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

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Question 7
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Patrycja 

Dawn

For me, the preliminary was a base for building on and learning new skills. I feel I have grasped various planning, filming, and editing techniques, and I'm sure these skills will be improved during the Final Production filming.

Looking back at the Preliminary task I have realised that we did our best for the first time of filming that we have done. I personally think that we followed, used and obeyed shot reverse shot, 180-degree rule and match on action in order to make the video successful and interesting. By doing the Preliminary task I have understood that without research and planning, it is quite hard to film as you do not know what your filming and make it harder for yourself to achieve the criteria. Things like the storyboard and the script are really useful and should be used as they help the director to lead the actors and tell them what to do next and what to say. While working with my group it was really hard as we all had different ideas that did not quite match together. After having few meetings our conclusion was to try and combine ideas together and come up with one, which then made it easier for us to start the filming as soon as possible. I have learnt that the research and planning is one of the most important part of constructing the video as there needs to be a narrative to the story that makes sense but also all the other things such as shot list and concept to make it easy to direct while filming.

I can see that the planning is crucial in creating a smooth production process. The research is a very important part of this, without it I wouldn't have appreciated the effects of shots, the group meetings and the intricate process behind a clip of film. Any production needs shot ideas, shot lists, storyboards and scripts; without them the filming would become a complete mess and be time consuming whilst sifting through every single shot to find the right one, there would be confusion within a company which could lead to disagreements, and the post production would become cluttered - needing a thorough review on what to keep; which might lead to re-filming. The group meetings were essential to make sure everyone understood what stage they and others were at in the making of the preliminary. When it came to the full product, ‘LOOKOUT PRODUCTIONS’ group meetings were so much better compared to our Preliminary groups meetings. They became far more detailed thanks to the practice we had with the preliminary.

Our group needed to re-film for the Preliminary because, in our ignorance, we didn't put enough effort into planning or our group meetings, meaning many important areas weren't taken into consideration; weather, filming time, continuity, space, surroundings. The weather was sunny and the next day it was raining, we didn’t plan ahead in order to stop us from re-filming again; we had to rush our filming because of the time waited and lack of planning. This mistake helped me realize how essential planning is needed for filming and when it came to our real media product I planned the days that I could film, if the weather was appropriate, what times in the day to start, when to finish and how long the shots should take. Without the Preliminary mistakes I may have made this type of mistake for the real media product, which would have heavily impacted our company’s production of ‘The Forgotten’.

When constructing the preliminary task we realised that sharing roles is also important, as one person cannot be responsible for everything. Our group has decided to make each person responsible for something e.g. Patrycja doing editing with Veronikas help, Dawn filming and doing the script, Anna and Veronika as actors, Anna and Patrycja doing storyboard. This way we makes things even around the group and everyone can get equal marks for constructing the preliminary task and the final production.

The script and story board were keys for communication in the group, as they stated what order the shots would be in, where the camera would be, what shot type, what the actor would be saying at the time, they would also display continuity, how long the shot should last etc; aiding the groups understanding of the production as a whole – helping everyone understand where the production was going and what to do. Creating the script and storyboard for the preliminary was great practice for our real media product because it was a starting point to improve my skills. When I revisited my skills for the Preliminary, I realized that the filming and script were very basic compared to our final production. I have greatly improved my filming and camera techniques with more practice and a wider understanding of shot types, camera, tripod positions and practicality of filming. This process also challenged our communication skills when working as a group, not everyone would agree with each other’s ideas, having differing opinions. This prepared me for our opening sequence productions meetings because we had to make a product that appealed to both of our interests; which promoted our teamwork and collaboration.

Preliminary task was really easy to construct as it did not have to be long and it was a simple story of someone walking in and having a chat with the other person (the brief). While doing the preliminary task we realised that we have not used variety of shots, kept some of the shots too long-which made it boring for the audience to look at, the sound was not clear and some of the shots were not good which made it hard to put together when editing. The task also helped us to find out what logic pro and premier pro is all about, as we had to use it in order to put the clips together. From there it was much easier to construct the final piece as we already had some experience from doing the preliminary task.

Although I wasn’t as involved in editing the clips together in both the Preliminary and final, I have a greater understanding of editing, how to move clips, merge them together, using ‘cross-dissolve’ or ‘fade-to-black’ to transition clips and the ‘echo’ effect to make a clip seem distorted. Whilst filming I began to plan for Patrycja, the editor, and take into consideration the techniques that could be used on shots or filmed more shots to provide her with more material. Concerning the final product, I can see improvements that we could make. We could introduce the characters faster and in more depth through more variety of camera shots and angles. We could make it more suspenseful through the introduction of the characters, possibly involving a flash back to display short scenes of the female characters back-story.