Se7en keywords deconstruction

Above is an amalgamation of keywords listed on the IMDB page for the movie 'Se7en'. Each keyword stated the amount of people who found it 'relevant' to the film, so I used these figures to create a 'Wordle', with the most relevant keywords appearing in the largest font. I eliminated any of the keywords listed on the IMDB page that didn't describe any themes found within the title sequence such as 'revenge' and 'FBI agent', but kept themes such as 'death' and 'sociopath', which can be clearly inferred from the very dark, twisted and unsettling montage style opening.

Preliminary Task

This is my preliminary task; a short video of someone walking into a room and engaging in a spoken conflict with another character. For this task, I was placed in a group of 3 and was allotted the role of the cameraman, a role that I had never before undertaken. The point of this task was too both exhibit three film techniques that we had learned (match on action, shot-reverse-shot and the 180° rule) and to simply practice filming, editing and scriptwriting to some degree, though the latter to only a very minor extent.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

Preliminary Task 

For my preliminary task I was asked to go out and and film a short interaction between two characters in order to exhibit three media techniques; 'match on action', 'shot reverse shot' and 'the 180° rule'. Firstly 'match on action' is a technique in which an editor takes one shot and then cuts to another which matches the action of the first one, which allows the film to play more fluently. 'Shot reverse shot', on the other hand, is a technique where one character is seen talking to another (whose face is usually unseen), the shot then changes to show the other character talking, with the first character's face now unseen. As the two characters are shown facing opposite directions it is assumed that they are looking at one another. Finally my short interaction had to work alongside the ' the 180° rule' which is a guideline within cinematography that states that cameras must film a conversation between two characters from the same side of an imaginary axis that runs between the legs of both people involved. We use this rule in order to assure that the first character to be filmed talking is always frame right and the other is always frame left, which helps to create consistency within an interaction between two characters. 

My preliminary task involved a dispute between two female characters, with little information offered. During the making of this piece I also learned how to use 'Adobe Premier', a piece of relatively simple video-editing software that I have been assured will become very useful and significant as the course progresses. In conclusion this task helped me understand the importance of camera angle on the fluency of a film, as well as teaching me how to edit a video to a satisfactory standard.