Zoe Rutland - Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

From our preliminary task, I feel we’ve improved to a great extent in many different areas. The preliminary task was a way to showcase our knowledge on the continuity principles - match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule which helped us in the final product, and it was also the first time we'd used the cameras and editing software properly.

Planning:
· I’ve become much more aware of the importance of storyboarding in order to know the direction of the product and roughly how it will look once edited. However, it also became clear to me the need to sometimes make changes to it during production if things aren’t working, as when filming the preliminary task, I felt the need to stick directly to the storyboard when we could have included a few more shots to add variety. In our final product, we completely changed our initial storyboard as we felt it didn’t convey the Thriller genre and was quite complex for the short time we had to film.

· The importance of choosing the right location was something the preliminary task showed us, as we simply used a setting available to us on the day, which ended up being quite a dark location which produced unintended shadow. This then forced us to look at a variety of classroom set-ups for our real thing, discarding some for simple reasons such as a colourful background which wouldn’t match our narrative.

· Most importantly, the issue of time management became clear during the preliminary task, as only two of us were present when shooting and so we devised a timetable for when we were all free to let us know when filming could happen as a team.

Filming:
· In our preliminary task, there was unwanted shadow when looking back at our footage, which made us more aware of the need to control the shadow and light in our opening as much as we could. The shadows that appear in our final product were intended in order to display the conflict in the narrative, and we did struggle at the beginning with controlling this which made us move location to a lighter classroom.

· Setting up the equipment and checking the spirit level was important to know how to do, as it ensured the camera was level so our shots weren’t at an unwanted angle. This became easier and faster to ensure after our preliminary where we were still learning the basics.

· We spent more time framing the shots in our final piece than the preliminary, as during shot reverse shot, Rachel’s face was covered as the opposite character is slightly overlapping her face, something we only realised when uploading our footage. This then made us more aware of the necessity to check nothing unwanted was in the shot when filming and that everything had a reason to be shown.

· We also struggled with sound and unwanted background noise when editing our preliminary footage, as again, we didn’t realise such noise was present when filming, again making us aware of the need to watch clips back after shooting to check for many things, such as shadows.

· We also made sure to have a variety of shots in our final product, as although the preliminary task was a simple understanding of our knowledge, we still could have pushed it further and produced different shots, and so it simply made us aware that we needed to use interesting camera shots and movements to engage our audience.

Editing:
· I became more aware of the importance of continuity editing so not to confuse the viewer and to make things look natural. We had an issue with continuity in our preliminary task, as in one shot, Monaire’s hand is up on the desk, and then it cuts to her hand down. When shooting for our opening, we made sure the continuity shots flowed by ensuring Taylor was wearing a watch at all times, that the books were at the same angle in front of her continuously, and in the editing process, we had to change some shots around to ensure this even further.

· As the preliminary task was a quick task to display our knowledge on filming and the continuity principles, we didn't include additional sound, special effects, transitions or titles, and so the context of this task and the final product were very different, which meant we had more to learn about iMovie in the final task than the preliminary, such as how to add in transitions and text.

Teamwork:
Overall, the importance of working as a group became clear as each of us had different ideas to bring about. For our final product, we all input ideas on how to transition the text, or what shots to overlap, and so the preliminary task simply identified to us the need to work as a team in order to get our product completed efficiently and to the best degree.