7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Before starting the course we had seen work produced by he previous years; this made me extremely enthusiastic about the task asked of us, but it also made me realise how hard it the whole course would be.

Our first project was to produce our preliminary exercise. After producing the final video, we realised how hard it was to produce a proffesional looking video and made me and the rest of the group realise that we needed to work hard to produce something of the quality we knew we where capable of.

After the preliminary we where told to reproduce the opeing scene to juno; although this was an enjoyable task, it was also very hard because we wanted to produce something simirlar. After watching the video many times, we was then able to look for locations, props and costumes for the video. We where given a close deadline so in some shots we had to rush and also when eduiting the final piece we hadn't given ourselves enough time. After alot of hard work and time consuming editing sessions, we believed the final video we produced for the remake of juno, was of a high quality and alot better than what we thought we could produce.

After the feedback we receivced from Juno, as a group it boosted our confidence for our main task, and we where happy with the knowledge we had developed to start our main task.

For our final piece we had a blank canvas, we could pretty much do anything we wanted as long as it was an opening to a film. We came up with multiple ideas but found it difficult to stick to an idea for more than a week. We then completed some target audience research which helped us narrow down what we were going to do. We were very ambitious to begin with but we realised that it was going to be very difficult to fulfill those ambitions and that if we completed something far simpler it could look far better. After conducting our market research, discussing our ideas between the group and consulting teachers we came to the idea of a rap movie. We then had to seriously organise ourselves as we had found out in the Preliminary Exercise everything needs to be covered. We put a folder of our Research, ideas and planning together to present to our teacher for final approval before we went out to film. There were a few things that needed to be in more detail but he was impressed and surprised with what we had produced. We then had to go and film.

Our first shoot didn’t run as smoothly as we expected and it took longer than we expected to take certain shots and we became concerned that we were overcomplicating things. Then Sol’s brother said that we could film in him flat and in the block which was ideal for what we needed. This brought some life back into the team and kept us inspired for the rest of the filming process.

We went back for editing and produced a rough cut to show for the class. They were impressed with the shots and the editing but said that it didn’t really show the storyline or create an enigma. We then went back to the drawing board and decided to get some shots of Sam in the schools recording studio. We felt this gave a better idea to what the story was about. To create the enigma we had a shot of Sam’s Mansion [Thorpe Hall] as a Point of View shot falling into a blur. This was to create the hook to what happened there. Among some other improvements we thought it would be 100% ready for the audience to see the final piece. We uploaded it to YouTube and received our feedback

I believe from the prliminary not just me but the whole group had gained alot of experience, and this enabled us to produce a much better video for a final task from the prleiminary. It also enabled us to be more realistic with what we were able to create; we knew we couldn't produce something prffessional but we did have a good try at it, and we believe as a group, there are something we would change if we did it again but there are aslo many areas that we are very happy with. We knew we wouldn't be able to produce and include special affects using green screens because we didn't have the equipment reuqired but we believe we have produced a main task that is of a very good quality given the resources we had.

The main problem we faced throughout the course was organisation and time. Throughout the course we focused most of attention on the practical rather than developing our knowledge on what we wanted to recreate. If i could change anything, I would focus more on research and plan exactly what I wanted to create before trying to actually create the main task.