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

Just by watching our preliminary task and our main task, you can tell that our group has progressed immensely since the beginning of the year. The brief for our prelim was to 'create and edit a video sequence that tells a story, follows continuity and makes sense to the viewer'. We had to include an exchange of dialogue, match on action and a shot reverse shot. The brief for our main task was 'to produce a 2 minute opening sequence for a fiction film'. We had to include titles throughout, sound effects and a soundtrack, understanding of continuity editing, clear signifiers of our genre. 

Prelim

The prelim was beneficial because it taught us not to try and over complicate things and to make things as easy as possible. This means sticking to what we knew, and whilst also challenging ourselves to experiment with new things, not taking on too much responsibility. As you can see we stuck to a achievable genre to convey what we knew well. Our prelim with annotations of how it fit the brief is shown below. It also mentions some of the challenges we faced: 

Location

We had to keep location in mind, making sure we didn't over complicate it - learning this from our prelim. For each task, we chose one easily accessible location where there weren't too many disturbances. For our prelim we chose the interior of our school as we would've had to bear the weather in mind, which would've changed throughout the day. However, one of the challenges we faced as ensuring that we didn't film between lesson switches, as the bells would interupt our filming. We filmed our main task in Alice's house, where once asking permission, we were free to do whatever we wanted within reason. One of the challenges we faced was constructing Eve's walk from the party and out the front door in a way that the audience could gain understanding of relative location. We decided to follow every step of her journey exactly to achieve this.

Planning

For both shoots we planned the process using shotlists and storyboards. In our prelim we created a script but did not create a very substantial shotlist - the one we did make we didn't necessarily stick to. We did more vigorous planning as you can see below, the shot list and script for our main task being typed up clearly:

We also had a test shoot and a practice shoot. Having these was essential to a smooth running of the shoot and allowed us to communicate to the actors exactly what they were meant to be doing. Furthermore, we sent them individual costume details in which they arrived at the shoot in, to save time on the day.

I think one of the main things that made our shoot a success was that we weren't as strapped for time as we were in the preliminary. This is because we knew exactly what we were doing and when we were going to do it - partly due to the animatic giving us a rough idea of how long we wanted to make each individual shot. It became the very first insight into how our film was eventually going to look. Therefore we made adjustments accordingly. The animatic is included below:

  

The Shoot

• We arrived at 10 and we asked everyone else to come at 11. This ensured that we had enough time to get make-up and costume sorted out, and also allowed time for people to be late.
• We provided food for our actors.
• We shot many master shots that we could cut back to if need be.
• We shot on the Canon 550D which gave better picture than the Canon Legria HV-30 that we used with the prelim (apparent in the pictures below).
• We focused more on lighting in our main task than we did in the prelim (also pictured below). 

Editing

• We created many different potential sequences and incorporated our favourite elements of each into the final sequence.
• We would only make changes to this final sequence when the whole group was there to agree to it.
• We didn't have to capture picture from the film  (only sound) which we thought was beneficial as that would've been a lengthy process. Using a digital camera, we only had to import from the card. However, we ended up not needing the sound.
• Below are pictures comparing our shot reverse shots between the prelim and the main task. Here you can see the difference in picture quality:

Evaluating

• We discussed this process as a group, whilst also working individually.
• We organised recorded interviews, held focus groups and organised voice over opportunities together as a group.

Overall, we have learnt a lot from conducting both our prelim and our main task. We have also developed as a team and learnt a lot about working with other people. Undoubtedly, the most key factor to what we believe was a successful opening sequence was our development as a team and the equal allocation of jobs that made everything run smoothly.