Evaluation 7 - Seth Tumwa

Preliminary Task

Final Product

Improvements

u  Looking back and comparing our preliminary task it is easy to see how we as a group have improved our skills to go form a basic piece, to a full 2 minute opening filled with different camera angles and evidence of adapted skills like use of lighting, sound and editing (e.g. titles and credits) so that we have created a realistic thriller opening that conforms to mainly elements of the thriller genre and the sub-genre of psychological thriller.

Pre-Production

Pre-Production was important for both tasks at it made sure we were prepared for almost everything before we began filming

u  Planning: For our preliminary task planning time was very limited only having around 10-20 to plan our location, allocate roles and the actual concept for ‘the meeting’

u  In addition to this we needed to select suitable camera techniques and what to/not to do. For example it was important that we did not break the 180 degree rule whenever we were filming to maintain verisimilitude

u   Props: in our preliminary task the props used were very minimal and mainly included things we conveniently had at the beginning of filming  (e.g. pieces of paper, mobile phones

u  The location itself was a key factor in both our preliminary and our final product. For our preliminary task, as I mentioned before, timing was quite limited so we made the decision of filming in school as it was far more convenient, we then had to search for a suitable room that had enough room to film the preliminary task whilst including the key factors of showing a door opening and showing a conversation with a clear range of camera angles (e.g. over-the-shoulder)

u  In contrast to this, with our final product, we had a number of weeks to plan what location we were going to use for filming. In the end we decided Max’s home (group member) mainly due to its convenience, it was easily accessible with enough room for filming so we would be able to include a vast range of camera and angles, shots and movement and enabled us to have a low light setting that we could easily use additional light to, to improve visibility.

uOn the actual day of filming we had more time for preparation before filming actually took place. This enabled us to perfect things like make-up and costume so that we created a believable character

Production

u  Time management - due to the time constraints our preliminary task had to be produced and edited over a period of about 1-2 weeks meaning that all photography was completed in a single day. The complexity of the task was not high at all therefore the brief filming was still effective in providing enough footage for a suitable completed task. 

uFilming for our actual final piece was intended to take place over an entire weekend however we were surprised to find that all filming was completed in a single day and no further filming was required. This was somewhat similar to our preliminary task however the filming of that only took place in less than one hour rather than an entire day. This shows how even though we had to use more time, it was used effectively, even more than our preliminary task.

u  Lighting - ties in with the use of technologies (e.g. cameras) with our preliminary task we didn't really have to worry about our use of light as natural lighting was used (the lights in the room themselves and daylight) however when it came to our final piece, lighting was a crucial aspect and required a lot more work. This was mainly because we wanted to achieve a mysterious atmosphere created through the use of very

uOur use of camera angles was thing I believe we improved on most from our primarily task to our final product. We experimented with a only a few angles in our preliminary task for example over the shoulder shots, however we predetermined a vast range of shots to use in our final piece sand on the day experimented even more which better suited the darker/tense atmosphere of the opening. 

Post Production

u  Titles and credits - In our final piece their is a much vaster range of titles and credits than in our preliminary task, which included things like, names of editors, the production & distribution company,actors names, in addition to the film title itself whereas our preliminary task only included the title of the task itself and the names of group participants. This shows clear improvement as the use of tiles and credits is the complete opposite to how it was in the preliminary task, featuring far more titles and crediting a lot more people and institutions e.g. Film 4

u  Uploading our actual finished piece which we didn't have an opportunity to do for our preliminary task, this meant that our knowledge of technologies like 'Blogger' were improved and ways to upload our finished product to YouTube, making it easier to access our film outside of school. 

u  Editing - use of software: we definitely improved in our use of editing software (final cut pro) when it came to editing and completing our final film. For our preliminary editing took place fairly quickly mainly because there was much less footage to choose from and far less transitions were required. Also music did not need to be edited into our preliminary task which meant that a lot of time was saved in its completion. For our final task however, music, special effects (very minimal and brief), titles, credits and logos all had to be edited before our film opening was complete. This meant that a lot more time had to be spent on the film itself in addition to going through a lot more footage in comparison to what we had for our preliminary task.