Question Eight

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

Wow, It really does seem as if we just started the media course and our preliminary tasks were set just the other day or so.. This shows that time has passed significantly!!! When we were first given the task to make a normal/boring activity into a suspenseful clip, I thought to myself that it was going to be impossible to make. 

Just to make it clear this task was called 'The Bag Swap' and to summarize quickly what this involved us to do was to include two characters switching over a bag. Simple as that. But seen as we are media students we had to make this 'Idea' into something interesting that involved a deal of suspense and tension, so the audience will actually be in gaged. 

As this was our first filming task, myself and my group members found it slightly difficult to adjust the camera the way we want it, for example the close-up quality-making sure it is not blurry and that the audience can tell what we are filming and also the lighting on the camera.. I wasn't quite experienced when it came down to filming and handling the camera, so I was slow getting to grips with it but eventually at the end I managed to shoot full on scene's for our thriller. Which made me feel great and much more experienced !! 

''Infact, the whole progession from the start of the course uptill now has been a great success. I started off not knowing how to handle camera's or get a perfect shot or even how to edit a single scene THEN end up creating a 2 min thriller opening, which obviously includes all the editing and titles # the main things I wasn't clear of at the beginning.'' 

Here Are Some Pictures From The Preliminary Task 'The Bag Swap'  And From Our Thriller Opening 'The Return' 

The Beggining Of The Bag Swap..

Obviously now that I am more familiar with the whole filming process, I notice now that this shot has too much spacing showing before the actuall scene startss, which is very poor Mise en Scene. 

Taking this screen shot and comparing it to the beggining of 'The Return' you can see a clear difference! As the shot is perfectly angled and partly shows the room.

The Return Opening Shot..

As you can tell much more better and well planned out.

Firstly I didn't purposly crop the top bit of this shot.. This is how it was filmed in the first place and I just print screened it.

Now you can see how poor the filming was, we didn't notice that the actors head is cut off when filming and when we did, it was a awfull quick zoom out.. Which by the way looked slightly bad in the film.

A HUGE difference now.. It is a much tighter shot of the character and the Mise en Scene! We're not cutting out the face of the character or showing any excess background. 

I guess one point that made our final opening more successful than the preliminary task was the timing & planning. For the preliminary task we literally had one hour/half to do all the filming and come back to put them together and make a sequence. However for our final opening we had a more relaxed timetable.. We had a rough plan ( although it did change freqently as well as our storyline ), and we were also able to film out side of college time, whether it was the weekend or holiday. 

Overall the whole filming process was a wonderful experience, although we went through a lot of ups and down, but at the end of everything, we managed to make our thriller opening a success! 

The MAIN Things I Have Learnt In The Progession ..

* How To Use The Camera.. 

-Camera Shots, Angles, Movement

* The Mise En Scene..

- Like I Mentioned Before At First There Was Alot Of Excess Scenary Compared To The Final Opening (much tighter)

* Working With Other People In Groups..

- It was nice to get to know my group members, I believe I have built good relationship with each of them. But at first no one knew what the other person is like! 

* Edit and Sound !!

- At first I would have never thought that I will understand how to Edit something using final cut or add a soundtrack. But this is one of the biggest point I have gained a lot of experience from. And now I can finally say that I Know how to use each of the programmes.