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?

I feel that the preliminary task was a good chance to learn about and experiment with the camera in advance before using it to film our main task. Before the preliminary, I had not used a digital HD camera before and needed to discover how to capture successfully. The task also enabled us to experiment with different tools on ‘Final Cut Pro’ and work with simple editing to merge a sequence of clips together. Also, the objective of the preliminary was to work on the continuity of shots and scenes before the main task, so that we knew how to construct a film professionally, making sure that the film flowed. Once we focused on perfecting the continuity and produced a short clip, we learnt how to import our product, edit and cut with tools and effects. This helped prepare us for our upcoming task to familiarise ourselves with the software as well as experiment with camera shots that we thought would look successful in our piece. This was useful when it came to our main task because we knew what to expect.

In the preliminary, we had used the camera and tripod and worked with final cut pro which broadened our knowledge on the technology we’d be using. However, there were aspects of the film that we did not consider when completing the preliminary task such as working with voice-overs, sound effects & music and titles. Because there was little time to experiment with these features, we did not use them in our preliminary and therefore had to experiment with them during our main task. When filming the main task, we had not taken the camera and tripod out to discover new locations before therefore this also added extra time to finding suitable locations and using the camera to experiment with shots we could capture.

After looking back at our preliminary task, we realised that our clip had good continuity and therefore assumed we would get the continuity accurate in the main task. However, when we imported and watched through our footage, we realised that we were not as careful in filming as we should have been with our continuity and so some shots did not flow together. As we were short for time, we could not re-film –also due to the fact that the mise en- scène would be different- because of the weather and other possible changes in surroundings. This is something we would take in to account in the future.