Eval Q 7 Progress from Prelim.

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


When i first joined media the first task i was set was to create a prelim, my initial knowledge on films was very bleak and i didn't understand how films were made and anything to do with them. My first insight into some ways in which films where made and some types of shots that were commonly used in film where those that Dave had taught me in lesson. These shots were, shot reverse shot, the 180 degree rule and the match on action. When i was set my prelim i had to incorporate these shots at least once.

Since i did my prelim my understanding and knowledge on how films are made and what goes into making them a success has broadened. I have learnt since shooting my prelim about new and various different shot techniques, angle, editing styles and much more. I have learnt this throughout the year from doing research and also learning from Dave during lessons. This new understanding of how the film industry works and how films are made had enabled me to include these techniques in my own work such as my film opening which myself and some of the other lads in the class made as part of our coursework. One of the fundamental roles that i learnt during the making of the film opening was time management and scheduling everything to make sure that i was on top of all the work that i had to have completed.

When we filmed our film opening we had to create a inbox online on the social network Facebook so that as a group we were able to stay in contact with one another and update each other on when and where we were going to meet to film our opening and also to confirm whether or not we were available to ensure that we did not waste time. Obviously this didn't help due to the fact some of us had jobs and other activities on certain dates so we had schedule it for an appropriate time when we were all available.

My Ident

Also we had to make idents to incorporate in with our film opening so that anyone watching it would know which company produced our films, and the ident i made was ' Paper Plane Productions'

And with the prelim there was not much point in making a storyboard or planning what shots to do in what scenes, whereas in our film we had to plan shooting schedules , and have shot lists showing us what shot types to use in what scenes , and also plenty of storyboards showing the idea has been fully planned.

When we did our prelim we lacked mise-en-scene and we didn't include and props our outfits for our characters which meant that it lacked detail and didn't look very good. However since i have made my prelim the work that i have produced since has incorporated these techniques which has meant that the my films are now better with much more thought and ideas that go into each and every scene, each prop or costume will hold some purpose to signify a certain point, for example the blood on the killer's white apron this was to signify that he's butchered the victim.

Then with our film opening we had to have a larger cast than we did for our prelim which brought complications, such as finding the cast because for each character role we had to make sure the actor fulfilled the requirements needed for the character, and it was especially difficult to plan the dates of specific shoots as our casting crew would be available at different times, so this is completely different to the prelim where we just could used ourselves to film it and was capable of just doing it in school, whereas we had to do location scouting for our film opening to find a location that fitted the requirements that our film needed.

Also for our film opening we had to do a much larger variety of takes than what we did in our prelim as our opening is up to 2.40 minutes long so obviously it's going to of required a lot more footage than the prelim did, but also trial shots were needed in our film opening to test ideas for shots to see if they worked or not , and then there's always the problem with one shot not working so we'd have to go back and re-shoot the scene, or if one of our actors did something wrong we'd have to film another take, so here there was much more to get done than what was needed for the prelim.

Soundtrack

And there's all the editing process that we had to go through with our film opening which we didn't need to do for the prelim as it was much simpler, for example all the shots and to be cut to length or adjusted slightly so that the end product would look neat. But also there's all the soundtracks that we had to make to fit in with our film opening which we never had to do for our prelim so we had to learn how to make these soundtracks as well as incorporate them into our film.

Audience Feedback

Then there was all the audience feedback that we had to collect as well as going through it and understand what worked with our film opening or what improvements need to be done , and this is where all our rough cuts come in hand as from each rough cut we could publish it online , for example we used Youtube to exhibit our rough cuts for our audience to be able to access it, but also they were able to give us instant feedback by commenting on the video, and with the prelim we didn't have to do any of this.

In conclusion the improvements since my prelim are a lot better and have made the work that i now produce a lot better and to a higher quality. This is due to the fact that my understanding is a lot better and i am more aware of which shot types, angles, props etc to use and my time management is a lot better than it originally was.  

This is the Prelim we made at the start of the year:

Then we made our first rough cut which showed some more variety of camera shots being used, which is also showing how we've improved from our first prelim task.












And we then went on to producing a second rough cut of much higher quality as we demonstrated more camera shots than we did in our prelim activity and our rough cut, and this rough cut was an improvement from our first rough cut as in our first rough cut there wasn't much variety in shot angles and takes, there were lots of long takes and lost effect where as we broke down this long takes more in this second rough cut.








Finally we produced our final cut which showed how far we've made progress from our first prelim task , as we demonstrated lots more verisimilitude and continuity editing which had greater effect than our first rough cuts towards our audience.