Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have

learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

For our preliminary task we created the opening 2 minutes of a film, this allowed us the opportunity to film and use the equipment and have an introduction to editing, the software we would be using and just a general taste of what our final task would be like.

Preliminary Task

Our team for the preliminary consisted of 4 of us :Myself (Mark) ,Carl, Ollie and Tom

We all worked relatively well together and also had a good time whilst producing the film.

For our actual coursework we had Ollie leave us to join another group leaving myself, Carl and Tom to team up.

Our Team

Our team had a lot of strengths, we all liked the same genres of film and we all had similar ideas when shooting that we all contributed.

Because there was four of us, work could be distributed evenly and it was easier to film because we had more people to check that we were doing everything right.

By having four people it was also easier because we could have different people, doing different tasks, at the same time and it wouldn’t take as long.

Preliminary task

Genre ; Action/Thriller Story line ; We came up with the

idea of a ‘hitman’ storyline, we wanted to have a man meet up with another, they had previously known each other and try and discuss a possible ‘hit’ for the ex-hitman. When the man refuses the other vows that he will pay...

We had too much happening in the first two minutes, this made us realise once we established the main storyline we needed to come up with a condensed beginning for the film for our final task.

Storyline comparisons

• Genre ; Horror• Storyline ; Emily and Josh are moving into a new house when they experience some unexpected visitors from the past. We see them bringing in the last few boxes. Emily continues into their bedroom when she finds a box that has sentimental value to her. She glares at it intensively and hides it away from Josh’s reach…

• From doing the preliminary task we learnt that we needed to be realistic with the amount of content within the storyline of the first two minutes, by watching other film openings we saw how different films start and at what pace

In our preliminary we had a range of different shots, we did not keep the camera recording long enough though so we had to cut from one clip to another quite frequently.

The Preliminary task allowed us to develop certain skills such as abiding by the 180 rule when shooting

When filming we did not carry out certain shots correctly, due to a lack of planning we did not have a story board to follow so shots were made up on the spot between the 4 of us.

We attempted to carry out a match on action shot of one of the man opening the door and coming in, because we didnt film lengthy enough we were left with the sequence being interupted and the match on action being very poor.

When shooting although trying to abide by the 180 rule we did in fact break it causing a lack of flow of the film.

Camera shots - Prelim

Due to a lack of good team work and organisation we messed up our shooting and did not include a wide range of shot types so we ended up having to re-film our entire film.

Through practise and planning we were able to pull off two match on action shots both on the boot of the car. Both of these shots I think proved to be very effective. Josh opens it – cut to inside car – josh closes it – cut to outside car

Camera shots – Final piece

The prelim was the first time we had the chance to use Adobe Premiere Elements. Because we had never used this before I thought we did quite well for achieving a finished prelim but feel that if we knew the software well like we do now, we could have done a much better job.

Our biggest problem with out preliminary is the fact that we didnt do long enough shots, because of this we had to cut the shots early rushing the sequence of the film.

We also found that we did not cut at the right times, due to lack of organisation we filmed and did not think about how the film would cut together, because of this our cuts were very jumpy are was not a very smooth transition.

Editing - Prelim

Due to the fact that we were now experienced with Adobe Premiere Elements, we were in a much better position on our editing and we knew much better how the software worked and the different things that we could do with it.

Because we took longer shots, this gave us a wider opportunity when editing our film as we were able to cut when we wanted. We also shot the same shots more than once so we would have a wider range of shots to choose the best.

We were able to put video effects on our footage so the home video footage would be more grainy and more evident that it is not the normal camera.

Using Photoplus I created a layer in which we were able to put over our home footage film to make it very clear that it was the home footage.

Editing – Final Piece

Due to the fact that we were now experienced with Adobe Premiere Elements, we were in a much better position on our editing and we knew much better how the software worked and the different things that we could do with it.

Because we took longer shots, this gave us a wider opportunity when editing our film as we were able to cut when we wanted. We also shot the same shots more than once so we would have a wider range of shots to choose the best.

We were able to put video effects on our footage so the home video footage would be more grainy and more evident that it is not the normal camera.

Using Photoplus I created a layer in which we were able to put over our home footage film to make it very clear that it was the home footage.

Editing – Final Piece

Before

After

Due to the fact that we were now experienced with Adobe Premiere Elements, we were in a much better position on our editing and we knew much better how the software worked and the different things that we could do with it.

Because we took longer shots, this gave us a wider opportunity when editing our film as we were able to cut when we wanted. We also shot the same shots more than once so we would have a wider range of shots to choose the best.

We were able to put video effects on our footage so the home video footage would be more grainy and more evident that it is not the normal camera.

Using Photoplus I created a layer in which we were able to put over our home footage film to make it very clear that it was the home footage.

Editing – Final Piece

Before

After

I used my prior knowledge of photo shop and adapted it to using photo plus.

By adding this mask it makes it clear to the audience when it is Emily recording and not.

Due to being rushed to get a final edit done and a lack of organisation again we did not have any music in our prelim, because of this we did not get to experiment of different ways of getting music that you can use for free or start to make our own music.

In our final piece we decided to not add music as we felt their wouldn’t be music with the write tempo to fit into our shots.

But we did add sound clips that we acquired offline from www.soundbible.com that were free to use, we used a clip that we could present when we saw the ‘possessed girl’ to use as a sting so the audience would not miss it and it would keep it at the edge of their seats.

Sound

From not doing a good enough script and storyboard for the Preliminary task we suffered greatly, this is what encourage us to do the script and storyboard as early on as we could in our coursework time.

Obviously as it would many changes occured to both the storyboard and the script throughout the process from start to finish.

As we are not confident drawers we took pictures of the shots we wanted to do, and then eventually we took screen grabs of our film once shot.

Script and storyboarding

On a whole I think our time management was very poor. As a group we met up on many occasions but we were not always 100% focused on our work, all three of us believe that because of this our work has suffered.

We did not properly manage our time when filming which caused the conditions outside to change and thus making us have to re-film.

Some simple tasks took longer than they should have and not everyone was putting their sufficient amount of effort and time that is needed to create a film of high quality.

On a whole I am proud of what myself, Carl and Tom have achieved but it would have been a lot less stressful if we had split the roles equally, all contributed equally and all put much more attention into our coursework straight from the start.

From working together it has taught me that I may have chosen the wrong people to partner up with, as we are friends and can easily distract me and vice versa.

Time management and Teamwork

How to use Adobe Premiere Elements to edit effectively and create a smooth running film that looks good.

How to use all the different equipment such as cameras, mic’s and setting up tripods.

How to carry shots like match on action successfully and keeping the pace of the film flowing.

How to story board and script write effectively to help on the day of filming.

How to add sound to your film to effect the audiences mood.

How to create a mask on photo plus and layer it over our film clips to create a camcorder display-like screen.

How to use a wide range of shot effectivly to keep the pace of the film the same.

What we have learnt since the preliminary? - summary