Prelim Evaluation

Introduction

Our prelim task was to create a short film of about a minute long. The film ha to show one person coming into a room, sitting down and sharing a dialogue with someone else inside the room before leaving. It was a short task to see how well we could create a continuity, match on action and apply the theory we learnt about filming.

1) Who did you work with and how did you manage the tasks between you? Explain how you organised your time and schedules. What issues came up with time management? What problems did you come up against? How did you deal with these? What were your strengths and weaknesses in this area? What would you do differenly next time?

• I worked with Tosin. We shared out tasks equally and discussed the major decisions between ourselves to make sure we were both happy with it(such as location, which we both visited to make sure it was appropriate). We managed our time well as most of our tasks were complteed on time and any task that was not was given to one of us to compltete at home, once we had both agreed on what was left to finish(for example, I finished off the script one lesson after school and Tosin finshed off the storyboard). I think my strength in this area was that I kept things organised, but I tended to take over a lot of the project by doing more directing, so in future tasks I think I will try and let others speak first.

2) How did you plan your sequence? What process did you use?

• We first thought of a  treatment and script, and then planned out our scrip on a storyboard.

3) What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it? What did you learn about using the cameras? Here you can also refer to the discussions we have had in class recently about digital cameras.

• We used a digital filming camera, along with a tripod. We had the camera on automatic, so we could still change zoom, but couldn't manually change focus. I learnt that it's very difficult to move around a camera, as setting up the tripod in different positions is very time consuming. I also learnt how important it is to properly frame and position a camera. In class, we discussed mthods of shooting, such as filmning entire scenes from one angle and then moving to another angel and repeating. We also discussed how it was best to allow a minute or more before and after you start filming the main action in a sequence to make it easier to edit. This turned out to be very important while filming.

4) What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing?

• When planning and shooting, we had to take into account the time we had and the location.
• To combat the problems we could have while filming in the location, we did a location recce, where we listed all the possible filming obstructions and things that could cause a difficulty while we were filming. We realised that there may be people around while we were filming before going out on the recce, so we had asked a teacher beforehand to make sure the classroom was cleared for us. However, we also realised there may be problems with the location itself, such as the layout of the room and the furniture inside. To combat this, we decided we'd move around some furniture before filming, and then we did a run through of our story board to make sure that we could still film inside the space. We also realised that we could not control people outside the room- however this was not too much of a problem as the majority of our shots were to be filmed inside.
• When shooting, we had to take into account all of the above problems, and then also the time it would take for us to film. We realised it would take much longer to film, even though we were only trying to film a one minute film. We also had to remember our storyboard and the proper framing for all our shots(taking into account rule of thirds). We also had to make sure there was a good continuity in all our shots and keep in mond the 180 degree rule when filming two shots.
• When editing, we had to rememeber that we had more them one take of each shot, and therefore had to go through all our shotys to check which ones were best. However, we had already taken notes as to which shots were the best, whiuch made our task easier. We also had to edit the shots so that we kept the match on action.

5) How successful was your sequence? Please identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve/do differently?

• I think our sequence was well done, as there was very good match on action. There were apropriate cuts, as we showed our teachers while editing, and took account of their feedback to improve out overall film. We had a variety of different shots and kept to the 180 degree rule. Wqe also tried to take into acocunt our framing, and did change our angle multiple times to adjust framing and get the perfect shot.
• In hindsight, I think we could have used some more shots at the end of the sequence, and taken a bit more care with the framing at that point. I also thiunk the sequence could have been longer.

6) What have you learnt from completing the task? Discuss time management skills, group work skills, oraganisational skills and technical skills of production.

• I think we learnt that we managed our time pretty well, as we were able to compltee our task in the correct amount of time. We had previously also finsihed all tasks to meet their deadlines, which meant when we got on set, we were compltely prepared for filming.
• I think we did mangae ourselves well, as both mjyself and Tosin were involved with the filming and aranging shots. When starting to film, we'd take turns holding the clapper board and settiung the camera on record, but we both watched the shot in progress through the monitor and then after discuss whether we liked the shot or not and whether we needed another take.
• Our technical skills were both fine and we were able to easily move the camera around.

7) Post production - What did you learn about the editing process? How did you make decisions while editing? How did you plan your time to complete the editing task? What were your strengths and weaknesses in this area? What would you do differenly next time?

• We learn alot about editing. We learnt that even though you could have an hours worth of footage, when it was edited, it could become just a mere minute. I learnt how to use the editing software, which made it easy to cut and paste parts of the sequence into the right order.
• When making decisions, we both discussed what we needed and consulted our storyboard for the order. We had around two hours to edit, which was plenty of time for us to cut and arrange our squence. After intially cutting and arranging the components of the sequence, we played it back a few times and nit picked it until we were 100% happy with the result. We also asked for feedback on the sequence and went through many different arrangements. For example, at one point we inserted a close up(as it was in our original story board) but then decided to remove it as our teacher thought it would be much to much focus on such a small part of the whole sequence.
• Our strength were we were able to work together and were good at discussing what was good and bad about our sequence. We were also very thorough, so we tryed to look at ever detail of it. Our weakness was that we had a more limited amount of takes, as although we did have more then one take for some shots, others we did not have. Also we were new to the program, so we made a few mistakes intially, but were able to easily recitify them.