Introuction to Film maker pro and video cameras

This post covers the lessons of 1/12/08 and the 3/12/08. On the 1st we were in the editing suit and had an introduction to using film maker pro. We learnt how to cut footage, allowing us to gain the desired clip from footage that may have included the filming of things we didn't need. To do this we had to select the clip,from a selection of pre-recorded sample clips, and would have to create mark in and out point by using the 'I' key to mark in and the 'O' key to mark out. The full original clip would remain in the left screen and the now edited clip would appear on the screen on the right. We learnt that organising the clips was as easy as dragging and dropping them on to the track in the order we desired but the teacher made a point of saying that when dragging a clip on to the track the arrow icon of the mouse should point down which i made sure to do. After a couple practice clips we had to make the clips form an understandable story.
After editing clips and arranging them we moved on to the task of transitions. We where able to apply a range of shot transitions such as dissolves, wipes etc. Tony gave a pointer to the class saying however that the best type of transition are the more subtle ones, like dissolves.
Finally in that introduction we learnt to do a match shot. This is when you pair to clips to create one smooth clip. An example is of what we did. Their was a clip of a man entering a shop looking at something and bending down to take it. The other clip was just of his hand and what he was taking. Our aim was to pair the shot so as he bent down in the first clip it would cut to the close up of what he was picking up smoothly. This was pretty easy and just consisted of the marking in and out we learnt earlier but was slightly more challenging in that we had to time the cuts of each clip better.

In the lesson of 3/12/08 We where given the task of filming a card game with the objective of using camera shots and angles to create suspense. We started the lesson of with an introduction to how to use the video cameras. This covered loading the tape, recording, playback, focusing the shot, setting up and mounting the camera on a tri-pod, properly! Our whole group (Nymal, Cloudio, Susuana and myself) seemed to grasp all of it with ease.We had already planned to a scene of a poker game but with a mystery player who is feared by poker players world wide for his confidence charm and undefeated winning streak. I played this character. We created suspense through mes-un-scene as well. The characters were meant to look like old new york gangsters n the mystery players face was never seen because his 'pork pie' ( i think that's the name of the type of hat) covered his face. We used camera shots for suspense also. We use Ecu's to show the other characters reactions to the mystery player and to show t he tension in the game. We used pans, over the shoulder shots and tracking to do this as well. We encountered a few problems with thus project however. The first was finding somewhere to shoot. We did this relatively quick but where asked to leave the room we where filming in because a teacher had to use the class. We lost time relocating. Another was that out camera wouldn't let us manually focus our shits like we had been instructed in the introduction, even with the assistance of Andrew. The third was because we had lost so must time relocating we didn't finish recording but we had fun with the project and was still able to complete the task.