Media AS Evaluation Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
About:
In my preliminary task I had to be able to use a variety of techniques which would become significant for my final piece of work. The task involved working in a group of three to produce a short sequence which showed that continuity was key for a media production.
-The first was match action which is getting the shots to line up correctly (so they look believable) using long shots, close up’s, POV and panning. Something which we liked and kept on to for our thriller (at the party and when the protagonist is in the sea at the end).
-And secondly was the 180 degree rule which is used for dialogue. The idea of this rule is so that the audience do not become disoriented with lots of different angles, by keeping to one side of the line this makes it much easier for the audience to understand the scene. Something which I did not use in my final production however it was useful information for when a scene which required a conversation would be required, regardless we used this for when we spoke in the preliminary task to demonstrate our skill and understanding of why it should be used.
-It helped me work as part of a group
We managed to get a few good shots in the preliminary video however costumes and props were very limited and basic since we were using those provided by the college, there was no real theme or genre for this either since we did not go through much planning and no storyboard was used… we simply wrote a few lines and planned it out as we went… something which we would steer clear for in our real production. We took the opportunity to mainly to practice our techniques. With this first stage a few minor errors were made regarding continuity and editing although identifying these mistakes we as a group were then able to address this for the actual production.
Characters:
There was little thought go in to the characters we simply said we needed a protagonist and an antagonists. It was merely a comical fight scene between the two characters with a “who wins?” ending. For the preliminary task we had to film ourselves as we had little time to arrange for actors this therefore might have made the scenes look a bit strange as we were really sure who we were playing as in terms of the characters weren't given a story.
When it came to the actual thriller opening we took a lot of care and planning when casting people for it. We used characters our own ages as we were able to cast them easily and it also appealed to our target audience which were teenagers meaning how the characters appeared was more realistic since they were teenagers/ students representing themselves. We used teenagers as the protagonist (victim) as well as extras who were at the party. We were also able to get help from family members to play older characters since it would not appear plausible if it was a teen playing the antagonist, also they would loose some of the mystery and fear factor since he would not appear as scary or powerful. This gave a principle of binary opposite as it was not only a fight for the audience of good against evil but maybe a slightly more controversial theme of young vs old which could cause split opinions between an active audience.
Sound:
In our preliminary task we used iMovie to edit our sound where we simply got a soundtrack from their database and overlaid it with our video. Diegetic and non diegetic in preliminary task using the sound of doors closing and footsteps as well as when the character falls to the floor. This was very useful when filming our final thriller we could then identify where appropriate sounds should go within the clips.
When it came to editing the sound for HIGHTIDE we actually created the audio in garage band and combined it with other sounds found on there including atmospheric non diegetic sounds overlaid to the backing track and diegetic sound such as the wind and ship rigging noise in the credits. NOTE we also included the noise of waves in the beach scene to help bring the setting to life however we did not have diegetic sound for the party scene as it was set in the past.
Editing:
From our preliminary task we probably learned out most valuable lesson which was making sure we had backups of our shots, this was down to use having issues uploading them to the computers. We took this on board and made sure each scene was filmed a couple of times, this was also useful for continuity in case some shots didn’t match or if we felt they weren’t to a good enough quality for our thriller, this was noticed when filming our thriller at the party scene and we decided to adjust the lighting and film it a couple of times to see what was best.
By having everything filmed early it gave us much more time to play around with editing techniques as well as going out if necessary to re shoot certain scenes if we felt they weren’t up to scratch.
When working on the preliminary task we used iMovie this piece of software was easy to use for this task however it is not as professional as Final Cut Pro which we decided on using for our thriller as it allowed us much more freedom with editing and the tools available this gave us the capability we could fine tune certain clips in more detail.
With our preliminary task there was little editing required as it wasn’t very complex we just placed the clips in order, there were no visual effects used. When editing our final product HIGHTIDE we looked at various tutorials and websites on how to edit in Final Cut Pro, this was done so that we could improve visuals such as lighting as well as make certain scenes e.g. the beach scene, have an essence of time passing through the fades.
MANY THANKS FOR WATCHING!
Written, presented and editied by Russell Dewing
www.russelldewingmedia.blogspot.co.uk
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