Evaluation Question Seven

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

         After completing both my Preliminary task and my final product I've learnt how hard it really is to create a proper film. We were working with a very low budget which restricted some of the things we could achieve with a camera. A lot of the work we have completed we have achieved through learning new skills over the past few months. 

         The idea of our prelim task was to follow three basic ideas. We had to achieve a Match on action shot, shot/reverse shot and 180-degree rule. After practicing these and learning what they were, we tried to incorporate them into our final production. 


         During the progress of making our production, we have realised the significance and how important it is to do research onto the genre. We spent a lot of time watching film openings of other horror/slasher films, helping us gather ideas for our own production and practice our deconstruction skills. There was no planning for our preliminary task, we were given a camera and a set of instructions on what we needed to achieve and completed it. This made decision making very hard because you had to make them on the spot. In our group we found it very difficult to organise filming dates, due to the cast not being able to shoot, or other commitments. We used call sheets and story boards on set to help us when we were filming, this helped the process flow better and was less time consuming. Filming at dawn meant we had little time to shoot in, this was one problem we faced. 

      

         A lot more thought went into the Mise-en-scene and the actors/actresses we would use. When making our preliminary task we were put into groups. The people in the groups had to play the main actor/actress's roles in our prelims. When we planned our final production we casted friends of ours to get the best set of actors we could. We also had more choice for location and the setting of our film. I learnt what a big factor the location plays in a film. When doing our prelim it was done in school time, this meant we could only film on school property limiting us. We used a tripod in both tasks to make sure the shots were steady. This was because it made the shots look a lot more professional. This was a key factor we focused on when filming. 


      I also learnt how to create an ident. For this we used a software called Live Type. Our idea was to create something that had symbolic meaning to the name. For example when making 'Flatline Films' we had a heart beat noise is background. This signifying a heart monitor. When using this program you can really achieve some really interesting results. 


      In our final production we have been out to shoot a lot of times. This has been because we have lost shots or just because we thought of a new idea. We have made a lot of rough cuts, when you get to editing them you realise how much you can change in order to improve them. Editing is a long process with so much thought needed to going into every small detail. With our preliminary task we only had a very short time for editing, this came as quite a challenge to us. Whereas we have had plenty of time to edit our recent production. This really showed us how much time and effort goes into the editing stage of a film and how rewarding this can be. After every rough cut we got audience feedback from a range of people, mainly our peers (our target audience). We realised how key it was to gather audience feedback, which allowed us to improve our production when it came to filming and editing. I found that when editing, it was important to make sure we were not cutting something out that was important to the meaning of the film. 


      Working in a group has been really good. We worked in groups for both tasks and it is really good getting a range of ideas for the filming. I have learnt to listen to your partners and take all views into consideration, which I think has resulted in a good outcome.  


A useful website that we used for research into the genre