Evaluation Of The Preliminary Task

What have you learnt during the making of your preliminary task?

For me the preliminary task was a good opportunity to learn some basic skills and explore with the cameras. I learnt just to experiment with shots and to explore the same shot in different ways. This task also made me value the importance of filming more than you need, and having a whole repertoire of shots and clips so that you never feel unprepared when it comes to post production and editing.

Our group used one of the DSLR’s so decided we should try some effects on there, such as blurring out the background and sharpening the objects in the foreground. This helped me to learn how adding that little extra to a shot can make a whole scene look different and give it some personality.

Editing was also a learning curve for me as I have never edited before. I feel that this preliminary task gave me the perfect opportunity to explore with the editing software, Premiere Pro, and find my footing with how kind of editing styles I liked. Editing also links up with the idea of continuity and how important it is to pay attention to when both filming and editing. I found some aspects of keeping continuity hard which I had expected from the beginning.

What was successful?

Overall, I feel that generally this task was successful. Firstly, in the planning stages, I believe that our planning of the concept and the speed we came up with the concept was ultimately successful. From the offset we were certain that we would try to create and Assassin’s ‘’interview’’.

I also feel that a great area of success was in our editing. After having watched back our clips multiple times and setting up a rough idea of how the clips would flow, we became very efficient and neat with our editing, despite the multiple computer problems we had. Even though our piece was shorter than the suggested time, I still feel that our editing makes the piece stand out and still gives it character.

I also feel like we found success in the effectiveness of our shots. We thought about each shot before shooting it and decided what would look best by taking stills of each shot before we filmed it to ensure that everything was in the correct place and to see how the shot would feel before committing to filming it.

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Areas for development...

Our time management was definitely not perfect in this task, and I believe it needs a lot of work. As we originally needed members of staff to be in our short film we had to film out of school. Even when this plan was changed, the room we needed was often in use so again we had to use free time and time out of school. Although I feel we were committed to filming out of school and finding ways to film, one of the team members had outside commitments which meant they were considerably less available than the rest of us which made sorting things out that little bit more difficult.

I also think we need to work on lengthening our pieces and finding ways to explore each character more without using lines of dialogue. In our piece, you do not learn much about the Assassin or the company they are visiting, you are almost thrown into the action, which does create tension but also could be considered slightly confusing.

Teamwork and contribution...

I definitely feel like I threw myself into the task and committed to the filming and the post production that was needed. Within our group, I acted in the clip as the assassin and also contributed to the lines my character would say. Alongside this, I also filmed the shots of Oliver who was acting as the Interviewer.

In post production, I helped to edit by helping to notice things that needed to be trimmed out and how the clips flowed together. By watching the piece several times throughout different stages of post production, I was able to see where things didn’t fit or where we needed to rethink the sequencing of the shots.

I feel that I was rather flexible in this task as there were only two days a week that I could not film after school due to commitments of work experience and netball matches. I tried my best to free myself and find time where we were all free to film however that was never possible.

I have learnt a lot from my own involvement and from others in my group, especially in the post production side of filming. I also think that I was comfortable in my group which allowed me to make mistakes in both filming and editing without feeling embarrassed or belittled by the others. Overall I feel like we worked relatively well.