Reflection on the Preliminary Task

The vast majority of you have now completed this exercise.  Well done!

Now it's time to reflect - and BLOG - about your experience.

Firstly, lets do a little audit of skills and technologies that you used to create your prelim.  You should be able to identify what you have used in the creation of your blog.  Here's an example:

"My brief for my preliminary task was to demonstrate an understanding of continuity editing, this meant filming a sequence whereby a character walks through a door and sits or stands opposite another character, and exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.  I would need to highlight my understanding of media language by filming a match on action shot, shot reverse shot, and not break the 180 degree rule."

Most of you did this.  Some of you failed first time round, some even failed second time round, mainly because you crossed the line or needed to show another shot.  I need to see them before you post your completed prelim to check if it works and to make sure that you have passed. 

If you did fail - good, you will have more to reflect upon and know how not to fail when it comes to producing your final piece. 

Tools Used

• Computers/internet - to view the blog and watch examples on the blog of good and bad practice
• Storyboard sheets - to sketch initial ideas (take pictures of them if you did this) If you did stick men, how did you improve upon this?
• iPads - you used the camera function to take digital images of each shot, then you cropped each one so that you could use them in a storyboard
• Apps - you used shot designer to map out your location, and you may have used storyboards to experiment with orientation and pre-visualize. Evidence these on your blog!
• Walkthrough using Camera - you may have used your iPad to take pictures of your filming location before you filmed (good practice) and created a slideshow in shot order.
• Casting - you will have emailed or texted or tweeted your friends to get involved in your productions.
• Note/Word - if you were properly organized you would have scripted the dialogue.
• Videolicious - this app lets you talk through your storyboards in sequence, particularly useful if your drawings are really bad and you want to explain what's going on.
• MovieMaker - you may have edited the animatic in moviemaker first to add titles, narrate or even just see if the sequence works.  Again, you could have used still images or those created in Storyboards.
• iPads - many of you used the video function to film your prelims - how was that? Some of you held the iPad the wrong way round (durghh!) - don't make this mistake again - hold it like a TV screen 14:9 ratio, not 9:14 - that's just wrong.
• Cutecut - although limited to 30 seconds, many of you experimented with this because you have used this before.  It works and can truncate your movie (see below)
• blogger/weebly/wix - whichever one you have chosen, I expect you to have documented the whole process outlined above.

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REFLECTION

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• So, what do you like about the prelim you created? 
• Explain how you found completing the task. 
• How have you improved as a result of doing this? 
• Do you understand the rules of continuity editing, the 180 degree rule, match on action shot? 
• Which shot are you most proud of and why?

 

EBI

• Why did you fail first time round?
• What shot looked wrong and which did you have to refilm?  Explain your reasons for this.
• How's your framing - do you have the right amount of headroom or are you way off? 
• What if you weren't using iPads, how did you find the filming exercise?
• How could you improve?
• and incase you missed the last one, how could you improve?

 Bottom line, you could all improve - please make this very clear in your posts.