Evaluation: Question 7

7. "Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the product?"



Final film:



Preliminary Task:



Earlier in the year my group created our first short film. Before this my group had little experience in directing or acting, so our film took longer than expected to film as we were constantly altering segments, adding new ideas or eradicating ones that didn't work. As well as this we were prone to mistakes and even recorded half our film before realizing the microphone was not turned on. However this task allowed us to practice and develop our camera and acting skills, as well as allowing us to test shots that we would later need for our final film. The shots that we focused on in our preliminary task were the;

Preliminary Task shot examples

• Match on-action - where one of the group starts an action (walking through the door) and continues it through the next one masking the cut.
• 180 degree rule - where the audience can only see the front of the character's faces as they engage in a conversation.
• Shot reverse shot - where the camera focuses on the face of the characters talking, alternating between all the characters involved in the conversation. 
• Eye line match - where one of the group looks across the room at the other characters as he enters.

Practicing these shots in the preliminary task gave us time to improve our execution of the shots which would later improve the quality of the final film.
In our preliminary task we did not use any non-dietetic sounds which dampened the overall experience. We took note of this and made sure to correct this for our final film. The use of the non-dietetic audio within our final film added to the suspense and tension, engaging the audience more so.

Overall the experience of creating the preliminary task prepared are group for the final film by developing our skills in using the hardware, software and our acting in order to create our film. We also become more decisive when capturing scenes and we had a better idea on what we wanted to create and how we wanted to convey it. This allowed us to be more efficient and productive in creating our final film and produce one of a higher quality than we would have been able to do without the experience.