7.Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

When comparing my final task and my preliminary exercise, i believe that there have been huge improvements due to the fact that we are now all much more experienced in the the ways in which a film should be made, and more proficient at using the required technology.

An area that has improved considerably from the preliminary exercise is the camerawork. In several scenes in the preliminary, we had poorly framed shots, the most serious being at 00:23. However, when creating the preliminary, we had to conform to a list of shots, and we were only just beginning to be aware of the techniques of filming, i.e. the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and staying away from any jump cuts. We were given much more freedom when deciding the shots that we could use for our final task, and we were really able to use our imagination to come up with how we would piece together the shots of our film. Another factor that is very much different between the two tasks is the scale. When creating our preliminary, we did not have to take as much into consideration as we did with our final task, For example, in our final task, we had to take into account the availability of our actors, the setting up of props and costume and since our film was set in a rural environment, our ability to film depended upon the weather on the day. This were all complications that were not present during our preliminary exercise.

As can be seen below, the differences in the quality of our shots is far improved. As can be seen in the left side picture, our framing in the preliminary exercise was poor, with lopsided shots making the image slanted, however on the right side shot, the final task shows much improvement, as we learned from our mistakes and made sure that we improved our shots and made sure the were to a good standard.

When creating our final task, we were able to be creative when planning how we would film. Unlike our preliminary exercise, our film was set in a large outside area, meaning we were able to experiment when choosing shots. For example, we were able to use tracking shots of our characters and establishing shots of our surroundings. However, poor shot choices can be seen at 00:12, as the character is shown walking down the hall, yet the next shot shows him just starting to walk. With the time and effort put into the final task, we were able to make sure that there were no mistakes like this and that the shots flowed smoothly. One major difference between the tasks was the concepts of the film itself. Whilst the preliminary exercise was a simple and basic idea, the final task involved a complex setting, and the Mise-En-Scene needed to be convincing, involving a lot more thought when deciding the costumes and props to make our film seem plausable, although unlike the preliminary exercise we were creating a film with our choice of plot and setting so we could create something completely how we wanted it, which made the whole creation process much more enjoyable. Similarly, we were also able to be much more free when editing our film. There is an example at 00:05 of my preliminary, when i decided to edit in the sound footsteps and they ended up being far too out of sinc and sounding wrong. When creating the final task, we had a problem with the original audio, so we had to re-record the dialogue at several points and dub it over the footage. Because i had much more experience at using the technology, i was able to line the audio up to footage so that it was not noticeable that it had been changed. This would not have been possible when creating my preliminary exercise, as we were only able to spend a limited time when editing, whereas with our final we had several weeks to perfect the editing process. Also, when creating the final task, we wanted to have our black, white and red effect to create a much more artistic tone to the film. This was far more complicated than anything we had done before, as with the preliminary, we only used cross fades, which were handled poorly.

When creating our final task, we wanted to include music that would lend itself to our chosen era of the 1940’s. To do this we used freesound.org and garage band. Through these we were able to find suitable jazz music for the beginning and dramatic music for builds in tension whereas we used no music at all in our preliminary. Because of our ambition when creating our film, we did end up having to deal with many complications, such as obtaining props and of course the sensetive nature of the characters we were portraying and perhaps most of all our ambition of creating the black, white and red effect. Still, our experiences when creating our preliminary exercise helped us to learn how we should create our film and the common mistakes we can avoid.