign on the door and the main character tapping his knuckles as a way to knock. in this shot, we chose not to show the character as we felt a close up on the knuckles would be a good idea.

We then chose to do a shot from inside the room as the main character entered we then cut to a side shot of the other character telling the main character to sit down. For the dialogue, we settled on a shot-reverse-shot however this was only possible by filming the whole section of dialogue while close up on one of the characters then repeating this on the other character we are then going to edit this together to make it play smoothly.

We decided for the final shot we wanted to show the hostage or the 'fish' so when the two characters finished their dialogue we did a slow pan around the room to show the hostage.

What made the whole filming process significantly better was the fact that on this particular day we were able to come into school wearing our own clothes as opposed to our school uniform this allowed us to transform much better into the characters we were trying to portray.