Evaluation Question 7

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



The first project we completed was a short film entitled “The Package”. This was a short film that we produced in a group of four at the very beginning of our coursework. Below is the finished piece.

This was my first time working with this kind of equipment and for the rest of our group it was a similar story. This inexperience can be seen in a number of shots especially one in which we filmed a hallway but didn’t realise until we got to editing it that we had filmed the whole thing at a very slight angle which caused the corridor we were filming in to curve away making it look like it spiralled. This did not happen again in our production of our opening as we paid close attention to such details. This was particularly important in the shots where our actress walked towards the bridge as these could have looked very bizarre if they had been filmed incorrectly. This failure also taught us the lesson of time management as we made this mistake due to the time constraints put on this first project. Because of these pressures, when it was time to shoot the scenes for our opening we factored in the time we would need to experiment with various shots and also to make sure that we filmed all the shots correctly.  

 One thing that was good about this project was our attention to detail in terms of continuity. In another group’s piece there was a moment were a person suddenly changes outfits for one shot. This showed me the dangers of breaking continuity and so we paid special attention in our final opening to the costume of our protagonist making sure to keep it the same across the three shooting days.  In addition to this in one shot in this piece we broke the 180 degree rule during a change-over of the “package”. This was something that we didn’t pick up on until filming was wrapped up but it taught me how important it was to pay close attention to shots such as this as they could confuse the audience if this rule was broken.

After this initial project we worked individually on our preliminary tasks. Below is my preliminary task.

The main thing that I learned from the prelim task was the basics of both Final Cut Pro and the general process of shooting a scene. This was especially important as this was the first time I had worked with such equipment before and so the experience that I gained from this initial experience was invaluable and while I did not use my knowledge of editing later in the production cycle, the experience I gained in terms of shot planning and selection were useful later in the production cycle when it came to us cutting down the footage we had shot into a workable 2 minute opening.

One other thing I have learned through this process is the importance of soundtracks in the effectiveness of media products. In our short film we did have a soundtrack but it was a pre-existing soundtrack taken from the internet because of this the beats in the music didn’t match those in the product. In contrast to this in our final piece I created an entirely original soundtrack to match the piece. This did increase the length of our production cycle as it was necessary to have a near complete edit of our piece before I started working on the soundtrack as it would have been pointless to work on a soundtrack that did not match the beats of the piece. Despite this increase in the time taken to produce the piece, this original soundtrack massively increased the quality of our piece as the moments of tension in our piece were furthered by the soundtrack supporting them.

Finally a fundamental difference between the two products has to be the level of planning that went into our final piece. In both my preliminary task and our short film “The Package” we didn’t really have an exact plan for where our shots were going to be taken, instead we just decided on a path through the school and then found what we thought were the most interesting ways to film our characters journey along this path. In contrast to this we spent a great deal of production time planning our shots through the use of shot lists and story boarding. This meant that when we shot on location, the process was far easier than before because we knew exactly what we were looking for and this meant it was easier for us to focus on smaller details and allowed us the breathing space to attempt different versions of the initially planned shot which meant when it came to editing down the footage we had we had several option so we could create the best opening possible.

Overall I have learned a lot from my preliminary task to our final product. These range from developing my understanding of the fundamentals of filmmaking and working in more complex ways with technology such as Logic and Final Cut Pro to furthering my knowledge of how sound design can influence the style and tone of a piece.