Saskia Smith AS Media Production

Our final preliminary piece both reflected what works well and what we each individually could improve on. Although we were all happy with our outcome of the task ,we all picked up on different aspects where we could have done better. Before we got feedback from the rest of our class, as a group we looked over what could've been improved. These things were the fourth shot in the film we cut off our actor Sam's head off. This was an issue that we didn't notice at first. Another thing which we thought may have been a problem was that we didn't have a soundtrack whereas most of the other groups in our class did. This made us question our decision about having a soundtrack put in.  

Despite the short time we had to complete this task I personally think we managed it extremely well even after our downfalls during the task. There were a number of things that went well and not so well in the preliminary and I am going to go through them as well as the feedback we received from our peers and teachers.

 

The first comment was congratulating us on the natural theme of our piece. We were the only group that didn't try and make the preliminary task too scary or relating pacifically to the thriller theme. We decided this as because we had to film in school with lack of desirableable mise-en-scene we were trying to re-create the natural feel of a school life, therefore we didnt have to worry about the filming looking out of place. This made it easier for our group as we filmed in the right environment for our narrative which was two students at school and something out of the ordinary happens. The class thought it worked extremely well and was creative in a different sense.

 

The second comment was about the lack of non-diegetic soundtrack; both our peers and teachers said that possibly adding a soundtrack after the explosion went off would have added more chaos to the scene. However, our argument was that we decided to have a lack of non-diegetic sound because of the fact that we wanted to keep it quite natural and realistic. However, we took the comments onboard.

 

Next our peers mentioned that we had a nice range of different camera angles. In our shot reverse shot it was highlighted that we took a different approach and instead of facing straight on to an actor we used side profiles with the left actor on the left side of the screen and the right hand actor on the right hand side of the screen. This was something I suggested to the group as I have seen it used many times on films and television programs. This wasn't a major problem however, when the acting is realistic and good it adds to the overall feel of the film. Adding on to that I would have experiment filming the students having a casual conversation which might have made it more realistic if the students didn't have a script. This is something i would consider doing if I was to complete the task again.

 

Similar to this we received positive comments about the bright naturalistic lighting in our film. This is also something which I find important from a photography students point of view as I know how much lighting can dramatically effect a piece.

 

Something we could improve on was the steadiness of our shots. They mentioned that the tracking shots were sometimes unsteady and ruined it. Although we used a steady cam and used after effects to stabilize the part of the filming which was particularly unsteady it still wasn't perfect. I suggested using a tri-pod however, Zack our camera man felt more comfortable using a steady cam which when editing looked fine to us yet when filming our production piece we will use a tri-pod most likely.

 

Another comment from the class was to shake the camera when the explosion when off and when the two students ran to the window. This was something to consider as we tried to add a canter angle at the same time which wasn't as successful as we initially though it would be.

 

If i was to do this task again I would use a tripod instead of a steady cam, purely because you can always rely on the shots to be still. I would also consider who I was using as actors as the performance wasn't very realistic. The editing side of the preliminary went well and I found myself happy to edit and get used to the new software that I was using. Time wise our group managed really well other than when I recorder footsteps to go over Sam's which we didn't end up using in the end because of the lack of time however, it wasn't an extremely bad sound and it wasn't something that definitely needed to be re-recorded.

Overall I though the piece was successful and followed the criteria given as well as adding a quirky sound effect within the piece which experimented our creative skills. It also gave me time to get to use new equipment and new software and think about what i am capable of as well as what I could achieve in my final production piece.