Question 7

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 now that the production and post-production stages are finished, it’s clear that without the preliminary task, we would have had a great deal of difficulty. The briefs were different in that in the preliminary task, we had a time limit of one hour for each stage, and although ultimately we did have a time limit for the main task, it was much more flexible, and also allowed us a choice of locations, rather than having to film in the school. In general, we had a lot more flexibility with the brief of the main task; the preliminary had specific things that had to be included: a conversation, demonstration of the 180ᵒ rule, shot/reverse-shot, and match-on-action – basically all good continuity – and it had to be 30 seconds long; the main task had to be an opening sequence, with a duration of 2 minutes, including titles and a soundtrack. We also had more choice in our group members. This meant that when it came to planning, we approached it much more carefully and were able to come up with multiple ideas that we could then either use or scrap. We had a better idea of what things would work and what wouldn’t, and had to come up with proper stories.

I found that, although we had learnt the theory already, the completion of the preliminary task helped me understand the importance of and get to grips with the idea of filming master shots first and then cutaways, how shooting scripts worked, and things like location recces. I also learnt that running on the action is a good idea, to prevent actions from looking stilted, unnatural, and posed. However, we do have a shot in our final production that does look slightly unnatural!
Being able to reshoot was one of the big differences between the preliminary and the main task, and it was certainly very important for us! We had the capacity to change our idea around, and view what worked and what didn’t, rather than having to film everything in one hour. We got to know the importance of shooting scripts and storyboards, which really helped in our preliminary tasks, especially with the time limit – it was good to have the shooting script worked out to make sure it was done in the most efficient way, without having to shoot in the order the footage would appear after editing. We found it was important to leave gaps between dialogue in the conversation, as they can be edited out, but if you need to cut into them it can be really difficult. Also, it is much more sensible to take at least two takes of every shot, because it’s likely there will be something wrong with it.
We were able to experiment much more with different techniques and effects on Adobe Premiere Pro for the main task, as we had much more time, and there wasn’t much we really needed to do with regards to effects in the prelim. We learnt how to edit using continuity techniques, so we didn’t have to waste time doing that in our editing sessions for the main task.
Looking back on the preliminary task and the evaluation, it is a very different reflection process; with the preliminary task, success was measured by whether the brief was met, and we achieved all the specifications, but the main task had a lot more detail and had an intended genre, narrative image, and codes. We didn't have any audience feedback for our prelims because we weren't targeting anyone, we were just attempting to fulfil the brief. With our main task, however, it was important to get audience feedback to see whether or not we had succeeded.

All in all, I think we achieved what we had aimed for: from the screenings we found that our audience understood what they were supposed to, could identify the genre and form of our product (the opening sequence to a film), and most said they would want to find out what happened later in the film.