Question 7

Q7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression form it to the full product?

During my pre-production of my prelim task, I made an initial decision that the filming of my location should take place in a humanities classroom. This location is ideal because it was set up with appropriate equipment to create a workplace atmosphere. For instance the classroom contained a desk and office with added to the realistic workplace environment. The problems encountered during filming were background noise, created from passing students. This slowed down the process of filming, however we managed to successfully adapt to the problems. My group had done this by politely asking students to make their way down stairs; prior to my group needing to film exterior shots in the humanity corridor. From the problems encountered in the prelim task, we learnt to film in a quieter environment to reserve time, when it came to selecting a location for our main task. Therefore my group and I didn’t encounter in this problem during the production of our main task. We did this by investigating the agreed location, which was the exterior of Aaron’s house, both his street and alley way, before our filming day. This was beneficial for our group because it allowed an insight to what the location could offer. 

And it also gave us the opportunity of planning the variety of shots we aimed in incorporating in our main task. It also allowed us to practice possible camera angles. Despite, the preparation my group took to prevent possible problems from occurring, we still faced slight issues on the day of filming. For example, passing predestines and vehicles were a factor that limited the useable shots we had. Also, because of this the continuity of our film was affected, we were limited to only a few useful shots of our establishing shot.  The key lessons learnt from these continuously experienced issues, is to prevent filming in congested places, especially outside. My group and I can now take away the knowledge and understanding we have gained from these problems.

The initial decision made for the prelim storyboard was a scenario involving one character entering a room, where the second would interact with character one, and they would complete a short dialogue. The storyboard in the prelim task lacked a variety of shots. This meant that we didn’t showcase our media skills as well as we could have. Our prelim task consisted mostly of mid-shots and close ups. This is a clear indication of our lack of media skills. In the main task it showed my expansion of media skills. For instance a variety of shots were used throughout, Including: Mid-shots, long-shots, establishing shots, panning, cut-ins, close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots.

The key lesson learnt from this is to keep in mind I have to portray my media skills by aiming to incorporate a wide variety of shots and camera angles. In the future, I will be able to expand my knowledge of media shots.

An initial decision of cast in my prelim task was to include cast members who were not camera shy. Despite the characters acting ability, they lacked knowledge of how to portray themselves when in front of the camera, this therefore demonstrated the lack of ability the cast had in terms of character adaptation. The problem I encountered as a result was shots weren’t executed perfectly on screen.  I ensured that in the main task, the cast were comfortable on screen and were able to portray there charter to the best of their ability. I did this by carefully selecting cast that were not afraid or limited to portray the immature youth required. For example, Aaron who was initially out of his comfort zone adapted to the situation and was able to deliver the necessary personality of an urban character. The problem that occurred encouraged us to be precious when selecting cast members. The key lesson learnt is to be aware of individual’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of adapting to a character, and assign them to the appropriate role according this.

During my production of my prelim task, I made an initial decision that the timing of the film would be after school. This was because a quiet and undisturbed atmosphere was required to shoot are prelim task in. The problems encountered during filming was in fact the timing as students had just been let out of lessons , so in order to maintain our location without finding an alternative, our group required patience. This kept our group back in terms of starting our exterior shots, in the corridor. Our group had to make an immediate decision and reorganise our shooting schedule. We also needed to establish that we could only use approximately 4-6 minutes per shot, and limited ourselves by only filming 2 takes per shot. This was a major risk because it meant it was essential for our group to get each shot perfectly with few attempts. From the problems encountered in the prelim task, we learnt to film each shot quickly and with few mistakes each time when it came to our main task. For example we used a continuity sheet to note down the useful and useless takes per shot. This saved time when it came to editing. It was also a useful way of remembering how many takes we took altogether, so we could refer back and take more if necessary. The key lesson learnt was to manage our time accordingly and don’t go over time for one shot, because it would affect the overall time remaining, this would put our group at risk of not meeting the deadline.

The initial decision made for the variety of shots used in our prelim was not organised. This showed through the lack of camera angles and creative ways of capturing the action of screen. This became a problem when watching our film because are audience did not remain engaged throughout. This meant we were unable to showcase our interesting narrative of a mysterious occurring incident, as are lack of varied shots over-powered the storyline and acting on stage. We had to find a solution to this problem, during editing is group tried to combine several shots in an interesting and creative order, to make up for our lack of shots. Therefore my group and I didn’t encounter in this problem during the production of our main task. We did this by planning each shot carefully taking into consideration a varied number of shots were to be incorporated. We created a check list to ensure art least of each different shot was used. The key lesson learnt from the problem encountered is that are group should always refer back to the requirements set for us by our media teacher, so in future was are able to show are media skills are abilities more affectively.

Throughout the production of my prelim task, I made an initial decision that continuity was urgent. However this priority became less important when filming our prelim task, because I came across several limiting factors such as lack of time and location issues, the continuity of our film was poor. For instance there were several jump shots and glitches with the exterior shots- of the character walking in the classroom. This meant that the finish product was poor and lack fluency. This gave the audience the impression that the characters actions were not consistent and the same all the way through filming. This problem prepared us for our main task because it allowed us to prevent this mistake from occulting again. I focused more on the continuity of the characters actions and so the fluency of the film was better, in comparison to our prelim task. The key lesson learnt was to instruct the action on stage so that the characters more consistently rather than moving the camera to correspond with the movement. 

The feedback received from my class mates and teacher, after completing my prelim task encouraged me to focus more on timing. However because we were aware the prelim was less important than the main task we didn’t take the feedback seriously at that stage. This mean that was necessary for my group and me to attend several group meetings: in order save time on the day of filming, our main task. During our group meeting my group discussed our shooting schedule, location, cast and script. This was an important factor because previous feedback given to us by our media teacher suggested we lacked time management. However through the filming of our main task we incorporated this feedback as we knew it was an important factor, if we wanted to demonstrate our media skills. Also timing in the sense of editing on time was difficult during the prelim task, in comparison to the main task. This is because more create factors such as sound and credits were included in the main task, but not the prelim. However to improve, in the future my team should come up with an editing timetable to ensure each group member contributed equally.

It I was given another opportunity, I would ensure that me and my group would remain prepared. We would have more group meetings, as this helped us understand what was required, and going to happen on the day of filming.

The sound and music choices were less important in the prelim task, in comparison to the main task, mainly because of the simpler narrative and actions. The sound and choice in music was a significant factor in our main task, this is because we thought the choice in music would help demonstrate the comical message we were aiming to put across to the audience. However there was a limited choice of music to choose from, this limited the creativity of our group. If I was given another opportunity at including music and sound on our opening title sequence, I would research other useable websites which offer copyright free music. My feedback suggested the music was slightly repetitive at times.