preliminary video - evaluation

  

The crazy Lab Assistant

Our preliminary video was shot inside our school and is 2 minutes and 45 seconds long. the first scene begins with two students working on their experiment. Here one student is wearing a lab coat and the other is not. This was a mistake on our side as we should have also bought in another lab coat. Though we chose these actors because they were available at that moment and the student without the lab coat did not have chemistry as a subject therefore she didn't have a lab coat. Our group member Fatmah played the assistant in this video. Using an actor from within the group has its advantage as he or she will be available at all times and also will go through many retakes without getting sick of it. Retakes were inevitable as we were using only one handy cam. This scene begins with Fatmah dropping the plastic glass and the sound of a crash. The crash sound was downloaded from the internet and then edited and adjusted in the video. The close up of the spilled flask was shown with zooming. The speed was increased in window movie maker by selecting the effect of speed up. The speed was increased to create a dramatic effect and also to disguise the movement of the camera. Tracking closer was more feasible, however, as the picture was getting blurred or we should have zoomed in only until the picture was clear. We will make note of that and avoid this mistake in our final exercise. The shots of the students and lab assistant are taken from the top of the chemistry lab table and from the other side of that same table because we wanted to bring the lab in view. We couldn't try other angles because the lab had bright windows without any blinds and a very bright light would have distorted our image.

  

The next scene unfolds in a principal's office. Since the dialogues for the principal were long therefore we had chosen someone to play the principal a day before the shoot and had handed her a copy of a script. To cover the uniform and show a figure of dominance we used a gown worn by the members of students council in our school. The scene starts with the principal pretending to read a complaint sheet. Fatmah enters and sits down. We have experimented with high angle shots of the principal and also an over the shoulder shot of the principal has also been taken. 

We couldn't repeat the same for Fatmah as there wasn't much room behind principal's desk and so we were only restricted with reverse shots. Many shots taken had not been used such as Fatmah's low angle shot from the left as the lighting was bad and Fatmah's face seemed covered in shadow. In edit we just used a high angle shot from left and panning when Fatmah left the room crying in the end. Most of the shots of the principal have been used in our final cut. Reverses shot are taken to show continuity in the conversation. Panning was also used when the lab assistant enters the room. we used the school career counselor's office because  it was almost arranged like a real principals office. Here not much of props were used besides the files and pencil available on the table. All the shots shot in the office were taken in two days.On the first day we took shot the principals dialogues then on the second day we shot the lab assistants’ part therefore there was a huge difference between the two shots in the lights and the colour composition of both shots

The shots of the principal had perfect light and white balance and the shots of the lab assistant were too dull and dim and there was too much red mid tone in it. Where the walls were suppose to appear off white they are tainted with red and too much shadow. these shots were improved to some extent using Premiere where I used the effect of colour balance and reduced red composition to -14 and increased blue and green to 30. and also added more light and contrast to the picture so now it is appearing like this. the sharpness and lights are not as good as they are in the principals shot but at least better than the original shots of the lab assistant. we will make note of taking extra care of lights in our final video.   

Later on further editing, I reduced the green mid tone to 20. in the picture above, only the mid tones of the video clip was changed. At first I felt that highlight and shadow were not significant, later I found out the picture quality actually improved and neglecting shadow and highlight was a big mistake. I added three effects to the video clip, brightness and contrast, color balance and lighting effect. in lighting effect light type was directional and white light was used.  

Also there was a difference in the volume levels which was later adjusted on Premiere by right clicking on the video or audio clip and selecting audio gain. There was too much background noise while shooting in the lab so actors had to speak louder than they did in the office. Here the principal was at a point shown angry and over powering and here we should have taken a high angle shot of the principal to emphasize her dominance by making her appear tall. There are some scenes where we have used different video clips but the audio track is still the same this you will see in the last and in the beginning as well when you will hear a student blaming her teacher while you will see the zooming shot of the flask. This has been done by unlinking the audio and video clip and editing the video part only. This you will see in the end when we hear principal looking at her sharply and we can hear lab assistant crying. the shot of the lab assistant crying is taken from a top angle from the right side. there is another shot of the lab assistant crying and getting up and walking out of the room. 

The shooting took three days given our class timings and availability of resources. An acknowledgement to Schanza Khan for acting as a principal for us. We had to do several retakes and all the actors were patient during the shooting.