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

In the preliminary task we had one day to produce it and I worked in a group with 3 other people.
In the film opening task we had over 2 months to go through the whole process and I worked in a group with 2 other people.

Research

For the preliminary task no research was done whatsoever. We were just given some sheets showing different shot movements and angles and a brief telling us what we needed to do. In contrast to this a lot of research was done for the film opening task which included 5 analyses of film openings, 3 analyses of supernatural horror openings and research into the supernatural horror genre.

Pre-Production

For the preliminary task very little planning was done. We probably spent about 10 minutes deciding where to film, who to film and a general idea of what shots and in what order. Whereas for the opening film task an incredibly larger amount of time was spent in doing things like location scouting, test shots, storyboards, health and safety, call sheets, props, costumes and more. From this I have learnt that putting more time into pre-production is more important as it gives you a more concrete idea of what you are actually doing and it also means you are following all rules and regulations in terms of having permission where you are filming and health and safety. This, overall, makes the whole process more professional as you're not just picking up a camera and filming what you feel like.

Production

match on action

The filming for our preliminary task only took about 20-30 minutes I would say, which is a very short amount of time. We did shoot shots we were happy with and we checked the quality of them all however I think this reflects how it was a much smaller task that didn't need to be as long. To film we used a standard tripod and a flip camera (so the quality wasn't great). However, in terms of filming I guess it was a good place to start as if we could achieve good shots with a flip camera then we should be able to get even better ones with a HD camera. We didn't think much about the lighting at all but natural lighting worked in our favour. During this task we also achieved shot-reverse-shot, match on action and we used the 180 degree rule.  This gave us a good introduction to filming sequences well and from what we learnt during this we could use similar things in our film opening (e.g shot-reverse-shot).


Shot reverse shot

When it came to filming our film opening we could use a HD camera and had already thought about match on action, shot reverse shot etc. Therefore we used what we had learnt in the preliminary task and applied it to our final product. Looking back at our film I realised we didn't exactly follow the 180 degree rule as Suzanne goes from the first room to the end room. However, as I have only just noticed this I don't think it is a problem as it has no disorientated me ever or any of our target audience so the film is still easy to follow. Regardless of this we have still learnt that in most cases the 180 degree rule is a very good thing to follow.


Post-Production

During the preliminary task we all got to grips with the two main editing softwares; Final Cut Express and LiveType. This was very useful as it meant for our opening we would be able to begin editing much faster and with more knowledge of the programme. Although, when we started editing our film opening we did find ourselves learning new skills such as adding filters and changing the speed of clips. We had to balance the roles between each other which was a little more challenging but we all worked well as a group so if someone was controlling the editing then the other two would still have full input. I personally really like editing so for me it was a bit of a downside that the role of editing had to be shared between us but I already had evaluated working alone or in a team and overall a team, if it was in a team with people I got on with (which is was), was a much better decision.

In post-production for the preliminary task I did no audience feedback. As it was such a small, short task it was not necessary. However, from doing the film opening and getting feedback at least 3 times from the target audience we chose I found it to be a very useful exercise as looking at our first rough cut of Malediction compared to our final cut I can see a great deal of improvement and a lot of this was due to audience suggestions.

Conclusion

In conclusion I can see a wide range of skills have been obtained or improved upon through the making of the film opening. These included knowledge of filming rules (match on action, etc) and how to use various editing software. I have also really learnt the value of audience feedback through the progression from the preliminary task to the full product. Overall I am happy with my progress and with the finished project as I have really enjoyed doing it all and learnt a lot.