Pre-lim Filming

Before going out and filming real footage for my short film it is imperative that I practise filming shots. It's important I do this as it helps me to test out my ideas and see if they are plausible whilst also helping me become more comfortable with the equipment such as the tripods and cameras. It also helps me as it allows me to test out shots that I want to use in my film to see how effective they are and if they connote what I want them to and are visually engaging enough to hold the readers attention.
Pre-lim filming familiarizes me with the whole filming process as I have never created a film before and the processes are all new to me, by practising them before I go out to shoot real footage it will help me to make sure that my shooting flows smoothly, I get all the footage I need and don't waste my actors time.
Through the pre-lim filming I have learnt a number of tips and techniques such as how to hold the camera if I'm doing a hand held shot (with my elbows in for stability), to have an assistant camera man for support, to direct the actors before we shoot so they know what I want them to do, to count down from 5 to 0 whilst filming so actors know when to start and to have a lot of extra footage for editing, to shoot an initial wide shot of all action then cutaways and close up's to edit later and to shoot with editing in mind.
When I came to edit my prelim I had a lot of problems with the computer and uploading the videos as it kept uploading my files shorter than the original size and kept crashing meaning I was loosing the edit I had made. This means that my prelim is very short as I lost a lot of footage. This has stressed the importance of filming a lot of extra footage for editing later. I also learnt that I should keep the angle of the shots the same when going between close ups and mid shots whilst filming a conversation to make it flow better.

In my prelim I practised filming a conversation as much of film is conversations. Below is my prelim.

I have also created an edit of the prelim which includes the shots I've used and why I've used them which is below.