2 months ago I produced my preliminary task which I am proud to say was the first film I had ever created. If im being honest it was a very daunting experience but knowing that this was the practice for what would be my real As level film coursework made me realise the importance of going through the process mithogically and taking detailed notes of anything that went wrong or that I would like to change when doing it again for the real thing. I feel the biggest diference between the way we set out to produce our preliminary compared to our opening sequence was the confidence that we showed and brought to filming and editing. 2 out of 3 of my group had never made a film before, it can be quite scary at first to be given a camera and expected to just get on with it. However as the process developed we realised that with media and filming there is no one right answer and infact the more creative you can be with your scene selection and your shot types the better your film can be. By the time we started our opening movie sequence ideas flew on to our paper during planning as we had these amazing thoughts. I would say the first thing we learnt is that there is no one way of doing things in media and that having the confidence to try something new and be creative eg; using strange camera angles can add to the effect to your film.
We were given very little time to plan, film and edit our preliminary task, however we made the most of what was given to us. Planning our preliminary was an important lesson in film making as none of us had ever drawn a story board or properly planned a film. Although we spent time planning our preliminary and drawing our storyboards, we found they still led to some confusion when we were filming the scenes. Although we knew what we needed to film we found that we had not included enough detail leaving us having to put the pieces together off the top of our heads whilst filming, this did lead to a few continuity errors as not everything had been planned. However because of this when it came to planning for our opening film sequence we ensured all was done efficiently from research to developments of ideas to story boarding even including the dialouge we would use in the film. The extra time spent on research and planning paid off when it came to filming and we had a perfect plan of everything we wanted to film, what angle we were going to film from and what dialouge was going to be exchanged.
When I look back at what was expected of us from the preliminary task and all of the basic shot types that needed to be in our film. It was important for us that we learnt to film these shots effectively as when it later came on to our opening film sequence it was vital that we used these film shots in order to make the film more aesthetically pleasing as well as receiving marks for good use of varied shot types. Film shots such as the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/ reverse shot aloowed us to add variance to our opening sequence. Another vital lesson I had learnt in our preliminary task was to ensure scenes were filmed repeatedly at different angles. When creating our preliminary some scenes were filmed once at one angle, when this was later used in editing we were given very little creative freedom to adapt the film. Again this lesson was noted and when it came to producing our film opening we made the effort to redo scenes 3 or 4 times despite this being quite tedious and boring!
When it came to editing our preliminary piece no major mistakes were made and so it is dificuilt to say any lessons were made. However editing the preliminary gave us a foundation of imovie allowing us to understand the very basics of the software, which could later be developed on when fancy titles and effects were needed for our opening sequence. My knowledge of Imovie has progressed emensely over the past couple of months especially in the last couple of weeks where i have been relied upon to use it more and more. I went from being a novice to someone who could quite confidently edit another movie, if given the chance.
Ultimately, I now look back at the preliminary task and compare the diferences (the planning and filming as well as the end product) to our opening film sequence. There are vast amounts of changes I was not even aware of, most of which I have detailed above. The preliminary task taught our group to learn from our mistakes, working out how to do things better as well as teaching us a valuable lesson in the importance of continuity. As a group we realised how important continuity was to a film when we were shown scenes with and without proper contnuity, the diferences were astonishing. I think the preliminary task was worth the time and the effort solely because of the key skills and understanding we learnt from our first movie making process.
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