Q7

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to the final product?

Looking back at the preliminary task it is clear that a key thing I have learnt is the importance of planning. Although I created a storyboard for my preliminary task the overall planning was no where near as in depth as the planning for the final product.

For example in the prelim a lot of the speech was almost improvised, by this I mean the lines were thought up just before the shot was taken. However for the final product the lines were prepared further in advance. For our final product almost everything on screen was put there for effect whereas for the preliminary task it was just the movement of the camera movement was planned. We also had more content in the final product that needed to be planned such as music that had to be chosen.

We also learnt the importance of organisation in terms of time, people and people and equipment. We had a limited amount of time to shoot due to demand for the limited filming equipment from the other members of our media class. We also used actors that were at university that meant we had to film within a three week time period. This presented us with the challenge of people management as we had three actors that were busy on different days and intended to go back to university of different days as well as an extra (the taxi driver) who was at work during the day and could only take part after a certain time. This turned out to be problematic and lead to a very last minute decision to change actresses.

I have also learnt more technical skills in the time between my preliminary task and the final product. The most important of which being my development of skills using Mac software and Final Cut Pro video editing software. Without being able to use this software it would have been impossible to create the final product. We used final cut to edit both the audio files of our film and edit and add sound. This was key to creating the effects we wanted to use.

I have also learnt to use equipment that was not used in the making of my preliminary task. The only pieces of equipment used in the preliminary tasks were a tripod and a camera. Since then I have learnt how to use various different lights to create different effects as well as the importance of using an external microphone to capture sound of superior quality.

There is an obvious improvement in the quality in my final product when compared to my preliminary task due to the development of technical, editing and planning skills.

TS