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?

Looking back at the preliminary task I feel that I now know a lot more.

The brief for our preliminary task was:

"Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/Reverse shot and the 180 degree rule."

The brief to our production task was: 

"To produce a 2-minute opening sequence for a fiction film. All video and audio material must be original, produced by candidate(s), with the exception of music and audio effects from a copyright-free source. It should be clear from your sequence who the audience is."

The differences I found between the two briefs: 

• Production task had a time-limit.
• Production task had a focus on audience.
• Production task was more open to creativity.
• Preliminary task was controlled and specific
• Preliminary task had a focus on Camera rules.

Planning:

A lot more planning went into our Production task than it did to our Preliminary task. For our real opening we needed to plan:

1. Location
2. Representing characters
3. Mise-en-scene
4. Camera angles and framing
5. Sound FX
6. Music

In comparison to our real Opening; the preliminary task was barely planned. We were limited to our group to act and the task was done in lesson time. We were given a location and time for the shoot. This contrasts our Production task as there was a lot more that needed to be done. 

Since it states the task should have a clear audience, we needed to take genre highly into consideration as this was a way we were going to target are TA. This made our group have to do research into different genres and Target audiences. 

We needed to decide on actors, locations, plan the shoot in detail, make a shootboard, storyboard and animatic. 

Production:

I feel that doing the preliminary task was fundamental when it came to our Film opening as we learnt a variety of techniques and rules which needed to be followed. 

Match on Action

Continuity in a scene where character movement is continuous and doesn't jump between shots.

Examples of Match on action in our Prelim (top) and our Film opening (bottom)
As you can see from the Gifs above, the action in continuous without any 'jumps' or 'glitches'. For example when the door opens it cuts to Flo's reaction, after this the progression of time is so that Ella is already half way into the room.

180° rule

This form of continuity is where the camera must not move more than 180 around your actor. This is don't so not to confuse the audience with setting.

An example where we used this rule in our film opening

Over the shoulder shots:

These shots help the audience understand the point of view of the actor

Master shots:

Running a shoot:
During the shoot I got a great experience of using the clapper board, camera and directing. Since I am someone who likes to take a 'leading' role in projects, being a directer by guiding actors, and maintaining everyone helped me to further knowledge myself on how to be more 'people friendly' but still achieving the main goal.

Post Production:
I already knew how to use Adobe Premier Pro from Gcse and from the Prelim task. As the project progressed, my knowledge was further developed and I become much more familiar with the software and being able to use more tools with ease such as add effects, and grade shots.

Evaluation process
For our Prelim we self evaluated and picked out issues. This wasn't the case for our film sequence as we would show people the progress during production and after production. We received a lot of feedback that helped us to improve our sequence and then asked for feedback from our TA where we reflected whether or not we achieved our goal.

Working as a team:
This skill is important throughout life and not just in the Media industry. During the prelim I learnt that communication amongst group members was vital to highlight any important issues. We carried this on when we started our groupwork; we created a Whatsapp Groupchat to share research, ideas, and to raise problems as well as having 2 hour meetings every week.

Conclusion
During these two projects, I developed my understanding of technology and film theories and am now able to apply that knowledge. If given more time we could have further been able to improve our opening. Saying this I enjoyed making the opening and found it was a great learning experience.