Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?



The brief for the preliminary task was different from our brief for the main task. Firstly, the brief for the preliminary task was very to the point and clear about what needed to be done. This seemed like a quite boring, mundane task to film when as a matter of fact, it was quite difficult. It let us practise using the continuity techniques we had learned in class without worrying about being particularly creative. It was really helpful as in our final sequence, we used a lot of the techniques due to having a conversation between the 2 victim and villain such as the 180⁰ rule, shot-reverse-shot and match-on-action. The other difference between the two tasks was that the final task needed music and titles. This meant that the final task needed much more editing than the original task. The final sequence brief allowed for a lot more creativity. This gave us the opportunity to experiment with things such as the lighting techniques, shot types, editing techniques and other things. In the pre-production of the preliminary task, we learnt that it is very helpful to have a shooting script, a storyboard and a shot list and knew we had to be as organised as possible to make the most efficient use of time. The shooting script was incredibly helpful on the main shoot as with our location, we had a very small space of time to shoot and as our actors weren’t media students and were doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, the shooting script helped us plan when we needed each of the actors so we were able to let them go home as soon as possible. This is another benefit of non-linear editing. We didn’t need to shoot it all in order so we could shoot them in order of convenience. We were also able to do location reccies for the main task, this allowed us to choose where we wanted to film. In the final production, the only difference in the equipment we used was the fact that we used studio lights with blue gels to get the right colour and create the shadows for our sequence. Also, using experience from the preliminary shoot, I learnt that it’s very important to make sure that continuity is correct. In the preliminary task, we had a few errors from shot to shot like the chair not tucking in properly or the hand on the door not pulling away properly. This taught us that in future we should really pay attention to the mise-en-scene such as the things left on the floor of the basement although, we weren’t entirely successful in this as, as I mentioned before, we had a bag left on the floor in one of the shots (0:30 to 0:40). The final shoot however gave us the potential for re-shoots which we took the opportunity to use although we didn’t use any of the footage from the re-shoot. The preliminary task also taught us how everything takes much longer in the actual shoots because of continuity and we couldn’t just film small snippets and edit them together so we were aware would have to run-on the action in the shoot so it would make it easier to edit together to make a coherent sequence. Another difference in the production of the 2 tasks was that in the final task, we were able to get any actors and not use media students. This made the overall project easier in the actual shooting aspects such as having plenty of people to do the jobs such as controlling the lights, taking care of sound and directing. This meant the quality of acting was overall of a much higher standard. The only problem we encountered with this was the fact that they can be quite unreliable which is something we didn’t experience when using media students in our own group. In the preliminary task, we had very little time to edit, around 1 hour. Due to having a lot more time in the edit suite with our final project, we had the potential to experiment a lot with the effects in Premiere on the actual footage such as adjusting brightness and contrast. Two of the major differences between the editing of the two tasks was the need for titles and music. In the preliminary task, there was no need for music to be added but in the main task, the music was vital. It accentuated the entire atmosphere. The music we used was 'The Platform' from www.freeplaymusic.com The next aspect of the main task that was different was the fact that we had to include titles in our sequence.
Overall, I feel that the preliminary task was very useful to have done due to the fact that we were able to practise the continuity techniques and, although we didn’t have a re-shoot, this meant we could tell what was wrong with the shots and could make sure we didn’t do it wrong in the actual shoot. It also refreshed our memory on how to use all the software and hardware that we used. It also made sure that we knew what we were doing when it came to editing the footage so we could worry more about editing to the music and adding titles. I think I improved greatly due to the fact that I learnt to construct a seamless narrative and coherent sequence with the use of new technology and gained skills in using Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro along with improving my skills with using Adobe Premiere Pro.