Question 7

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



Our preliminary task is very poor in contrast with the final edit of our film opening.  Since then, I have learnt about film titles; the order in which they are importantly placed in and their timings, production company logos, the importance of the use of sound, mise-en-scene, costume and lighting to successfully set a scene and help draw the audience into a film, effective camerawork, various different editing programmes on the iMac; Final Cut and iMovie, and how to work productively in a team of film-makers, which I could use to my advantage within the final project. 

For our preliminary task, as a team, we were very naive.  We didn't do any research into genre, let alone consider genre at all.  Whereas, we did a considerably greater amount of research in general for our final film opening idea which benefited to it's final outcome; looking like a professional, independent film opening.  The preliminary task turned out to be more like a short film than an opening due to us not knowing how to arrange titles correctly, let alone any generic conventions used specifically in openings.  We had to do alot of research to ensure our farce film opening was conventional according to it's comedy genre, target audience and it's independent funding.

Our film opening flows alot better than the preliminary task and it has more pace.  The preliminary task was very slow due to the lack of planning and knowledge.  In the planning stages of our film opening, we made not only a storyboard (as for the preliminary task), but an animatic storyboard using iMovie.  Not only did this improve our editing skills on the iMac, but it made us more aware of the pace of our final cut; which we could then alter in these early stages if it seemed necessary.  We did not have this privilege whilst creating our preliminary task.  It also meant we knew exactly what shots we needed to capture (admittedly, after filming these shots, we did film some alternative shots as the original shots didn't give the effect we had envisaged) and what order they would follow on from each other whilst editing.  This helped the process to be smoother and quicker.

We perfected the skill of match-on-action shots in our film opening.  We were extremely happy with the outcome of our match on action shot of the nerd putting on his glasses after cleaning them.  I think it flows extremely well and is very realistic.  Our use of mise-en-scene and lighting has extremely improved from our preliminary task, also.  More thought was put into the costumes and we thought about the setting and if we needed to use any extra light source in it although, luckily, the natural lighting was ideal for our film opening - which added to it's professional outcome.