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

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

Prelim:

At the beginning of the year, we had to create a prelim film so that we could begin learning about filming and editing as well as planning. During the process of making this preliminary task with my group, I began getting used to the equipment such as the camera, tripod, and furthermore, the editing software Premier Pro. I was also able to learn how to organise a group as well as taking part in it and doing equal amounts of work. This therefore helped me to organise my teamwork skills. I had done GCSE Media which helped a lot with the filming process, however, I had never used Premier Pro before, therefore initially I struggled to work with it. However, I picked this up quickly and soon managed to film to high quality and take into account aperture, the 180 degree rule, and shot types. I then began thinking about lighting and how that could effect the footage, therefore I ensured that the lighting we used would enhance the filming quality to each piece of footage. I decided to play around with editing for a while and watch Tutorials on how to do things such as audio gain and lowering/increasing the volume of the music. Initially, I found this complicated and a little overwhelming, however, I quickly got the hang of it and began feeling much more confident when editing. Despite this, the prelim task was very simple compared to the amount of work I had to put into editing my thriller opening. Thankfully, the prelim task allowed me to really get into grips on how to edit and allowed me to make minimal errors during the editing on my thriller opening.

During the filming of my prelim task at the beginning of the year, I was unsure on how to make continuous filming, therefore having numerous transitions looking a little odd. We did not utilise a tripod during this prelim period which made our shots shaky and unstabilised, therefore making the overall film fairly bad quality. I learned from this, though, so in my thriller opening I ensured to use tripods during filming to avoid blurring and shakiness. I was already rather confident with a camera due to taking GCSE Media last year, so I experimented with multiple angles whilst filming our thriller sequence with a tripod to increase quality and smoothness. Due to this, we had a number of different footage that we could work with and pick from to ensure high quality footage. This also allowed us to have continuous filming and no jumpy cuts like before. We took a lot of different frames and we chose the best ones to use despite a few minimal errors still there.

Before we started filming and editing the prelim, I decided to conduct some research of my own into conventions of thrillers so that I could include them within the prelim. I then began watching and analysing an abundance of thriller openings, trailers, and title sequences so that I would be prepared to apply my knowledge into my thriller opening. I ensured to study a number of shot types, characters, mise-en-scene and sound (ambient, diegetic, non-diegetic, dialogue, crescendos) so that I could apply these in my thriller to make a professional, smooth film. Megan and I discussed multiple conventions which we would use for our thriller before beginning to film so that it would fit into the thriller genre rather than another one. I also asked for improvements that I could make once my peers looked at my prelim task. They included more variety of shot types and to increase audio-gain so that they could hear the characters more. I appreciated these remarks so that I could apply these into my thriller opening.

Blogging:

I attempted to blog about every decision my group and I made during the prelim, however, it was difficult to keep track of progress due to the filming and editing being the top of my agenda. This wans't too efficient as we wasted aspects of time checking things through on our blogs. Knowing that this was a mistake, I ensured to keep blogging about Megan and my decisions and changes which we were planning on making during the thriller process. I tried very hard to blog about progress which was been made such as shot types and sound. I was then able to see how much progress was being made and therefore I did not waste time double checking my blog every so often. We also made a to-do list so that we could tick off what we had completed and what needed to be done. I ensured to blog frequently and efficiently so that I could make my priority filming or editing instead of having too much blogging piled up on me.

Schedules:

My group and I in the prelim task all agreed that we did
not communicate enough or were very organised. We did not schedule ourselves well which lead to our film being sloppy and tedious. This impacted on us quite dramatically as we became stressed and worried too much instead of being calm and collected. However, I learned from these mistakes and decided that communication with my partner Megan during our thriller film process was vital. As mentioned before, we created several to-do lists and planned out everything before we began. We also asked each other frequently whether we agreed on something or if one of us thought something needed to be changed. I ensured to take time on a particular job before moving onto the next so that I would have perfected the task before. Megan and I did not necessarily work in chronological order, however, the to-do lists ensured that we did not miss some shots or narrative that was vital for our filming. We also agreed that we should begin the most significant jobs which were more time-consuming rather than taking too long on smaller jobs as we could come back to them if we had time at the end. Once we had placed in all of the shots needed, we would then begin adding in little pieces of detail to ensure continuity and seamless editing.