LessonPage:Intro to filmmaking:Pop Quiz

This school is:

Wikiversity Film School - Narrative film production

This course is:

The basics of narrative filmmaking

This lesson is:

Understanding Filmmaking

The pages of this lesson are:

Introduction - Understanding Filmmaking

1. Editing a conversation - Overview

Pop quiz - Editing a conversation. ← You are here

Why did the editor roll the picture?

Look at the movie called "Start Here". At 8 minutes into the movie, there is the longest rolling of the picture edit. The editor rolled the picture edit so that the back of the man's head is seen as he talks. Why?

Multiple Choice Answers:

Answer A: The girl is the star of the show and so the audience wants to see her rather than the man.

Answer B: The man has been talking a long time. It is time for a new shot but there is no other shot available so rolling the picture edit will solve this problem without having to shot a new shot.

Answer C: The man is not as interesting as the girl. Also, watching the top of his head move up and down is not interesting.

Click here and tell me your answer to this question.

What does the number "17B-7"?

Each take is given an number. What does that number mean?

Multiple Choice Answers:

Answer A: For scene 17, this is the third time that the camera was moved. That is what the "B" stands for. (17 was the first camera setup; 17A was the second camera setup; 17C was the third camera setup.)

Answer B: The -7 at the end of the number means this is the seventh take. Since there are no other takes with the name 17B, the director did not like any of the other takes filmed from this camera angle.

Answer C: This is the number which was assigned to this scene by the script person.

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How long did it take to film this scene?

If it takes an average of 30 minutes to set up each camera angle and 10 minutes to setup to reshoot a take and each take is 80 seconds, how many minutes did it take to shoot this scene?

(Example: if there were 1 camera setup with 5 takes and each take is 80 second long then the scene will take 30 minutes to set up for the first shot and 4 times 10 minutes to set up for the other shots plus 5 times 80 seconds for the filming of each shot. This is a total of 4600 seconds.)

Tell me how you would calculate this number. Tell me

How many camera setups are there: Tell me how many camera setups are there for this scene? (Camera setup means physically moving the camera to a new location. That is when you have to change the lights as well.)

How many camera setups are there: How many total takes were there for each of the camera setups for this scene

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Where is the gap?

In the example edit of this scene in the "Start Here" movie, there is no gap between when the man says, "Well, you can always follow Dave?" and she says "Follow Dave? What? In dark glasses and a trench coat?"

Yet, when you watch this scene in the edit called "Sample with music" in the Watch Me Second folder, there is a three second gap between the words.

Look at all the film dailies and find the take where there is a three second gap between these two pieces of dialog.

Multiple Choice Answers:

Answer A: 17-1

Answer B: 17-2

Answer C: 17A-2

Answer D: 17A-3

Answer E: 17B-7

Answer F: 17C-1

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The next page

Fun with ArtRage Free

Now, we need a movie poster for the movie set. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn about a fun program called Art Rage FREE.

Go to on Creating matte paintings. Lesson:Matte Painting

Contact your instructor

Your instructor for this filmmaking class is Robert Elliott. You can email me by clicking here.