Evaluation Q7

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

I have definitely learnt a lot in the progression from the prelim task to the full product. For each there were different stages to go through in order to end up with the finished product and the prelim and the final product had many differences, but also many similarities.

Briefs and Pre production

Preliminary Task
Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue with another character. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main Task
The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidates, with the exception of a copyright free source.

Firstly the brief was different therefore our initial responses were different. Additionally the prelim was done at school therefore there was not as much choice for location, so we found everyone wanted the same location – this taught us that we need to book in advance and get permission to film where we wanted, and that we needed to do a location recce and walk through to check the spacing. Furthermore for our final piece we spent a lot more time deciding on, and thinking about our target audience, as there wasn’t really one for the prelim. There were also a lot of things to consider for the pre production stage. For prelim we didn’t do any research, as there just wasn’t time. The prelim task taught us that it is essential to plan. You really do need to do a storyboard, script and shooting script in order for you to work efficiently on the shoot. Possibly the most useful thing we learnt from the prelim was that we didn’t need to shoot in order, which greatly helped us to improve the continuity of our final piece.

Production and Post production

During the production stage for the prelim task, we didn’t have a test shoot or a re shoot, so if things went wrong there was not time to change them. This made us aware of how important it was ensure our actors would be available for more than one shoot, and as things are likely to go wrong. I also learnt the importance of shooting more footage than needed, and more angles of each line than you could need and definitely definitely shooting a master shot! This meant when we came to editing we had more choice, and a better opportunity to be creative. On the prelim task we all just stuck to our roles because of the time limit, but when shooting for real we all swapped and so we all did an equal amount of shooting, production work and sound work, making it fairer and more interesting for us. When it came to the final piece we also knew from the prelim task that actors can make or break you film, so we knew we had to get good ones. Doing the prelim made a big difference when it came to post production. We didn’t have to worry about titles, effects or branding, but we didn’t have certain techniques we needed to have used in order to complete the brief. This included the 180˚ rules, shot-reverse-shot and eye line matches. Here we learnt the significance on continuity, and we kept it in mind when filming later on.

Evaluation

We did not get much feedback after the preliminary task. The only response we got was from the rest of our class, and as they were media students it was all from a technical point of view. We did not get any audience feedback about how appealing or engaging our sequence was. However for our final piece we got loads of feedback. We did a media student screening just before finishing so that they could point out any little continuity errors that we could change. After finishing we did an audience screening of it, where around 20 members of our target audience filled in a detailed questionnaire on their thought and opinions of our title sequence. In both tasks we had to work as a team, but doing the prelim made us work more effectively and efficiently together, meaning the end product is the best it could be.