Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full production?

Since taking AS Media I feel that I have developed as a film maker dramatically and acquired many different new skills, especially when thinking about filming and editing. During my preliminary task, although it went extremely well there are some things that I have learnt. One of these is to make sure that we shoot more footage than we could ever need, this is so that when it comes to editing we able to get the exact end product that we would like, not just settle for what we have. I would shoot some of our shots for our thriller again as I feel some of them is very dark. When doing our preliminary there are a few shots that gave us huge encouragement. This gave us the confidence to try different camera shots, some that we wouldn’t have tried before. They ended up turning out very well and made our production look extremely professional. This also helped me develop a good attention to detail. Instead of thinking that will do, in this task I have made sure I have tried my absolute best and got everything, whether it was shooting or editing just the way we want it. Something that I have definitely learnt is to back up our work, this isn’t something that I didn’t know how to do, just something that I now know must be done. This is because just as we had finished editing our production for the first time it got deleted. We then also lost a group member. This gave me much more chance to re-edit our production and make sure everything is perfect. When re-editing I learnt the different that adding effects and using the colour change makes. This is something that we used in our final piece and worked extremely well. We used both of these on our preliminary task and because they worked extremely well we wanted to use them again.
 

Another thing that I have learnt are some key media skills, these consist of the 180 degree rule, match on action, shot reverse shot, continuity and the rule of thirds.

I first came across these when doing our preliminary task but as the time scale was so short to get it done we did not have time to really properly consider these. Throughout our thriller we have made sure we are applying the 180 degree rule to make sure that the audience understands what is going on. We also used match on action to keep the production interesting, this is shown in the picture provided, also in this picture you can see the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is when you divide the picture into three. As you can see here the main points of this shot is the shoe, the leg and the scenery.

Continuity is something that we spent a lot of time and made sure we was giving a lot of attention to detail. We did this to make sure The Lost Project was as professional as possible. A few ways in which we made sure the continuity was perfect is when thinking about putting different shots in Jake had to be in exactly the correct position. Another way we used It is when we filmed shots after the shooting event, we filmed some clips of blood dripping onto the photo. When we did this we made sure that Jake was in exactly the same clothing etc. This is so that if we were to use a shot of his arm the continuity of the video would have still been good.

When doing our preliminary task I realised that when doing our final piece we needed to plan the events of the day down to a tee. Doing our preliminary task made me realise that you have to know exactly what you are doing and do not waste any time. Allowing others to express themselves in the group helps this because they might have the solution to an idea you have that doesn’t quite make the cut. Sticking to the plan was important but as in our preliminary, a lot changed from our initial plan. When doing our preliminary we had a strong image in our head of what we wanted to produce, in this case we were able to produce something very similar to what we had in mind. I have learnt that this doesn’t always happen, when we was at Nocton Hall and was shooting we kept thinking of different shots that would also work well, so we shot both them and what we originally wanted to shoot. This meant we could combine the two into a strong final piece. Another thing I have realised is how long something takes to produce. It is not a quick and easy job. I was lucky in our group as our teamwork was good along with adding originality to our production. If I was to do the production again I would make sure we had a plan B. If something was to go wrong we knew what we were going to do to still achieve the same outcome. Something that I would definitely do is back my work up in as many different places possible as re-editing took us a long time.

We were lucky as we were previously able to visit our shooting destination (Nocton Hall). This gave us a good chance to work out what parts of the location we would like to use and help us put together a strong idea of what we would like to produce in our head.  I feel that we had good communication on the day of our shoot and no idea was immediately dismissed, we considered all options to make our production as good as it could be. Another reason that I feel the group worked really well together is because we are all in the same friendship group, we all have similar interests and are interested similar genres and directors so we can relate to each other’s inspirations. This also meant that we did not mind spending time together editing, especially the second time as we had to do the work at home. I feel that we all had a reasonable amount of input into the production and made sure that the continuity was kept strong throughout the production. I think we spread the workload evenly and enjoyed producing this production in the group that I was in.