Evaluation - Question 7

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

Looking back at our preliminary task piece I now realize how stupidly simple it was, we used very, very simple editing techniques that I took care of at home on Sony Vegas Pro 11, techniques limited to literally cutting down clips and adding in music. I also looped the noise of a cricket for too long and held still frames. for our preliminary task we used side angle shots, we had a big close up on a door handle, wide angle shots and and incredibly shaky panning shot done by putting a camera on my skateboard.

We thought a lot about how to present each of characters through mise en scene and lighting especially but also through the use of editing and sound in our film opening. However during the making of our preliminary task piece we didn't really think about any of that, instead we just focused on the representations of costume, whereas use of lighting was very important for use especially during the villain scenes which needed to be dark with one small, low key, white light source. I feel that body language and facial expression were presented quite well in our film opening as we had to concentrate on making our hero and villain completely opposite in every way. However in our preliminary task body language was not important as all there was, was a small amount of dialogue in which and a small amount of pacing, this was fairly easy to create.

The editing I did for the Preliminary was very basic and i feel I have really stepped up my game when it came to editing the film opening. I feel I've learnt a lot from editing the Film opening because if you compare the editing techniques use from that with the techniques used in the Preliminary task you can see I have matured greatly from that. Previously I used Sony Vegas Pro and edited it all together in a mere hour and a half whereas the editing for the Film opening took weeks to complete. For the Preliminary task all I did was trim shots and put them together. I managed to hold still frames and add in cheesy sound affects both downloaded from youtube. However for the Film opening I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and learnt loads of different techniques.

We relied solely on dialogue to get our plot across to the viewer in our Preliminary piece as there was little other sound and there wasn't much important mise en scene, sound or camera techniques to focus on except for the fact that it is obvious that our main character is a young girl in a classroom and the fact that she is on her own, this is also emphasized by the used of the cricket chirping sound effect as it dramatizes the fact that the plush toy not responding as it is not alive.

I think we have come a long way and have learned a lot and gained a lot of skills from creating our Film opening by using with more advanced editing software and using more editing, mise en scene, sound and camera techniques.