Question 7; Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
At the start of the A level media course, we were set to create a short clip that needed to involve someone, opening a door, walking through, sitting in a chair, and two characters sharing two lines of dialogue. A long side this we had to involve the 180 degree rule, match on action and finally shot reverse shot. From GCSE media I knew little information about these techniques, however I did some more research in to the, for example how they are used and why?
Once as a group once we found what our story line would be and our situation, we made a story board to know what sort of shots we will be using, and to help us being more organised. At time the story board came in ver helpful to us, however we all were very strict to staying to our story board, this limited us to exploring different types of shots and editing techniques.
However when planning for our film opening we made a bigger and more detailed story board, this was because it was a bigger project but we also had more freedom. In our film opening story board we added detail like duration of shots, extra sound, the colours of the clothes etc. We followed the story board however because we had more freedom we chose to ass in extra shots, this as because of the duration of our film opening, but also for other effects. The difference between the two story boards show how at the beginning of the course we had little understanding, but in our film opening story board it shows how the growth in our knowledge.
When shooting our prelim we was very strict on our self when filming when shooting we didn't think about blocking and because of this it would confuse the audience who is more important, and who is the protagonist and antagonist. But when shooting our film opening we found that we had more knowledge on how to shot different camera angles and pans. Because we used different types of camera works we managed to represent who our characters are in our film opening. We managed to give them different kinds of effects too.
We also used two ways to film our prelim and our film opening, we shot our prelim by using the schools camera, however we shot our film opening using an IPhone. This made our film opening have better quality visually and in sound.
Editing was new to me in media, I had never had experience with it before, however Ryan did so he taught me and Ashlea the basics, this came in handy through out the tasks that were set. We used Sony Vegas Pro 11 when editing our prelim, we ll struggled with this, however once we got hold of the basics we was able to compete the editing. We added in a overlay in our prelim, to make a shot look like it was CCTV, however we felt like it didn't look realistic. The editing was very basic in our prelim, however when editing our film opening, we had the chance to explore more and experiment with different types of editing techniques. We had more time to chose what we though worked with our opening. We was also able to make our opening more interesting by using fast cuts and slow cuts, as well as different transitions and overlay. We was able to see what worked and what didn't work from our prelim, however for our film opening we used a different soft ware to editing the opening we used one which one of our group members were familiar to, Adobe Premier Pro. We also learned that Adobe Premier Pro had a wider range of choices to chose from.
​
Sound is one of the biggest things that we have improved in our film opening, in our prelim we only had diegetic sound, and our sound was very quite, this was due to not having a mic. However in our film opening we had not only diegetic sound we also had Foley, sound effects and score. We got our sound effects from online websites such as FreeSFX, we downloaded them. However we also created our own score. This meant I learnt a lot of new skills such as, recording, instruments and different soft wares to create sound on.
​
Overall the difference between our prelim task and film opening has shown how we have more experience since the course and now have more knowledge since our prelim task. I have learnt new skills in all areas, from how to keep a steady shot, to howto record a simple score, to how to add in effects to our opening. In the end we are very pleased with what we have done and what we have produced.