Wednesday, 12 April 2017

Question 7

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

My preliminary task was to create and edit a short piece of drama that could be used as an opening for a piece of media. It was a short task in which I acted in an improv dialog between two characters then edited it.
Since this task I have learnt a lot that can be separated into headings these include:


Planning and time management:
I have learnt how to manage my time better when creating media and learnt how to manage multiple shoots by communicating with Amy who I was working with and the cast, this was important as we had to re shoot and take many trips to our location to film as things would go awry or plans would change such as the constantly changing weather, and rain.
Use of organised planning was built upon as we had to make lists for things to bring in for filming days, and ensure organised storyboards, scripts, and other joint documents. This is in contrast to the Prelim in which none of this had to be made or organised since it was improvisation and filmed in school.


Research and audience feedback:
Researching for our film opening along with getting audience feedback was also something I learnt, since for our preliminary task this wasn't needed as we didn't have to researched anything since it was improvised. We also didn’t need audience feedback as it was just a preliminary task and there wasn't much need to re shoot. We actively gained audience feedback for our opening scene by showing people the rough cuts of it and then making the necessary changes. As part of overall research we also learnt how to send out a survey to find out what people appreciated or wanted most in a film. A lot of research also went into looking at other fantasy film openings and requiring knowledge about the correct mise-en-scene to use. Research also went into the location, music, shot variations, and characters as detail needed to be built up to make this a believable film opening.


Pitching:
I also learnt about pitching because in our prelim their was little choice over what we could do however for our film opening we all had ideas on what we wanted to do and thus needed to present them to the class via a presentation to be able to let people have a choice on what opening idea they wanted to work on.


Individual roles and working as part of a cast:
Development on group work was acquired as a lot of important decisions had to be made fairly between the both of us in my team. It was also a learning experience to help manage a cast as this was not needed in the prelim, I was able to run through the screenplay with them before filming and assisted them on the roles their characters would play. It was also difficult finding our cast as a lot of people were not available. It was important to encourage each other and keep up moral when we faced difficulties such as forgetting the SD card in our remote location, or there being very heavy rain. I also learnt to research the character I played to ensure it followed the role.


Idents:
I also learnt a lot about the production of idents as our prelim didn’t call for them. I was able to research idents and then film my own short clip to illustrate my production company name of Breakfast for Dinner Productions, i then added the title onto it to explain and complete the ident.  


Location scouting, sample shoots, and rough cuts:
Since my prelim was filmed in school there was no need to search for the correct location, however because for our opening the location was a large genre signifier we had to go out and search for the best location we could find. This was difficult as the location we wanted couldn’t include paths or other man made things such as houses in the background or else this would challenge the validity of our film opening being of a fantasy genre.  Our location also had to fit in the correct areas that we wanted our characters to come out from- this would give the audience some narrative to the character and their personality. Once we had the location sorted we made a sample shoot, of where the characters will come out from and how the opening will play out, this helped us to identify issues which allowed us to negotiate how we will deal with things such as costumes. We also learnt the best way to gain audience feedback would be through rough cuts we learnt that gaining information on how to improve them was helpful which meant we could respond to what the audience wanted.


Sound:
I learnt a lot about sound and foley- the addition of sound put in after the film had been made- because our preliminary task didn’t include any sound in particular but just our voices. I learnt how to use different objects as foley for our characters footsteps walking through the moorland, for this we used dried ferns and crushed them with each step a character took. We also included sound from final cut pro such as lightning and rain sounds.


FX and Mise-en-scene
For the preliminary task we didn’t have to think about mise-en-scene and FX as it was just a basic dialog to edit. I learnt and improved skills regarding this by creating costumes from scratch along with creating the makeup for the characters, and ensuring everything looked the way we wanted it to look. I also learnt about FX as we wanted to add visuals of a storm along with sound FX of the storm.


Overall, the lesson I would say I learnt the most would be resilience and perseverance with creating this to the standard I wanted. This was difficult to keep up as we faced many obstacles, however we were able to use hard work and teamwork to complete this task.

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