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?


Preliminary task brief:
A short continuity task in which we had to film a character walking into a room through the door, sitting down on a chair and talking to another character briefly.


Main task brief:
To film the opening two minutes of a film based on the genre and storyline of your choice. It should last around two minutes.


During each tasks, there are three main stages:

During the preliminary task, I was able to refresh my memory on what I needed to know.


1. Planning:
This stage involved:

• organising group meetings.
• ensuring paperwork was correctly filled out.
• roughly storyboarding.
• hiring out equipment.
• choosing a location and actors
• writing a script.

Since GCSE Media, I'd forgotten about the planning stage of the project and i found this extremely useful, especially as things like shot lists and shot logs can prove to be extremely helpful in the future.

2. Production

During production we had to:

• assign group members roles. (eg. cameraman, sound checker)
• sort out timings
• achieve perfect continuity
• establish our master shots, cutaways etc.
• film all our shots fully from each angle
• learn the continuity rules (eg. 180 degree rule)

The fact that we were working in a team meant that everybody had to learn to communicate. This was a major skill that we all had to develop in order to produce a successful sequence with good narrative flow and continuity. 

3. Editing

During editing we had to:

• capture all footage.
• learn to use adobe premiere pro.
• add a title(s)
• cut the shots accurately and put them together so the continuity looked seamless (eg. when ella opens the door and we cut from her outside to her walking inside the room.)
• make sure the sequence made sense and was a suitable length.

I felt that this was the stage where i learnt the most - i learnt to make titles again and i was able to re-familiarise myself with the software, which i had forgotten about. 

One useful thing i learnt was to place clips on alternating rows rather. So i'd place one clip on 'Video 1' and the next clip on 'Video 2' etc. This meant that seeing where one clip started and another ended was very easy.

As well as those 3 stages, i had to evaluate my preliminary task - this was based on the finished piece and teacher/fellow media student's feedback. I had to state what i had learnt, what i'd do differently, what worked etc. I also had to write how i felt the preliminary task would help me in the future:

Finally, learning to work as part of a team was vital. We had to take it in turns to shoot, edit and do paperwork. I learnt to pull my own weight and to help motivate the rest of the team at times to produce a successful final piece.