Question 7

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

Looking back at the preliminary task, and now at the main task I feel that the change I have noticed is quiet large, from the different shots I have used, to the flow of the film.

Firstly, when I did the preliminary task, coming up with an idea on what to do wasn’t so hard, because my group and I didn’t need to think of a whole plot idea, all we needed was an idea to last only less than a minute, so it was fairly easy to come up with a treatment, however in the main task the process in coming up with an idea was much harder and complex, because the people within the group want their idea to be the  main story line, and  we all had different plots for the story line, also the process in which we had to decide the genre wasn’t difficult, but it was something that we didn’t have to do when we were doing the prelim task, which made my group and I have more of a discussion on what genre we should do, we first chose action, but after some further debate, we chose romcom. After that we finally came up with the plot ide, and it started becoming easier to further improve the story. Once we came up with our final storyline, we had to made a story board, when doing the story board for the prelim task, I found it pretty quick and easy, because there was only one person in charge of the story board and that was me, having done art, I felt like I had more skill in presenting the story board well. Whereas in the main task, the story board had to be very detailed, and we had to capture every shot we need precisely , but my group and I co-operated very well, and we were organised, meaning we got everything on time, and analysed it throughout.

Also the location for the prelim task wasn’t complicated or hard, I just felt there were more problems than I had in my main task, because in the prelim, because the location was in school, so there were students or teachers coming in and out of our location, meaning we had to wait for a certain time to film, that was mainly all the problems, from this I learnt that we have to choose a location with few people, so my group and I weren’t disrupted, for the main task, I decided that my group were going to film at my house, because it had all the props needed for the film, and the story board shows the main character waking up in her room, and getting ready in her house etc., meaning that the best place for the filming was a house,  we chose my house because it was big, allowing us to have enough filming space, also it was fairly close to the school, meaning it didn’t go past the restriction of the equipment. There still were a few problems when we were filming like the fact that we had to film outside for the establishing shot at the beginning, and because we were filming on a road that meant that cars were able to drive on the road and that stopped us from filming sometimes.

During the production the continuity was checked by one person within the group, this was an easy decision as the person volunteered to be the person in charge of continuity for our main task, this helped as we found fewer mistakes than I originally found in the prelim task, in the prelim task I noticed that there wasn’t anyone in charge of continuity, there went many mistakes in there prelim, but I’m sure that if we did have someone checking the continuity that the prelim would have been floorless, that was something I took on board when making the main task, as we constantly took shots making sure that the hair, makeup, costume etc., was the same. Something else I took on board when creating the main task, that I didn’t do for the prelim was ‘variety of shots’, in the prelim I don’t feel like I experimented with the different shots we could do, so when it came to the main task we included many other shots for example mirror shots. The location used for filming the main task was my house, there were a few problems like the fact when we were filming outside we had to do an establishing shot on the road which was annoying as it disrupted us from filming sometimes, which shortened our time. Other than that I feel like the location we used was very good as it contained all the props needed for the filming, which was good for our group as they didn’t need to carry any props, or had the job to bring something and then forget it, meaning it was less of a struggle for me and the group. The prelim task was similar as there were a few problems, but nothing that really disrupted the group and I, everything was solved in minimal time.

Lastly post production and feedback, when editing the prelim I noticed that time management was a key factor, editing for the prelim had to be done quite quickly, which was hard because it was our first time editing which made is more of a struggle as we only had 2 hours to edit, whereas in the main task we had more control ad information in editing, also we got to experiment with editing in different styles which was good because we had more time to do all these things to our film. Sometimes managing the time was difficult than expected as there were many deadlines when things had to be sorted, for example the actual filming of the prelim had to be done within 2-3 hours, so we had to be organised and manage our time well, as well as getting good shots. This was however all sorted as the group and I had everything in control and made sure that we stayed on target. The feedback I had got for my prelim was that the camera was sometimes shaky which is what I took on board and made sure wasn’t in my main task, and I succeeded on that point, for the main task we didn’t have many issues, most were actually compliments, the only thing people had said was check the continuity on the titles, as some had surnames and others didn’t. In the prelim there wasn’t any non -diagetic noise, all was on screen, meaning it was easy because all we needed to do was remember the dialogue, however in the main task we had struggles as we needed to use some music to fit the genre of romcom, which wasn’t hard, but it was hard trying to find the right soundtrack, we used minimal dialogue, because the main character uses her facial expressions to show her feelings.