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

I feel that there has been a massive amount of progression from our preliminary task to our thriller task. Our preliminary task was merely foundation of potential, showcasing what we could possibly do in a rather basic fashion. In this task, we used some fairly basic shots and used a basic understanding of iMovie to add in certain effects, to crop clips, edit them and burn the file to a CD. I feel as though I have developed in many ways, specifically in my editing and camerawork skills. While editing the footage for the preliminary task, the group in general had a slight tendency to add in effects that were superfluous and didn’t achieve a lot; they were only added in because they could be. Our first product was still up to a good standard, but there were a fairly large number of things we could improve upon.

Our preliminary production did use a small range of camera shots which were effective, and it was edited fairly crisply so there wasn’t much we didn’t need in there. On top of this, our dialogue was good and the short film looked realistic while still being succinct and straight to the point.

However, for every strength in our preliminary, we also a slight shortcoming which we had not predicted. There was an issue for us with continuity editing; we had an issue while using classrooms whereby one was locked and we could not gain access to it, our contingency plan was to find a second room, which wasn’t a problem at all. We had shot the scene of the lady walking up to the door and knocking on it very clearly, and one could see the sign very visibly. However, when we moved rooms and shot the scene afterwards, we did not have that sign to place back on to the door, and we did not think about it while making it. This showed a lack of continuity editing and our logical thinking fell slightly short on this respect. We did learn from this mistake though, and had no issues with continuity editing in our thriller opening, so it was not a problem again.

Another rule that we broke – albeit accidentally – was the 180 degree rule. In Media, the camera must always stick to one side to avoid any potential confusion with the viewer. We did in fact break this rule, we didn’t actually know that we had gone against it, but it became obvious as we viewed our video the whole way through. To ensure this did not happen again, we kept the camera on one line and only moved it along this line, apart from towards the end, this time we checked all of our footage over and were absolutely certain that we didn’t go against this rule of filming. We addressed both problems well so they were not a problem when it mattered.

Specifically, I feel that I have mostly developed on the editing front; before I started I would have no idea where to even start with iMovie, but having read a basic guide and learned the simplistic elements of the program, I have enabled myself to learn some of the more complex aspects of it; I edited the media production well and I feel the basics of cutting, editing the size of clips and adding effects were done well, and I had a grasp for the more technical things that could be done, such as editing the images.

   

As a team we were able to edit a simple poster of the word ‘Pestilence’ which was written with chalk on black paper, and change it to give it less of a ‘slapped-on’ look. I think we did this effectively and this is all a part of editing to make the video look more realistic, which gives a better impression of both the film. Often, a title sums up the look of the film, and we wanted it to look scary, have a contrast in it between one and another and be a little bit messed up – we feel we achieved this with our poster.

I feel that overall; our thriller opening was fairly successful and ticked the boxes of what we needed to do in terms of camerawork and editing. If I were going to do it again, there were a few minor things that I would change; the first of which would be during filming, there was a slight amount of jumping in the editing that looked a little tacky. For example, one section where a character was holding up a small bag, there was a cut and the bag was actually in a different place. This looked quite poor and it was difficult to hold it completely still. Next time I would instead probably not cut it at that point and keep the camera rolling. It may not be a massive issue, but it was a glaring error that really stuck out. Also, if I were to redo this task, I may have chosen to sort out the music much sooner, as when we did it, we left it fairly late and we had a few problems making it. If we had started sooner, it would have been easier to iron out any problems as opposed to panicking about them. However, we did get it sorted in the end so it is not a large issue.