Lilly Templeman Evaluation - Question 7

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

From looking back at my preliminary task I feel like my editing and camerawork skills have improved. The differences between preliminary task and the main task were that we had organised our time a lot more for this main task (full product) compared to our preliminary. Although we had done the same tasks to prepare ourselves for both of the tasks, overall the full products tasks were a lot more detailed and we researched and planned for these a lot more.

The planning that we done for our preliminary tasks was a mind map of ideas into what we wanted to base the film on. When thinking about genres, we wanted something that was obvious as we hadn't filmed before so we didn't know what our camerawork and editing skills would of been like.

On the other hand with our main 2 minute film, we decided that we would include:

•  A storyboard - this would help us to plan out any scenes and also write about what camera angles would be used etc.
• A shot list - although we had the storyboard, when we actually filmed our piece we could then look at this as it would include: location, how long the scene lasts, what's going on in the scene. So from this it would keep us a lot more organised and would help us to keep on time whilst filming.
• A script - we decided to make a script to give to the actors when they spoke in our piece. Although we didn't have much speech when we did we wanted to make sure that the actors got it right and was the effect we wanted to achieve.

By also helping us to plan, we decided to create a re-make of a film that was already available. Although we had done our preliminary task, we had done that sooner into once we had started learning about filming techniques etc. So by creating a re-make would help us:

• To see what we would exactly need to include
• Help us keep organised
• Help us arrange actors efficiently 
• Improve camera and editing skills

From looking at both of the preliminary task and our film, it shows to me that the camera work has been improved over the period of time. I have also learnt to understand the 180 degree rule a lot better and it has become more clear to me that you must make sure that the camera is focused on one side, rather than switching as this confuses the audience.

One clip from our preliminary task that I have learnt a lot from is:

As our preliminary task was filmed off of my phone, with this clip I had forgotten what orientation I was filming in and filmed this in portrait rather than landscape. As we didn't want this couple of clips (that have the three split screens) to look different we decided to edit it in a way that wouldn't look as obvious.

Overall, I have learnt a lot from my preliminary task and my main media product as I have realised I need to concentrate a lot more when filming and be a lot more organised when filming/preparing to film.