Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The Preliminary Task was to create a short sequence with two characters, dialogue, movement across a room, and certain editing techniques.
The Final Task was to create the first two minutes of a fiction film.
Looking back with hindsight at the Preliminary brief and comparing it with the brief of the final task, I see that the preliminary task was stricter in its brief in order to introduce some of the basic skills in film making. The final brief then allows us to put those skills into action, as well as other skills developed along the way. The final brief allowed us to use our imagination to a greater extent, coming up with an idea, developing it and then finding a location for the shoot, whereas the with the preliminary task, it was more a case of coming up with an idea that could be shot in the school building in a limited amount of time.
The planning processes for the two tasks were extremely different, as the brief dictated that we knew almost exactly what we had to do for the preliminary task. We knew when writing a script that it had to include:
- Two characters.
- A conversation between them.
- A character entering a room ad moving across it.
It was relatively easy to think up a scenario that matched this brief. When it came to writing a script for the final task, we looked back to the preliminary task script for information on how to continue, and wrote the script in a similar style to that for the preliminary task, writing a voiceover speech for one of our characters to say. However, due to unforeseen problems and barriers, the script underwent almost constant revision until the decision was made to forego dialogue in the film sequence entirely. This shows that we were unprepared for what problems we would face in the filming process, although our film did eventually benefit from this, our film not being let down by bad sound quality or bad acting.
As the final task was much more complicated than the preliminary task, consisting of over 50 separate shots with complicated setting up of lighting and camera which took several weekends of shooting as opposed to less than an hour and a half for the preliminary task, the final task needed much more preparatory work. A storyboard was made on paper for the Preliminary Task, which prompted us to make a much more detailed storyboard for "The Case," made up of post- it- notes stuck to a large cork board. Another aspect of preparation for the preliminary task that was intended to also be made use of in the final task was a shooting script. We had seen how this had been useful when shooting the preliminary task, but when it came to the final shoots we found ourselves suggesting, improvising and replacing shots spontaneously, ignoring the rough shooting scripts we had made. We knew almost from the start that our piece would be centred around targeting a film noir fan audience and achieving the style of classic cinema.
The production process for the final task was drastically different from that for the preliminary task. The filming of the preliminary production went almost exactly to plan, and, apart from a few unplanned shots, was exactly as planned on the storyboard. The production of our final task was beset by unanticipated setbacks, the most major of which was being denied permission to film at the place we had designated as perfect for our idea. This led to two weeks of difficulties as we searched for various film locations, which we were either forbidden from entered or charged. During this time, nothing was filmed, and when we eventually found our location, it became more of a case of thinking up a new idea to fit the location rather than working the location to fit our idea. The only things "The Case" had in common with the original idea "The Streets Run Red" were the genre and the idea of an Antagonist attacking a Protagonist, and then having the tables turned on them.
There was no way the filming of the preliminary task in the school building could have have prepared us for the problems of location filming. This meant that we could not prepare for this aspect of the production through looking back on the preliminary task with hindsight.
The actual process of filming owed a lot to the practice we had in the preliminary task. While I was often the member of the group with the least experience in media, I learnt a lot from my team mates, learning from their understanding of camera work. Trying out matches on action, shot- reverse- shot, different angles and close ups in the preliminary task made me appreciate how these things could enhance the film, and thus I included many examples of these in the final product. I was in front of the camera, acting, for most of the preliminary task, and so when it came to the final task, this was my first time behind the camera, filming and doing paperwork. I nevertheless found controlling the camera quite easy from watching other people filming.
Another problem that we encountered through the final task was the extreme cold of our exterior location. The preliminary task had taught us what to focus on during the production, but the extreme conditions made it difficult to concentrate on anything, and so it took several takes to get everything perfect in some of the outside location work, which in turn prolonged our exposure and made conditions less than tolerable, with some group members becoming irritable.
Post- production work on the Preliminary task passed very quickly, it being a simple matter of ordering shots properly. One of the obvious hardest parts of the process was the match on action, but even this was easy to edit together and make appear convincing. In contrast, the editing of the final sequence was a very long process toward achieving absolute perfection. The first few weeks of this post production was based around looking at the already filmed shots and deciding what needed to be re-shot, and noting this down for planning. In this way, post-production and pre-production were occurring co-currently, which had not been the case with the preliminary task. Fortunately, from the preliminary editing we knew the basics of using the editing software, such as cutting, ordering and rendering, so we could settle into the careful process of editing the final piece easily.
Also there was the task of finding sound effects and music to use on our piece. Fortunately, there are many readily available download websites, and the group decision as to what music to use was similar to group decisions made in the preliminary task as to what editing effects to use.
When evaluating my preliminary task, I looked on it as an achievement as my first encounter with media work. I also used to revise what technology and techniques had been used. The final task was about using these things in a more professional and focused capacity, and discovering what it is like to attempt to create a film in a professional style. When evaluating the final task, I look back on the task and see if I have used these techniques to the best of my ability. Over the course of the final task, I have learnt much about the post-production process and the process of real- world film release, and I have tried to incorporate this into my evaluation of the project.
The preliminary task taught me about the possibilities of film- making, and the sort of things that can be produced through them, and throughout the final task I have tried to express myself in the way we developed the sequence from the initial ideas through to trying to explain myself in the evaluation.
