Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

ORIGINAL PRELIMINARY TASK

• Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

From our preliminary task earlier on in the year I learnt the importance of PRE PODUCTION. In order to amend this during our opening sequence we had focused planning sessions before production.

In addition we had regular meetings throughout the weeks in order to finalise our ideas and plan for production.

 Meeting 1
Meeting 2
Meeting 3
Meeting 4
Meeting 5
Meeting 6

FILMING-practice shoots, re-shoots, shot lists

• Doing our prelim one of the main problems that we faced were the shots. As we only filmed on one day the shots had to be perfect as there was no room or time for re-shoots. Taking into account this factor it meant that we were very limited in our shot choices during editing. 

 How did we rectify this?

• During our planning sessions we allowed our self time for re-shoot to rectify any mistakes or allow for new shots to be added in. In addition in order to get the shots we needed we arranged practice shoots so we could get a feel for the area and the camera angles

practice shots

practice shots

practice shots

practice shots

practice shots

LIGHTING

In our prelim we used only natural lighting. Lighting in our prelim was not essential to the piece as the focus was more on the plot rather than lighting, mise-en-scene or music. However because of our selected genre and storyline we needed to use artificial light to create a bright and inviting feel to the piece. 

• In our original shoot we used only natural lighting. However during the editing process we realised that this shots we too dark to use as they didn't help to reinforce the atmosphere that we were trying to create.

 How did we rectify this?

we used a peg lighting create to add artificial light to all scenes. This made the scenes much brighter and created a more 'perfect' feel to the piece. 

Another problem that we faced with lighting was trying to match the lighting in each shot. As we used artificial lighting in some shots and natural in others it created an uneven tone to the piece.

In this shot the left side is noticeable a lot darker than the right 

CREATIVITY OF SHOT TYPES

In our prelim we didn't use a creative range of shots- only wide, close and mid. In order to make our opening sequence more interesting we adapted a different style of shots- SPLIT SCREENS.

• Our use of split screens allowed us to switch between the two characters creatively and allowed us to show their contrasts. 
• Furthermore the use of the split screens creates an interesting feel to the piece as the audience are presented with two sides of the story simultaneously.    
• An improvement that we could have made is the use of more split screens to show further comparisons. 
• The final shot could have been a split screen of the girls walking towards the school with ultimately blurs to one showing the audience how the two world's have collided. 

GRADING

In the prelim we didn't have to grade any of the shots, however in this opening sequence all of the shots needed to be graded

• As we had to practiced grading in the previous prelim we had to allow time during editing to learn how to grade efficiently.
•  During the final stages of editing we also had to allow time to grade each shot. 

AUDIENCE APPEAL/TARGET MARKET

During the pre- production of the prelim there wasn't focused attention on our target audience. This meant that our storyline and appeal was relatively vague as we weren't catering for a specific audience. This however meant that during this task we only focused on our primary niche audience- girls ages 15-24.

• I believe that we could have adapted our piece more to include males and older audience which in turn would have increased profit and appeal
• Furthermore I believe that we missed out on the use of modern technology- use of Facebook, twitter, bbm- as a way of communication which would have made our film more relatable and modern. 

CONCLUSION

 Looking back out our sequence I believe that there are many things that we did extremely well however I also feel that there are many ways in which we could have improved our piece. Variety of shots and spilt screens was one of the USPs of the film yet there were only several examples of this used throughout. Furthermore the lighting caused huge issues as it meant we had to re-shoot several scenes. By more careful planning this could have been avoided.