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?

Mine and Imogen Millard's preliminary task:

Our main task:

From my preliminary task to now, I have progressed as a filmmaker and a student in multiple ways. Originally when doing the preliminary task I didn’t know how to use the basics in Adobe Premier Elements CS4 so I found it very difficult to import sound and to overlay the tracks, since we didn’t attach an external microphone and buffer to the camera I had to edit the audio so that the soundtrack was playing throughout and faded during the dialogue, this caused the video to look unprofessional and the sound quality wasn’t very good so you cannot hear what some of the actors are saying at points. This has changed because now in our main task we only have a soundtrack and sound effects however they are of higher quality, but I did like the original effect which I put in our preliminary task which was a heartbeat this created more tension in the scene and made the audience anticipate the future events. I think that if we redid the project we would try to include faint sound effects which would unconsciously put the audience on edge adding more drama to our piece.

As well as this I found it quite difficult to create and edit in titles, so in our preliminary task we only have a black background with red font in front, this has progressed massively as now I fade the title in and out so it looks vaguely professional considering our ages and the amount of training we’ve had does limit our skills.

I have also learnt from the research I have completed which is about the Oscars and the BBFC, this has helped me decide and choose which conventions to include in our piece because of the viewing audience and what Oscar winning films’ opening sequences look like so that we can take inspirations from them.

We also learnt about the production of films including vertical and horizontal integration and the distribution companies, I think that our film would be horizontally produced because it would be a small independent film and that it would be produced by a British company like: Channel 4/Film4 or Working Title. We also researched about our target audience; this has helped by shaping our views on who would watch our film and what they would want to change. I have also learnt to take educational criticism on board because it improves our work and helps it attract our target audience.

I think that overall I have progressed massively and have learnt many things that will affect how I create and plan films later on in my life.