Question 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?Since the preliminary task, my knowledge on film production has improved immensely. Going into media in the beginning of the year I did not expect it to be so precise, challenging and demanding. With the preliminary task, my group and I learnt quite a lot. Throughout the course of the development we changed our idea up a few times. Similarly, we went through the same situation with our final movie opening, thus having to change our idea a few times.

Time management and planning:With the preliminary task in terms of planning, my group and I prepared our clip quite well. A few weeks before filming we decided what the narrative was going to be, where we were going to film, who we were going to have acting in the piece as well as every shot type which we were going to use. We faced many problems during the preliminary task. Firstly, we didn’t have a proper recording camera, so we resulted to using a Bridge Camera to record with. We chose to film our task at Hampstead Heath, and as soon as we reached the location on the day it began to rain and got very dark very quickly, so consequently, we were forced to film in those conditions. After we did film, and edited the footage together at school, we realised that what we had wasn’t good enough, as the visuals were very distorted and you couldn’t see much because it was so dark, as well as this, the sound wasn’t very clear due to the rain. As a result of this, Nadra and I decided to re-film our preliminary task, however with a different plotline. With our second attempt, we decided to keep the plot short and simple. The problems, which we faced with our second attempt, were not as severe as the first task, however they were still present. Because we decided to film last minute on the day, the people acting in the piece were found last minute and improvised the majority of the time. We filmed in school, so we constantly faced disruptions by either students or staff, however we did eventually get it done and edited by the end, not to the best of our ability, but completed.Similarly to the preliminary task, with our final piece we struggled with establishing a plot line that we could execute to a high standard. Eventually, we came up with the idea of having a plot that revolves around a society run by a Dictator. After agreeing to this, we needed to come up with a final opening idea, which we found quite difficult to do as we had to come up with something that was realistic and that we could execute to a high standard. Originally, we wanted to have a coloured family at their house, hiding from the police. We were going to have them get caught by soldiers serving the dictator and gunned down. After attempting to film that, we realised it was too ambitious for us and it simply did not turn out the way we wanted it to, so we ended up scraping this idea. Afterwards, we chose to use the basis of the dictatorship idea, however we changed it up slightly and decided to use parallel editing to show different people going about their routine, thus it being a slight reflection of what life is like under the dictatorship. Eventually, we were able to begin filming and got it done in the space of three days.

Mise-en-scene (Setting):The first preliminary task that we filmed, we planned the mise-en-scene out thoroughly. We established that we were going to go film at Hampstead Heath near the woods to make the movie creepier and fit in the image which we had in our

head. Unfortunately, on the day, which we began filming, it became dark very early and it started to rain. As a result of this, we ended up filming in the rain, but the footage wasn’t great. It was dark, and you couldn’t see much, thus making the opening look amateur and poorly filmed. With our second preliminary task, we chose to film it in school, as the narrative revolved around teenage girls involved in some sort of dispute. We had the actresses wear everyday clothing to reveal that they live everyday lives in everyday circumstances. Overall, the mise-en-scene for our second preliminary task worked out pretty well, as the audience were able to interpret what the storyline was, as well as the environment that surrounded the characters. In contrary to our preliminary task, my group members and myself made sure we double-checked each plan that we made in terms of costume and filming location. With the first idea, which we had, the narrative revolving around a coloured family, we chose to film it at a friend’s house, which fit in with the image that we had in our head in terms of what it would look like. We also had the protagonists dressed in military clothing, therefore fitting perfectly with their characters, as they played military workers of the dictator. In terms of props, we struggled a little, as we needed to find different items, such as guns, and a cigar. We ended up having them share a gun amongst themselves, and scrapped the whole cigar scene as we could get access to one. Ultimately we ended up only using two shots from that whole sequence therefore the problems which we encountered during filming did not serve as an obstacle in the end product. In terms of the second idea, which we had, the one, which we ended up using, with the journalist becoming a fugitive, we did not encounter problems with the mise-en-scene. We had a house that we could film in, that suited the mood and emotion, which we were attempting to create. As with the clothing and costume, the actors performing in the opening had come fully prepared and dressed appropriately for the characters they were playing. We had our props ready, such as the radio, which is used in the first shot of the opening and took it with us on location. I would say that mise-en-scene was the element, which we struggled with the least during the production of our film.

Editing:When it came to putting all the footage together for our first attempt of our preliminary task, Nadra and I struggled quite a bit because it was our first time using Final Cut Pro, so we had to become familiar with the basics of the programme first. Once we did so, we were able to crop bits from our film and put it in sequence. Our first attempt did serve us well as it enabled us to learn how to use the programme, therefore making the process of editing our second attempt to our preliminary task much easier and quicker.With the final movie opening, my group and myself found it quite difficult editing the footage in a much more sophisticated and professional looking way, compared to our P-task. However we dedicated ourselves by going back everyday after school for about two weeks till late in the evening and trying out different ways of editing the footage together, and deciding which way we wanted to have it. In terms of Final Cut Pro, we did find it slightly easier to use this time round, as we already knew the basics, but we still had to learn a whole new range of things such as how to render the footage together, as well as changing the saturation of the footage and playing around with the colour. Finally, we were able to finish the editing to a standard, which we were content with.