Evaluation Q4: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression

from it to the full product?

Kim, Chanise, Lady Pearl & Shazna

Pre production

During the pre production of our preliminary, we learnt about the different camera shots and angles such as; low and high angled shots, long shots, close ups, extreme close ups etc. We also learnt about the 180 degree rule which is guideline regarding the on screen relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. We then had to plan and come up with a story. Coming up with the story was not easy, as the subject was broad and it had to be within the college so there was not much to work with. We then came up with a story set in a classroom with a suspicious student that carried a gun (prop) in her bag, who was then caught by her teacher and other students. After we came up with the idea, we then put this into a storyboard. This was helpful as it was a step by step guide for our prelim so it made the whole process overall much simpler. We allocated the drawing of the storyboard to the best drawer in our group so that the drawings were nicely drawn and clear. Then, we proceeded to writing a brief description of each shot so that we understood what was happening.

When getting on to producing our preliminary, we had very little skills and had a lack of knowledge of what producing a film included. We had no idea of the different types of camera shots we had to film or certain rules we had to follow.

Production

During the production of our film, we tried to follow our storyboard accordingly, however, we were not so successful in doing this throughout filming as we made various changes that weren't in the storyboard. We had very little camera skills but we tried to work with what we had already been taught. We decided to film in our media classroom as it was convenient and most people had gone to film in other places in the college so it wasn’t disturbing. No specific costumes were worn. This would have made our film more effective as it would have depicted each of the characters identities. However, what did make our prelim more effective was the key prop, which was the gun. This was what the film revolved around so it was important we had it in our film.

Post production

When it was time to edit, we were fairly new to the software Final Cut Pro, so we knew our editing wasn’t going to be the best, but the process wasn't difficult. We put all the shots we wanted to use in the timeline on final cut, and put them in order. This made the editing process easier and faster as we just had to cut down shots that were too long or had mistakes in and ensure that everything was clear. We wanted to focus on match cutting, which is cutting from one scene to a different one, but has objects in the two scenes "matched," so that they occupy the same place in the shot's frame. We also remembered the 180 degree rule, so our film was not confusing.

To distribute our film we used popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as this is used amongst people our age so it would give our film more recognition.

We think that our film was filmed well as we used the tripod and the fig rig to perfect our camera shots. for example:

As you can see our prelim is not in focus properly and the camera shot is not presented in a professional way. If this was our film the audience would not want to see this, as it has a very bad camera shot.

The camera shots from our film is more sophisticated as it is a straight and still shot as there in not that much space above the head and we have used a tripod to present this shot.

Editing • The first time we filmed our film the shots were very bad as we didn't

follow the storyboard properly showing that it was not planned out and filmed very well. The second time we filmed, we learned from our mistakes form the prelim and we made sure that we followed the storyboard properly so that we were fully prepare of what each scene would be about.

• Unfortunately we did not use garage band or motion in the editing of our prelim as our prelim was about experimenting the different types of camera shots that we would usually see in films. However in our film we did use motion to create effects to the titles as in films we would expect to see titles of the key productions. We wanted to make the titles look more appealing to the audience so that they would want to watch our film. Instead of using garage band we use sound cloud to find a effective soundtrack.

We think that we worked well as a team as we discussed what works best in our film, but in the prelim we didn't really discuss what shots worked best. We think that we were all in control of our film because we all had our own ideas and discussed it with the rest of the group. We have developed our skills by watching the mistakes we have done in the prelim and have created better shots for our film. We have also learnt that by planning what our shots would be using storyboard we can follow each scene step by step.Overall we were successful in film.