Preliminary Task

For Media Studies AS, every student is required to create a Preliminary Task. This is a short film of anything over 20 seconds and it counts as 10% of your coursework.

Each Prelim Task is required to include:

• Match on Action - this is a type of continuity editing whereby a character starts an action, the shot cuts to    another angle and the character finishes the action so that they meet perfectly. A great example of this is if someone opened a door. You could have an over the shoulder shot of the person turning the door knob and starting to push the door open and then you cut to the other side of the door, which continues to open revealing the person on the other side.

• You must obey the 180 Degree Rule - All camera angles in a scene must be shot from  the same side of an imaginary straight line. For instance, if you were filming a group of people sat around a table, there is an imaginary straight line going across the room and all your shots must be taken from one side of it, which gives you a swing of 180 degrees.

• Shot/Reverse Shot - This is a convention used mainly during dialogue. If there are two people facing each other having a conversation then when one person says something, you film them over the shoulder of the other person and then when the second person says something you do the reverse shot, which is a shot of them over the shoulder of the first person.

The easiest way to include these three conventions is by keeping to this simple structure:

• 2 people coming into a room
• Meeting
• Having a conversation
• Leaving the room.

Once you have the basis for your Prelim Task, the next step is to storyboard it. This includes small diagrams detailing any what each shot will contain.For instance, any camera movement, actor movement, dialogue etc.

*Storyboarding Tip - small arrows represent actors moving

                                 large arrows represent cameras moving

Click Here to see an example of a Cherwell Prelim Task from a previous year.