Reflecting back on the AS year: Technical Skills

In AS media we learnt a variety of technical skill in the areas of editing, film making and sound such

Film making:

180 degree rule - this was when the camera had to be maintained on one side of the axis for every shot in the scene. The camera passing over the axis is called jumping the line or crossing the line. The 180 degree rule is used so that for example, in a football game if the cameras crossed the line the audience would think the football teams changed sides or they'd be lost as to who's scoring where.

A diagram that shows the 180 degree rule.

Use of Tripod - the tripod came to a great use for all of us as students as we were learning how to use all of the equipment and make our shots steady.

Editing:

• Match Cut - this is when editing occurs on an action as a result making the action appear seamless. For example, if there's a mid shot of a person kicking the ball, then cut to a close up of the ball being kicked, the close up would emphasise the person's action.
• Cross Cut - when the editing takes us from one situation to another and usually continues back and forth to suggest the 2 things have something in common/are linked. An example would be a shot of a police car chasing the criminals and then a shot of the criminals in their own car.
• Shot/Reverse Shot - this is a techniques that's mainly used in conversations such as cutting from one person speaking to the other person speaking, and back again.
• Credits - this played an important part of editing our final piece as we learnt to put the credits in order and properly to indicate who had what role within our group.

We all learnt about all of these different types of editing so that we could use in our own work. This was to achieve flawless editing and so that  the audience would enjoy what they were seeing.

Sound:

• Diegetic - this is the sound that's actually being heard on the set such as the actor's voice, traffic noise and so on.
• Non-diegetic - this is when the sound is added in post-production such as sound effects.
• Dialogue - conversation between 2 or more actors.

These 3 types of sound came in to hand when we had to do our own work as we learnt when and why non-diegetic and diegetic sounds were used for. For example, they would help with setting the mood and add emphasise to situations.