Preliminary Task Evaluation

When filming the footage, i found it very difficult to to keep a steady shot, as i did not have a tripod or crane etc to keep the camera steady, this meant we had to film certain, scenes more than once to get a clean shot. shooting in school meant we had a few restraints, like the space we could use and the lighting that was available within the building, as we had no control over them, this also meant we had to constantly change the angle of the shot to restrict the amount of light entering the camera.

some things did go well During the filming process. I found a lot of extras, this made the environment of the filming more realistic as they were in a school, meaning there would need to be students at least at one point in the filming to reassure the audience of the location where this event is taking place, and this also made it more believable. While filming I could have thought of the surrounding sounds in the rooms, for example the doors shutting when the characters where speaking, this can be distracting, and the speech could have been lost, but a lot of this was not in my control as, it was a busy environment where there where a lot of people moving in and out of room.

There are three main sections of the production process which i did. the first section is pre-production, this is the process where, the casting members, costumes, location planning, storyboards and and props are all decided. these are basically the steps that need to be taken in to account before the filming has started, by taking these steps you have a set plan, and you subtract future problems as you will already know what the lighting is like as you have done the location planning, or you have the right characters.

Production is the other step, this is where the actual filming and recording takes place. The aim of the production (Principal photography) is to film all the shots needed for the film, in no particular order. this part is where the pre-production takes its affect as all the actors and locations are already chosen. and this is where the director is usually in charge.

finally post-production is where the final editing and creation of the final piece is made. this section can include some production, if mistakes have been noticed in the filming or if the editing can not fix it. mostly this section involves;

• Editing video footage.
• Editing the soundtrack, adding sound effects, music, etc.
• Adding titles and graphics.
• Colour and exposure correction.
• Adding special effects.
• Re-shooting certain scenes. (Pick-up shots) 

in post-production you also do some continuity editing, this is the process where the smoothing out of the film is done and where the discontinuity of the film is fixed and connected to establish logic in the shot. As a result of all the elements which are involved in the this process, this section can be the most time consuming of them all.

While using iMovie i found it very easy to use, as it was all set out very simply, one key feature which made it very easy to use was the auto save, which meant you didn't lose your progress, and all the shots filled would appear in one place and also all the shot that have beet edited continually are separated and these can be added or remove with the right click.

while doing the test edit and the final preliminary edit, i learnt how to, fade in and out music, this is a good feature, because if the music just suddenly cut of half way it would make the production sound untidy and interrupted

. i also learned how to mute the background noise as some of it was unwanted for example doors slamming and people talking, as it was either to distracting or to loud when the music was placed over it.
thirdly i learned how to add subtitles to the film for instance, when there was a text on the phone, and it was not readable, because the text was to small and there was light reflection from the screen. I used the subtitles to so write what was on the screen so the audience know what the text was about, there for it would allow the audience to interact with the film as well.

Overall i think i have done very well in my preliminary task as i have used a variety of shot, which we where expected to use, and i think that is one of the strengths of the film as it does have a wide range of camera shot and angles, one unique camera shot I used was a low level shot, looking up at the character, which made it differ from other films. this shot also give the audience a different view point of the character, which keeps the film interesting.

another shot which was key to the continuity task we were give, was to use shot/reverse shot. shot/ reverse shot is a sequence of dialogue where it uses the 180 degree rule, to show one characters looking at the other character talking, and usually the camera is over the shoulder, then it switches to the opposite character to show the response of the second character.

another shot I used well was the closeup shot. I used this shot alongside the shot reverse shot to show the reaction of character two, when he is told the joke. With this shot you can see that the joke does not amuse him as shown by the expression on his face, and because I wanted to make this clear, so I Tried to show
detail in his face. I also think that my timing when using the shot reverse shot was good, as a continuity shot as it made sense and non of the lines where interrupted.

Another strength of the film was, the match on action. This is a technique used when creating a continuity task. When one shot goes to the next shot, but its a part of the same sequence of movement, no sections of that movement are lost or repeated. One example where i think this was used accurately was, when character two walks towards the door, then moves to a different shot to them opening and walking through the door. this looked clean and it flowed, because it look like the character started from where he left of in the previous shot.

on the other hand i think some of the week points in the editing phase of the production where the, unwanted background noise, which you can hear when the character is on his phone. this particular noise is negative as the character says something and you can hear door slamming in the background and i think this could be an improvement as we could have found a quieter location. Another background noise which affected the quality of the film was, noise that was not muted when the music was placed over it, this made the piece sound untidy at points and took some of the affect of the music.