Sam Foundation Blog: Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The prelim purpose was to teach me the skill needed in order to create a continuity sequence. These rules of continuity are the essential basics of an opening sequence in order to ensure that it make sense. Our preliminary sequence was very educational as it almost mirrored the structure that we must follow for our actual production, although, the scale of the production was monumental compared to the prelim task. Obviously this was to be expected with the length being over 4 times as long, however, the multiple day long shoots; that despite being enjoyable, I would never have seen myself doing when I first took media at GCSE. I have learnt the importance of time management and scheduling to make time most efficient.

Pre Production

I have learnt that we must plan our shoot thoroughly, when filming our prelim we were inside so did not have to factor in weather conditions. Our main project was a different story, we wanted to film before school but due to winter daylight being sparse had to wake up at 5am to ensure that as soon as the sun rose and shooting was possible we were on hand to maximise the light. To ensure the location was suitable I went out on location shoot, taking pictures and then analysing them to see what could be filmed where and why it would work. This saved us time when it came to shooting as I knew where locations were and when to use them for each shot.

I also learnt the importance of a shot list, and referring to it on the shoot. This was especially important for our sequence, due to the number of shots we had, so as not to forget any important shots which was of course not a problem during the prelim as any forgotten shots could easily be filmed.
GROUP 4 SHOT LIST

When it came to shooting we decided to shoot extra footage with multiple angles for each shot not only for variation but also as a safety net so that if we spotted errors we had insurance to back up our sequence. Shooting various master shots of Lewis smoking gave us options for the continuity sequence that could be cut to, to show continuity.

Come editing we grouped these shots into bins and then chose the best.

Editing

As well as this the editing process took weeks instead of days again highlighting how minor the prelim task was in comparison so from this. When capturing the shot log helped speed things up in the long term as we knew exactly what shots were wanted when putting the sequence together on tieme line and making it easy to re-order and decide whether re shoots were needed.

One of our shotlists

Evaluation

This was a key process as we still needed to work as team to get feedback. We test screened our film during free periods to see what the film looked like on screen and how good the sound was.

We also did a public screening during a lunchtime, which we organised using Facebook to raise the profile of the event. We produced a questionnaire ourselves, to get some feedback; receiving a mainly positive response. Furthermore, I linked the video from my social netoworking sites to broaden our feedback.