Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Preliminary Brief: Film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character. A couple of lines of dialogue must then exchange between characters & match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule should be demonstrated.
Main task: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes (all video and audio material must be original, produced by candidates, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source)
What I’ve learnt from the preliminary task:
For the preliminary task I was put in a group with Kevin and Safa.
Our first task was Pre-production which consisted of research and planning. As part of the planning we had to make a storyboard. The storyboard was helpful because it enabled us to see how our film is going to come out (shots, characters etc) although it’s on paper. We also researched movie storyboards and we managed to find the storyboard from ‘The Dark Night’ which was good because it showed us how the professionals do it. We also had to make a shooting schedule which was basically a timetable to show what shot we should be filming and where at a certain time. This helped us too keep management of time and if we were running late or ahead of time we could see by referring to the shooting schedule. We also had a script to help out the character to remember their lines and for rehearsals. The group also made a script to make sure the characters know what to say and when to say it and a shooting schedule to help time management and ensure we know what to do at what time and there’s no confusion.
During production I was the Actor, Kevin was the director and Safa was the camera person.
Post production consisted of editing which was putting all our best shots into a sequence to make a finished product. Unfortunately I didn’t use the editing software as much as I should have so I didn’t really learn how to edit using Adobe premier CS4.
What I’ve learnt from the main task:
I worked with Safa, Alex and Abdul.
I found that pre-production for the main task was much more work than it had been in the preliminary task so it took much more time.
Unlike in the preliminary task we had to make a location recce. This was a list of all the locations which we wanted to use with pictures and also a description. The locations which we had in mind were the history office and the music room. We chose the history office because it was already setup meaning we didn’t need to bring props to dress up the set as we would have if we chose the music room. We had to draw a storyboard which was basically our film on paper. This showed the shots we planned to take, camera angles and what will be happening in every shot, shot by shot. The storyboard had to be done more than once to ensure it was up to scratch. Once again we used a script which was longer than the one in the preliminary task and also a shooting schedule.
We also had to a lot of research into our chosen genre. We looked at opening sequences from films such as ‘Donnie Darko’, which helped because we found out the codes and conventions of films in our genre which then helped us to decide how we would use, follow or challenge these typical codes and conventions.
During production I was Actor once again but we swapped roles so I became assistant director and also worked on continuity.
I was much more actively involved in the editing this time round and I am now comfortable with the software and I can use it with ease.
What I’ve learnt from the start of the preliminary task to now:
I learnt how to use the Canon XAHi camera in the prelim task however in the main task I managed to develop my skills and I’m much more confident using the camera than I was at the beginning. I can also setup a tri-pod correctly which is harder than people think because although it may look correct it might actually be incorrect. I can now edit videos using Adobe premier CS4 which is an achievement because I had never used or even heard of this software before. Overall I now know how to construct a film from pre- production to post-production.
