"Introductory COntinuity Exercise".


Our continuity short (The Dealer) tells the story of an arms dealer and his client who exchange goods during a short encounter. My favourite aspect of our video is the soundtrack which is very relevant to the action; it just seems to work well. I also think that the narrative is engaging and effectively draws in the spectator. Another element that works well in the short is the use of props which helps the continuity because without a briefcase the viewer might not understand what sort of ‘deal’ was going on. My least favourite aspect of the film is the badly cut scene when the client is moving through the door and he suddenly is still in the following shot. This affects the continuity of the piece and leaves the spectator wondering, ‘why is the client suddenly still when he was on the move milliseconds before.’ Another problem was that some props that were in one place were suddenly in another place in a different scene. I feel that the smoothest aspect in our film is the match on action when the client is opening the door. Another element of our short that went well was the acting. I feel that for our first piece we did a decent job on our performances. Furthermore we did manage to use different camera angles effectively, in particular I liked the over the shoulder shot and the close up of the dealer at the end. This left the viewer asking questions like ‘why is he smirking’ and ‘what has he done.’ In my opinion our editing was a problem as we were unfamiliar with the programme. This problem probably won’t occur as much in future pieces as we are now more able to use premiere pro. Another problem with our film was that we could have had more time to shoot or we could have used the time we had more effectively. If we would have worked quicker I believe that the end result could be more polished and would have looked much better. If we would have done the movie again I would make sure that we would have paid more attention to movement of props and other various continuity problems. These errors just make the film less enjoyable and with a little extra attention to detail we probably would have made the movie look a lot better.