Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Preliminary Brief: Film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character. A couple of lines of dialogue must then exchanged between characters & match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule should be demonstrated.
Main Task: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes (all video and audio material must be original, produced by candidates, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source)
Since my preliminary task I think my skills of both production and pre production have developed and improved.
For my preliminary task our main objective was to film an example of shot reverse shot in a film sequence. For this we had to keep in mind the use of the 180 degree rule when filming two characters and examples of these shots such as action reaction or over the shoulder shots.
Our sequence was of Yasmin, our female character charging through a door coming into the frame, and crossing to some stairs, as she reaches half way Edward, our male character comes through the same door calling after her. As he reaches the bottom of the stairs we use a series of shot reverse shot and action reactions from high and low angles due to the stairs as the dialogue is spoken. After the dialogue scene we use a long shot as Yasmin continues up the stairs and of the shot through a door. We then use a mid shot and tilt downward as Edward sits on the steps.
Our steps during preproduction for our preliminary task were much smaller and in little detail compared to our opening sequence, although this is to be expected it surprised me how much I didn’t plan for or consider during my first task.
With our time limit being much shorter as well our planning consisted simply of
- A initial idea brief
- A storyboard
- A Script
- A shooting schedule
In comparison to the planning off our opening I understood how much planning and through preparation effects the filming itself. Coming away from my first task I already understood how with more planning the filming process would have been much faster and better done, it was my main lesson learnt from the experience. So I was pleased when it came to the main task I found I had improved from this and our extensive planning made the filming experience a lot more productive and even more enjoyable, it even allowed us time to take a series of creative unplanned shots and do a small commentary on our experience of filming and our use of mise en scene on the set, which I felt was an interesting bonus for us to do as filmmakers.
During preproduction of the prelim task we decided to be adventurous with how we shot our scene and arranged our storyboard with high angle shots from an elevated surface. Although I was slighted concerned about how it would turn out being my first experience with the camera I knew it was something I wanted to at the very least try before I film the back up shot.
Although it was a concern I’m glad we decided to attempt the different angles as the result was perfect to the storyboard, our only issue was the use of the tripod on the stairs which proved to be tricky and wasn’t something I consider at all before hand.
However we did manage to take shots of a good enough standard with some assistance from our teacher. This was something I defiantly took on board in my main task to plan how I will shot my desired takes, and to aim for shots which are unlikely to need handheld experience. As a result when drafting and finalizing our storyboard, we did not plan any shots or angles requiring this. Also it was not something we required when filming our extra shots or commentary.
From the editing I managed to grasp a basic understanding of the programme and how to digitize our film. However I found during the main task I discovered a lot more about what the programme offers and what’s available to use in our film, also to learn how to include non diegetic sound in a sequence was something I learnt during my main task, which can be seen with our music playing throughout the sequence, compared the diegetic sound and dialogue of our prelim task.
An issue I found I encountered on both tasks was lack of pre-empting various problems that could easily occur such as the use of natural lighting and how it will change throughout the days filming and the use of the tripod on the stairs. Although to very different issues I feel this shows there are still lessons I haven’t learnt from my prelim task and as a result they continued to my main task.
However from both my tasks I am personally proud of how we worked as a team to achieve our original idea’s and plans effectively and I’ve realized the importance of working together to overcome any issue we were faced with.
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