Evaluation Activity Seven ☮ ☮ ☮

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
Compared to our final film, our preliminary task appears very unprofessional and heavily flawed. Our group wanted to add in as many different shot types within the limited amount of time we had. We used match on action, shot reverse shot and followed the rule of 180 degrees. The task was short and sloppy in editing with distorted colour within the majority of shots, showing a high amount of yellow within all shots. This could have been due to the fact that we used the GE1080p hand held camera which wasn’t as a high a quality camera as the Nikon D3000, which we used in our final film. There is a major difference within the quality’s of the lenses within the two camera’s and this gave our film a more professional look by using the Nikon, whereas our preliminary task appeared very amateur and low budget.

Within our final film we were able to add in more shot types that we didn’t get to involve in our preliminary task, such as a long shot, extreme close up, close up , low angle and high angle shots. This was due to the amount of time we had increasing to around 3 minutes, allowing us to extend the gaps between more adventurous shot types, without having the film appear crowded and too much to keep up with. We felt this was extremely effective within our film as we could maintain a professional look with still being able to use the amount of shots we required without having too much of a tacky look.

The mise en scene that we used within the preliminary task wasn’t thought through at all, our group wanting to show an average conversation between two teens wasn’t particularly portrayed correctly as we filmed th scene within college, and so are actress’s were wearing business wear, making the clothing seem out of place for what we were trying to convey. With our final film we were able to plan outfits, with our main antagonist wearing all black and a balaclava, which really conveyed the correct appearance for the characters personality, due to the dark tones creating an evil look. Also with our other characters less thought had to be put in due to the characters ages being teen, we wanted to show a casual look.

Our editing also vastly improved, with soundtrack and sound effects also being used within the final film, this again showed a professional look and also cast a serious tone on the scene due to the thought our group put into the song choice that would be used over the entire film, we wanted perfect drops when something drastic happened and we felt that the song we went with, created this perfectly. At the beginning of our preliminary task we only see footsteps for ten seconds with there only being silence, which was both boring and difficult to set a tone over the scene. Between scenes when we wanted to show a difference in time we were also able to dim in transitions which we didn’t do within the preliminary tasking ,showing a very sharp and drastic cut, which again appeared very sloppy and unprofessional.

Overall our group has heavily improved over the AS year with our filming and editing techniques, which really has given our final film a great professional look. Our group has achieved a new set of skills that we really come in useful when we continue next year into filming a trailer, which we will also pursue into things that we didn’t use in the final film that we used this year.