'OMG!' Short filming exercise and collaboration...and it all comes down to the 180 degree golden rule of filming.

In preparation of our short film project which we will be directing, producing, editing and perhaps even starring in ourselves for some of the groups, we did a mini filming exercise last Tuesday in our groups. Ant, James and I went out to film around campus using a script written by Mike Johnston himself about someone who receives a phone call that brings mysterious bad news. We did this in order to get used to filming in a way that doesn't break the cardinal rule of filming: the 180 degree rule.
Each of the groups were given a different direction to keep true to, ours was to be shot going from left to right, making sure that we never broke the 180 degree rule. Here is our finished product (which was heavily edited by James at the end to make me sound like I was making some sort of animal noise!)

After this, Mike had us do a collaboration with another group that was doing the opposite direction to us to show how the continuity of direction would be broken if we did ever pass the 180 degree line. We linked up with Ed, Mike and Kirsty to do our joint collaboration, shown below:



This is good to know since it's the small details like this that make films work. We don't realise how much needs to be taken into consideration so that the finished piece will make sense to the audience, so this exercise was good for hammering the golden 180 degree rule into us for the future. It was also loads of fun filming it and gave us some directing, filming, producing, editing and acting experience.

Here is the finished product, with our own twist on the ending...enjoy!

OH MY GOD! from James Harris on Vimeo.