The Preliminary Task: My Experiences!

For many years now, I have held a strong interest in the media and it's technology. Whether a simple hobby video made with friends, straight to YouTube, expressing our love for complete randomness or to the extent of working with a small group of amateur actors to create a small film, it has all fascinated me. I took Media Studies for GCSE and the things I have learnt through those two years seem endless, and this AS course will most likely introduce me to many different areas of pure genius.
An old fashioned parentage has always held high and thick boundaries around the possibilities of careers in the media or drama, so to be taught officially and to be shown a way into such a career is brilliant.

I began my course slightly later due to confusing reasons, but I was soon introduced into the Preliminary Task. The planning stage for the Preliminary Production went very smoothly, with the two other members having a good sense of initiative and desire to learn. We discussed what shots we would use and how we would fit them in, who we would need to be in it, where we would locate it, and of course what the actual narrative of the short production would be.

Planning
What technical equipment is involved?
A Camcorder, Tripod and Computer for editing.

What props/costumes do I need?
21st Century Period Dress - Formal Suit for Boss
Hoody for fired employee

How do I want to set the scene?
Once shots of the employee character making the journey to the boss's room, we would like a shot of the boss sat at his desk waiting and annoyed.

Who do I want to be involved?
Fellow Students, 2 on camera - Boss & Employee

What filming techniques will I need to use?
Shot/Reverse Shot
Match On Action
180 degree Rule

Draft of the dialogue: Rehearsed Improvisation
Employee: I was only borrowing it, I was going to put it back
Boss: You can't just put it back and expect it to be alright, You're Fired
Employee: Good, I didn't even want this stupid job anyway!

Define the following terms/phrases:-
Match on Action: This technique is used to  give the viewer the illusion of one single movement across two separate shots.
Shot/Reverse Shot: This is where an original shot is taken and then repeated, only in reverse. For example a man walks through a door and then sits in a chair and then the second shot shows him in reverse, where he stands up from the chair and walks back through the door.
180 Degree Rule: A rule which maintains that the line of action should not be crossed, in the interests of fluid continuity. It therefore precludes a difference greater than 180 degrees between camera angles in consecutive shots.

When filming our plan mostly followed through, and the camera work was very easily done, and resulted in great clips. Apart from a few hiccups, such as the camera stands stiffness which caused multiple jumpy shots (with better editing software easily stabilized) which we re-shot with an improved tripod reducing the amount of jumpiness in tracking shots especially. Two shots also had an incorrect flow overall to the production, so these were re-filmed to create a better film overall.

Editing is now somewhat a breeze and a relaxation exercise for me, and I love to do it as precisely as possible due to a hint of OCD and my perfectionist mind seeping through. The editing for this particular production went very smoothly once the incorrect shots were corrected and imported into the production.
I truly believe there are not many things better than the satisfaction of a very well edited video, precisely flowing from one clip to the next, sure its time consuming, but so worth it in the end.

When we come to edit our final and official main task, I hope to use a much more advanced editing software, rather than Windows Movie Maker. While this software does the job for a family holiday DVD it does not cut it at all for a hopefully professional looking production from budding filmmakers, it only makes good quality camera work look amateur with its cheesy and tacky titles, credits and general effects.

In the end the finished production has a brilliant flow, displaying our hard work in an easy format. Some areas of this particular editing software makes the production look more amateur, which is an unfortunate outcome from using cheap editing software designed for amateur family videos and short clips to be uploaded straight to YouTube. For the Main Task I plan to use something more advanced: Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Express 4 (+ iMovie) Adobe After Effects.

All areas of the production creation was extremely fun and interesting especially when we got round to actually filming and editing the production, and finally seeing the finished film.