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

In the preliminary task we learnt a lot of skills which we applied to our main task (film opening). In our preliminary task we realised a few shots had objects in the background as we did not notice them until we started editing (in the classroom there were bags on the tables). This helped us with our main task as tried to make sure there was nothing in each shot before filming them, leading to us having more useable footage when editing in the main task. We also learnt how to follow the 18O degree rule as we found in the preliminary task if we crossed the 18O degree rule it could confuse the audience watching it (during the dialogue). This crossing of the 18O degree rule helped us a lot with the main task as there were a lot of walking shots which could have went wrong if we hadn’t made the mistake during the preliminary task. If we had made the 18O degree rule wrongly in the main task the viewers would be confused as the protagonist would have been walking in all different directions and the plot would not have made sense (when she walks over the hill).

In editing we learnt new skills from the preliminary task such as inserting titles, matching shots, and keeping the continuity of the film seamless. We also learnt how to fade in and fade out (both cross-fade and dip to black) and also how to fade titles in and out which helped with the continuity of the main task. The match shots in our preliminary were not great as a result we made it key that all our shots would be matching by filming everything outside in one day to keep the same weather conditions, same clothing, same lighting etc. All of which helped with the matching of our shots whilst editing in the main task. The preliminary also helped us improve the main task by teaching us how to edit with the sound as in the preliminary during the dialogue there was a shot we wanted to use but not the audio of that shot as we wanted to use the audio of another shot. Therefore, in the main task as we added diagetic and non-diagetic throughout the film opening, we have diagetic sound in the bushes and as the protagonist falls over. This was to promote realism and keeps it authentic.

We also learnt how to log and capture the video we recorded during the preliminary task so we could cut out the parts that weren’t needed or that we re-filmed. This helped throughout the main task as we had to know how to log and capture on Final Cut Pro in order to edit as we learnt how to do it in the preliminary it didn’t take as long to capture in the main task as we already knew how to do it. We also learnt about shot/reverse/shot in the preliminary task which we used during the preliminary as the teacher and parent had their discussion. We used over the shoulder shots so we could see the expressions on the other persons face whilst being told how their child was doing. We also improved the shot variations in our main task by using a variety of shots during the preliminary such as pans, tracking, close-ups, and low/high angle shots and we saw the result of using these shots and how they presented the character in the scene so for example, high angle makes the character look inferior.