Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Planning

During our planning we had a group discussion of what we all wanted to do, in terms of plot line. At first this proved difficult as we all had limited ideas as to the story line of our preliminary, despite having the brief to guide us. However, after we discussed everyone's role in the filming process, and we came to the conclusion that Xena and I would be acting and helping with setting up the camera for various angles, then Hazel and Zayanah would be filming whilst we were acting in frame. 

 

 

 

 Once we decided who was doing what, we were able to establish who were willing to be part of the preliminary we could plan our storyboard around the amount of people acting. Although, we had only one hour to plan so we couldn't plan anything too elaborate, but wanted to incorporate an element of humour. 

    

Planning process 

 

Inspiration: From watching previous year's preliminaries, which included the genre of a thriller and humour as a group we decided that this would be successful.      

 

Location: We decided to wait and see which classroom was going to be empty on the day of the filming, but we established that it would be on the same floor as our classroom as this would be more convenient.  

 

Props: In our storyline we decided to use a toy bear as the focus of the task. I decided that I would bring this prop in and the ribbon for the bear.   

 

Issues during the process: Our main issue during the planning stage was our indecisiveness in the beginning, where we were coming up with ideas for the preliminary task. Once we started planning for our story board (as seen above) other groups had started on their storyboards and we realised we had fallen behind on time, so we worked after lessons but managed to get it done.

 

Improvements: The main thing we need to develop is timing, I discovered that as a group, we are very indecisive even though we do listen to each other's ideas.     

Filming

Fortunately for our group, we started off having a room to ourselves so we could use the whole space.

 

1.

As we didn't have a set script we could improvise the dialogue but keep the essence of the narrative. On our story board we had a list of the camera angles that we could use, so when came down to filming we could see what camera angles looked good. 

 

  In the first scene we didn't do an establishing shot from side on of the table, like we discussed before the filming started, as the table was too low and the top of my head would have been out of the frame.

 

As we were filming we decided to add a few more camera angles to the scene such as close ups and a tilt, which still adhered to the 180 degree rule. 

(close up)

 

(Tilt)

 

This proved to be effective later as we used this for fast paced editing. 

 

2.

 

     Upon the second scene we realised that tracking wasn't possible as the camera shook too much, and the tracking was limited the amount of time I was in frame so we changed this to a medium shot with the camera placed behind me and then a cut to a medium shot in front of me to show me crossing a room. 

 

 

 

     3.



   
In part 3 we managed to follow the plan, however when filming the shot-reverse-shot the camera was slightly out of focus which made the footage a little blurry, so next time when we film we should make sure that the camera is in full focus before filming. 

4.



        Once we got to film our match on action other groups were also filming in the same room so we ended capturing some of the other group's through the window in the door. (As seen below)

  
5.

 Another error we made was not making this scene more detailed as we realised that the last scene and this scene didn't make sense put together so we filmed an additional dialogue. 

 

    When Xena was throwing the bear out the window, it kept getting caught between the gap in the window, so we had to do several retakes, which proved to be a challenge as someone had to go down the two flights of stairs to retrieve the bear.   
5.

 



Once we were on the final scene Xena and I wanted to take on more of the filming so we went outside to film the last scene by ourselves. We realised that the camera wasn't able to tilt all the way up to the window so we moved the camera backwards but this meant that the ground was out of frame, and we tilted the camera downwards we'd also catch another group filming near us.

 

  After we finished filming that day we discovered later that there was a continuity error, Zayanah had been seen in the frame, as Xena and I were filming outside. If we could do it again we would watch all videos back to make sure that there were no mistakes before moving on.  

Editing  

Our finished product:

 

 

 

We had one lesson to do our editing, as our group had not used Final Cut before, so at first we struggled to upload all of our videos. Eventually when we were sorted, we quickly learnt the basics of how to use the software, and our group worked well together to edit our preliminary.

 

 

 

 

Evaluation

Overall we had many challenges such as trying to put all the videos in order and cut them, however once we had done this we were able to go through and play around with speeds and sounds. 

 

 

 

 A problem we had was trying to cut all of parts of the videos that weren't needed and watching it back to make sure it looked good, and then doing all of this within the hour.

 

If we got to do this again, I would have liked to play around with filters to make it similar to an old movie (film noir) so we could consider it for our real editing practical.