Practical Analysis - The Dream

The Story
The Dream is a story based in a school and the main character is a student called Stephanie, played by Marianne. It begins with the teacher taking a register and at that moment Stephanie enters the room late to class. The teacher inquires as to why she is late but Stephanie claims she isn't terribly late. The teacher approaches Stephanie and this is where Stephanie makes a break for it and the teacher chases her. At the end Stephanie is awoken to find herself in class and that it was all just a dream and she had fallen to sleep during registration.

Use of Shots
We used most if not all of shots we were told to use within the sequence, we used; mid shots, long shots, panning, close ups, zoom, extreme close ups, over the shoulder shots, tracking, low and high angles and a tilt.

1. The first shot is the shot of the teacher in mid shot. This is to introduce the audience to this character and so they can make the realisation as to who this character is and what they are are doing. So the audience will recognise that this is a teacher and that she is taking the register.

2. The next shot goes to a long shot of the class as the teacher is questioning as to the whereabouts of Stephanie, this will show to the audience that Stephanie is not in the room despite the fact they don't know who Stephanie is, they will be able to see the teacher searching and being unable to find Stephanie. This will create mystery as the viewer will question as to the whereabouts of Stephanie.

3. A pan is then used to go from focus onto the teacher to the door where Stephanie will enter from, this gives the audience an introduction to Stephanie and the audience will then assume that the person entering the classroom is the person that they have been in search of.

4. A close up of the teachers face in then used so the audience will be able to see the exasperation in the teachers face and action and so the audience will be aware that it is the teacher that is talking.

5. A zoom into Stephanies face in then used. I believe this was a bad shot to use, I dislike the zoom and think it is messy. The zoom was to smoothly make the manoveur into the next shot but failed to work and it didn't look good.

6. The next shot was a close up of the time on the phone, the phone was slightly unfocused which could have been avoided without the use of the zoom but this shot was to show the time on the phone as it had it's relevance to the story line.

7. The next shot is a point of view shot of the teacher storming towards the student, this was unstable and wasn't a very smooth transition towards the student.

8. But we then have the cutaway to the feet of the teacher, showing her anger to the audience and this is a much more efficent way of moving from one scene and then to another.

9.  An over the shoulder shot is used, over the teachers shoulder, so the audience can see Stephanies reaction and how she makes her escape when the teacher scolds her.

10. A tracking shot is then used of Stephanie making an escape down the stairs, this sudden fast paced atmosphere of the film will surprise the audience as they will not have been prepared for a sudden change in pace. The audience will be alarmed and want to know if she will be caught.

11. A high angle shot is then used of the teacher making her way down the stairs (this shot is fairly wobbly to start with and at a tilt) to then extend the suspense the audience will feel as to what may happen in the story.

12. A tilt is then used from the point of view of Stephanie to create tension as we can see the teacher in the shot, the audience feels as though they too are in the same danger that Stephanie is in due to the use of the point of view and the creation of tension, the audience is scared of getting caught.

13. A close up is then used of Stephanies face so the audience can see her reaction when she is awoken and the audience will then realise that all that just happened was infact just a dream.

Critical Assessment
There were several occasions where the shots were shaky or tilted when infact they weren't supposed to be. In some of the shots cuts should have been used rather than zooms and moving closer and further away.
We tried to use shots appropraitely, although in some cases the shot type could have been chosen differently.

Conclusion
I believe that the positive elements of our film was that we used many different types of camera shot within the film which is what our aim was to do.
We used most shots appropriately and despite some of the wonky camera work and moving the camera rather than using cuts our film was adaquete for a first piece and we have learnt from the film how we could further improve in future projects.