Preliminary Task - Evaluation

Through completing the Preliminary task we came across some strengths and some weaknesses.
Throughout most of the task we didn't have many weaknesses, only at the very beginning when it took us sometime to agree on a narrative for our short video and when we were unable to find a location that was quite enough to film in. Though we over came these, as we managed to come up with an idea that worked well and put in a sound floor and sound effects to cover up the noisy conditions we had to film in. obviously the dialogue and mise en scene didn't fit perfectly as it is very unlikely that a girl would get revenge on her cheating boyfriend in a school, though as this was the only space available for us we had to work with it, my final piece will be more professional than this, set in a more appropriate place to the narrative. I think that the strengths of this piece was that even though we came across problems such as being asked to stop filming in a room during the middle of filming, etc. we were able to get through them and still come out with a fully functioning short clip which turned out as I had hoped. I also think that my group worked very well together in making this video, and we came out with a piece that had good camera angles and the editing was done well.
Overall through doing this prelim task, I learnt lots on how to edit using Adobe Premium Pro and how to film properly with the use of angles and interesting shots. I feel as if the things that went wrong in the prelim task are things that I know now not to do when it comes to my final piece.

Preliminary Task - Video

Preliminary Task - Editing

This is an image of the final edited version of our prelim task. 

The program we used to do this was Adobe Premium pro, this was quite simple to use but gave us the outcome we wanted. I found the editing stage quite challenging at first but after Sir went through it and explained the basics, it became a lot easier. I found the editing stage to be quite interesting and feel like it has helped all of us in my group, as now we know how to edit video footage properly. This will be every helpful in our final pieces.
We started with our unedited footage, which luckily was in order of  how it would be edited together. Once we put all the footage in order on the program, we saw that they just didn't fit together as smoothly as we had hoped, so collectively we all decided to look through all the footage we hadn't put in and try and piece together clips that made it flow better, once we did this we added transitions that would also add to how smoothly the video would flow.
Due to adding the sound floor we had to lower the background sound, which caused us to lose out on sound effects. So we had to download sound effects from a copyright free website and add them in. this caused it to sound and seem more natural.
Overall I feel that my groups preliminary task went better than expected.

Preliminary Task - Filming

When filming we came across the issue of where to film. We had filmed a short part of prelim task in a room that wasn't occupied by a class, but as the bell went for period two we were asked to leave the room as a class was being held in there. So we had to find a new room to film in and the only other available room was the year 11 common room, this was quite noisy due to the pastoral support talking with other children and a class next door who where quite loud. Earlier in the lesson during our camera safety talk, Mr Wilson had mention the use of a sound floor so I suggested we did this so the non-diegetic sound would flow naturally through the scene rather than it sounding cut up in the different takes.

After we had changed rooms however we started to film the scene properly, redoing some shots we had previously done upstairs. Mia did most of the filming as Sam and I agreed to be in the film. However all of us did have a go at filming sections so we were all familiarised with the cameras for our final pieces. Our group worked well together, and worked collaboratively in agreeing which takes we were going to use in our final version of the task. 

Though towards the end of filming our camera started to run out of battery so the last few shots are not as polished as they could be, as we didn't have time to retake any and didn't want to risk not being able to finish our short scene. We also chose not to re-film the final shots as we didn't want to take time away from the editing stage.

Preliminary Task - Planning

My group (Mia, Sam and I) found it difficult to start with, in coming up with a plot to put behind the prompt. In the end we came up with the idea of a cheating boyfriend and a girlfriend seeking revenge.

We created a storyboard to help us during filming, this helps us while filming as it shows the sequence of shots we were to use and helps us to see how the final cut would hopefully look. Our storyboard was undetailed in the drawings and some of the descriptions but it gives us a basic outline on how to film. If we are to stick to this storyboard and outline then filming should go to plan.

 

The dialogue our group came up with is very simplistic but it relevant to the story behind our prelim task and links well with the cheating boyfriend scenario. We also listed the one prop we needed, which was ideally a fake toy gun but if no one could manage to get one then we would ask to borrow one from one of the food technology classes.

As a group we came up with the idea for the narrative, and we all agreed that the cheating boyfriend scenario was the best one. Writing the narrative down made it easier to stick to the storyline during the storyboard stage of planning.