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

I feel that my progression from the preliminary task to the full product has been vast. I have honed and developed not only my technical ability, whilst in post-production and production, but also my ability to plan and keep my work efficient.

Our Preliminary Task

For this task we had to work in groups or in pairs in order to create a 2 minute continuity sequence for a fiction film which contained a short dialogue between 2 characters. My group consisted of me and Meera.

Whilst capturing our footage we had to bear in mind the basic continuity principles, such as the:

• 180 degree rule
• 30 degree rule
• Match on action
• Shot-reverse-shot

Pre-production:

The planning for the prelim was not very extensive as we only used one tool to help us when shooting, a storyboard:

Our storyboard for the prelim

When looking back on the prelim I thought that using another planning tool, such as a shoot board, would have been much more helpful in the production stage. Upon this reflection I decided that pre-production had to be different when creating the full product as it's benefits would be worth the time it took to create them. Below are some of the additions to pre-production that I made when planning the full product that I did not entertain during the prelim:

Production:

Me acting in the prelim

Me acting in the opening sequence

When it came to production I feel that the actual filming process in the prelim was extremely helpful as it helped different group member acclimatise to different roles and specialise in them - ready for the real thing. 

For example, I acted in the prelim and I then carried on this role into my opening sequence as that is where I felt I could benefit the sequence and the group the most due to the prior experience. 

In addition to this, when not acting in the prelim I helped with adapting the mise-en-scene; I then carried over this skill into the shooting of the opening sequence.

Post- production:

During the post-production of our prelim, our focus was mainly on just editing the footage into a basic continuity sequence. This meant that we paid little to no attention to sound levels or grading, whilst we didn't add a soundtrack or even rename the rushes. In my opinion the renaming of rushes was the big thing to take out of the prelim post-production as it made editing our full product much easier and more efficient; mainly due to the ease at which we could decide on the best takes and also switch them out in the future if needed to as we could easily locate them.

Our edit suite

Overall, I think that the preliminary task was a very beneficial process as I learnt a lot of skills and ideas which I could carry over into my opening sequence production.