Evaluation Post 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The brief for my preliminary task was: " Create a short continuity sequence that shows a character opening a door, walking across a room and exchanging a few lines of dialogue with another character." The finished continuity sequence is presented below.


I believe that since this preliminary project I have massively improved at every aspect of the pre-production, production and post-production process.

The brief for the main project was: "To produce a 2 minute opening sequence for a fiction film. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music and audio effects from a copyright-free source. It should be clear from your sequence who the target audience is. Your sequence must include:
- Titles throughout
- Some form of copyright-free soundtrack including sound effects.
- Evidence of understanding of continuity editing
- clear genre conventions through character, theme, story action, mise-en-scene, dialogue, sound, camera, editing style etc."

Pre-production

Production

The prelim taught me some vital lessons to do with how to successfully run a shoot and stay on schedule. For example, the process of taking multiple takes of the same shot and taking the same shot from different angles was unfamiliar to me before I worked on the prelim project, but by the time I started on the test shoot for the main project I was already used to the idea. I also gained a greater understanding of how to keep on schedule by taking similar shots together even if they did not run side by side in the finished sequence: such as shooting the two kitchen-watching stalker POV shots together despite their separation in the finished sequence.

I also learned how to practically shoot certain types of shot and their role in the sequence during the prelim, for example the importance of master shots (Shown in both below.) and how to film continuity sequences.

                     

Post-Production

The editing process was fairly simple in the preliminary task, as all I had to was edit together the shots in a smooth way that maintained continuity. This helped to get me accustomed to the 'Adobe Premiere' editing software, which meant it didn't seem unfamiliar when the time came to edit my main project. I had to learn a wide variety of new skills during the editing process for the main project such as grading, sound editing and titling, but thanks to the prelim I had the basic skills I needed to be able to make a competent edit that maintained continuity.

An image of me editing the main project