Evaluation AS 7

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

 Looking back at our preliminary task we have learnt so much from software to editing skills and many different things that include filming. As the preliminary task was one of our first times using the equipment (tripod, video camera) we started to experiment with different angles. We used basic editing skills to try and make the task work, but unfortunately the action on screen wasn't flowing how we would like and this made our filming not look as high of a quality. We also didn't take our acting as seriously as we should of, and we didn't edit our some of the parts where we looked like we were laughing. This obviously would of had a problem if we continued like this in our thriller as people do not expect to see laughter in a conventional thriller film.
Another problem we had when filming the preliminary task was how to work the camera. This could of been a problem if we didn't resolve it as the camera didn't have enough memory on the memory card so we had to figure out as a group on what things to delete and take the advice from our teacher in order to film. We also had to figure out how to position the camera for specific angles, for example we tried angles such as; Point of view, High Angle, Low Angle. We experimented with these specific examples of angles, because we planned to use them in our final cut of our thriller. We needed extra practice and work on how to be able to hold and focus the camera when moving and how to start and stop the camera at certain times to save us time on editing. The problems we had with the camera angles was that we could have injured ourselves by standing on a high chair in a public place, as we could have fallen off or been knocked off by accident and hurt ourselves/ or the people around us.                                                                                                                                                                            
When learning throughout the whole project, we learnt how to use the software properly, which was Final Cut Pro X. We corrected our problems like the tripod as we learnt and asked for help on how to correctly set the tripod up. Once we figured out the focus we we able to film different scenes and this helped with the quality of the action we had. Another way we corrected our problems was the basic editing skills, once we had more time to get used to the software, we worked well as a team and introduced things such as; blurs, colour changing, and ways in which to make the action flow much better. This would be an advantage for us as we are able to focus on making the editing more like a real film instead of your typical children's film. We also corrected our acting. Where we knew we had to focus and get the work done to a high quality standard, we took our acting seriously and made sure we had a plan before we started filming on how long we were going to spend on it and how we were going to act it. With the camera angles, such as POV at first we were walking or running too fast with the camera which made it have a jagged effect and it unfocussed in the action. To correct this we decided to walk alot slower when filming and this surprisingly gave us an advantage as the audience believed this gave alot more tension and suspense and this is what we wanted to convey in our thriller. Lastly, the risks we had when trying to film the high angles, we decided to do a risk assessment, and in this we created a table of all th risks we could have when filming. In this we included the fact that we had to stand onhigh tops and chairs in order to film high angles. We corrected this by making sure we had somebody to support us by either holding the chair or us so that we were stable and were less likely to fall.