preliminary task

Our prelim task was the first time that we had to construct and film in a group without guidance from the teacher. This was in order to learn through our mistakes we made and build up our skills so that our final piece would be even better. Initially, we had no ideas on where to start, so as a group we broke it down into parts. 

Pre-production- 

We decided to start creating our piece by following the structure of the film making process that we had created previously. We decided to come up with some ideas from the brief we were given as to what genre,character types we wanted etc. We decided that we were going to make our film based on action (spy) genre. 

We started to storyboard our initial ideas by including shot types and character positions. We then scripted the scenario, this was mainly between the Head agent and one of the agents, as we chose to have one 'prim and proper' agent and another that was more casual and laidback.

Before we started filming we had to choose the actors to play the parts of the characters. We decided to use ourselves in the film as this means that we don't have any worries about whether the other people can attend all of the filming sessions. However, as the head agent we decided to use a teacher at our school as she fitted the role of a mature, intelligent  person that we needed for the role.

production

In the production stage we used the Canon camera to capture the shots that we had storyboarded. This was harder to complete than we expected, this was because what we could picture in our minds was hard to produce through the lens. During this stage we decided to capture extra shots than we needed so that when it came to editing we had all the footage that we needed. To capture this footage we used a few camera accessories. These were the three lenses, the steady cam, the mic and the tripod. By using these accessories we were able to capture a good, steady image.

Construction and Editing-preliminary task

We started to compose our film using  final cut pro to edit the footage we'd collected in the production stage. We had to ensure that we maintained good match on action throughout the piece which proved to be harder than we thought it would be.

 The first piece of this sequence had fantastic match on action which we were really pleased with, however as we were adding in the rest of the footage and we realised that we had parts of the footage we needed missing, this therefore meant that we had to go out and re-shoot. 

When we were told us that our preliminary task had to include shot, reverse shot, we noticed that our piece didn't contain this and that we weren't sure how to include it in this scenario as the the two characters didn't talk to each other only to the head agent. After talking to our teacher he said that it was our decision what we did next but suggested that we start again as we made our storyline unnecessarily difficult. 

STARTING AGAIN...

 Starting the process again we began with story boarding. The sequence we chose was simple so that we could manage to do it all in time for the deadline, but still included all the essential skills(match on action, shot reverse shot.) 

Scripting and the shot list was easier to complete this time as we had already been through the process so we knew what we were doing. Additionally, this meant that we could get it done much faster than before. 

That afternoon we went out and got all the footage that we needed and also got some extra shots so that we knew we would definitely have enough to make the film work and include the key requirements. We decided to film in the sixth form block as the table set up and room structure was perfect for the look we were trying to create in our film. We then went back to the media suite to encode our clips using MPEG Stream clip so that we could easily, get on with putting the clips together and edit it. 

We were able to slot the clips together using Final cut pro and cut in parts of clips to create the shot, reverse shot. To create the match on action we just had to make sure that when we cut to another clip that everything in the frame was the same as in the last shot. 

After we had finished putting the preliminary task together we created some rolling credits saying which of us did what parts in the film making process. We worked out how to do this using trial and error, which helped us to remember how to do it in our final task. 

Below is our final preliminary task:

   
I enjoyed completing this preliminary task as it allowed me to work out the film making process on my own and gave me some keys skills for the final piece. It also will help me to remember my mistakes and not make the same ones in the final piece. Furthermore, it helped me work on time management and see how much time i would need to input. overall, I am pleased with the outome of the preliminary task as it includes the key skills that we needed, works well all together, and looks good.