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

From the creation of the preliminary task to the creation of the final sequence, I have learnt a lot. The first thing I learnt is that it is very important to shoot each shot more than once from different angles. This is because during the editing stage of the preliminary task, we were unable to use certain shots because of things such as the camera moving or reflections of crew members in windows.

Another thing we learnt about was the use of actors. Because of time constraints, myself and another member of our production team acted in the preliminary task leaving one crew member behind the camera. We learnt that it is better for two people to be watching the footage so that they can come to a mutual agreement about whether the footage is good and if we need to reshoot. So in our final piece, we used an actress so that we could all collectively direct her. This worked out better because the actress we used had studied drama and was used to being directed.

In our preliminary task we were careful not to break the 180 degree rule. The 180 degree rule is an editing rule that the camera needs to stay on one side of the actor or actors as the shots change so that the shots make sense to watch. We used this rule during a short conversation in the preliminary task

In our final piece, there were two shots that were put together that we later realised broke the 180 degree rule. But we didn’t have any shots to replace it with so we came up the solution of putting an ambient shot in between the two shots. The purpose of this was to break the shots up so that they didn't confuse the viewer. This benefited us because it helped build the characterisation aswell as made the sequence make sense visually.

We had much more opportunities to experiment with different angles and filming techniques in our final piece. We used a point of view shot in our film (Fig. 1) to put the audience in the position of the protagonist discovering the paper on her bed. We achieved this by having the actress film this shot herself so that it matched her movements. For the more tense parts of our sequence, we chose to shoot without a tripod, using the shakiness of the camera to our advantage as it makes the shots look unsettled. We also used a shot of a torch falling to the floor (Fig. 2) which makes it difficult for the audience to see what is happening. This is effective because off screen violence lets the audience use their imagination to decide what is happening which is always more frightening

With editing, we chose to experiment with our final piece by giving it a non linear narrative as opposed to the conventional chronological narrative that we used in the preliminary task. We also got the opportunity to alter the colours on our final piece by brightening the scenes and intensifying the reds. This was not necessary on the preliminary task because we were shooting in a well lit classroom.

Generally, we were much better prepared in our final piece than we was in our preliminary. This is because we took the time to create a script, a storyboard and a shotlist so that we knew exactly what to do when it came to the day of filming


Overall, I think we progressed a lot between the making of the preliminary task and the making of our final piece. I feel that I have learnt about all aspects of making our sequence and not just my assigned role of editing