Skills Audit: filming and editing preliminary Match Cut exercise

Our Preliminary Match cut task was to create a short film of someone going to another person and having a conversation. The film had to include a match cut of them moving, shot-reverse-shot of the conversation and the camera shots had to be within the 180 degree rule.

Starr Nine was what we called our film. A difficulty when filming was trying to get accurate shots through the outside window. This caused problems as we could see the reflection of the camera and ‘crew’ in the shot. We over came this by only using clips at high angles as it was too high to catch the reflection of the camera and still gave a clear shot of me running up the stairs. This shot was used in our match cut which was of me going up the stairs using different camera shots; from the back, the front, through the window and a close-up of my feet.

When editing we had to cut out many clips in order to make it work which meant that the duration of our film was shorter than others. Many of our clips in the match cut involved us cutting out certain parts in order for it to flow better – this involved using the input and output technique. For example, we cut the ending of me running up the stairs from the back in order to replace it with another clip of me running from the outside window. We also used the razor tool to trim out the middle of some clips and slot in others so that the match cut had many different camera shots.

Our shot reverse shot of the conversation involved three clips. These were close-ups of the characters faces and involved minimal dialogue. This showed the action within the film as it created a fast pace and made the audience want to know more about what they were talking about.

The sound we used during the match-cut of the running was a heart beat with an eerie repeated beat. The heart beat was used to show how anxious and ‘in a rush’ the character was and the eerie beat created tension as the audience were unaware of where the character had come from and where they were going. We used a ‘gun shot’ as the film was called ‘Starr Nine’ and to throw them off guard when the title came up. The gun shot then triggered a faster-paced beat which was to signal to the audience that more action was going to come.

We left the titles very simple as the sound of the gun alone would alert the audience and keep them interested. We used a plain black back ground and simple white font to create the titles.
If we were to do this again, I think we would try to add more conversation for our shot-reverse-

shot and try to make the film longer. Also, we would make more titles and be more creative with them by putting them on some of the clips and using transitions.