Evaluation Question 7

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have

learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Preliminary Task

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nXpOeVVBSY

Weaknesses In Preliminary Task

When I watch back my preliminary, I have noticed a large amount of weaknesses. One of the weaknesses I noticed is the editing was not as good as my opening sequence, some of the shots that were taken was not put in the right order so it didn’t look right when I watch it now.

Another weakness is that there was hardly a variety of camera angles. The only camera angle that was being used was mid-shot where you can see all of the characters body which shows costume which comes under mise en scene while also having an over the shoulder shot.

One other weakness that I had noticed is that the acting was not very believable as we didn’t see the characters for that long and also while this shot was being taken there was people in the background while being hot which didn’t make the preliminary task believable as the short film was about zombies.

Another weakness that I noticed was the sound was not as clear as what it should have been. When watching the clip from the start it sounded very rattily which was not a good noise. When they was talking, I found it a bit hard to listen to because it was so quiet as there was background noise.

One final weakness is the costumes, halfway through you can notice that one of the boys costumes had changed which made it noticeable and not being realistic. Also the costumes was ment to be scruffy as they was getting chased by zombies so mise en scene was not being recognized in this preliminary task.

How We Overcame These In Our Final Film

Editing - To overcome the editing problem, took time. After looking at the preliminary task we saw that we all needed to improve on our skills. At school, we have technician called ‘Michael’ who is very talented in using final cut pro. We asked him if he could teach us on how to use final cut pro, which developed our skills quite a lot. Another way we improved our skills was by watching tutorials and step by step guides over the internet which gave us a breakdown on how to use it all. We also used our general knowledge to overcome this as well.

Camera Angles – The first time when we filmed our opening sequence, we edited some and we didn’t have a variety of camera angles so we decided we would re-film and this time before the day of re-filming, we took time to think of the variety of camera angles to include in our opening sequence so we would have a variety in the sequence.

Acting – The acting this time round was more believable as the gang looked threatening that included mise en scene. At some points in the opening sequence some of the gang was smiling which made it unbelievable but apart from that the gang looked realistic.

Sound – When filming our opening sequence we decided that we would mute everything apart from when one of the characters was talking. By doing this, the noise that the actors would make while not talking wouldn't’t be interrupting the music. Also we encouraged the characters to talk loud enough so there was not any barriers to having bad sound quality.

Costumes – When we started planning our opening sequence, we decided that we would make sure that everyone who participated in the film would wear hoodies and jeans when acting in the opening sequence. By doing this, mise en scene would look more realistic and also being believable towards the audience watching the sequence.

From the right image we can see that from our preliminary task the shot was very unclear and too much going on in the same shot as we can see a massive hall with a lot of chairs and the main section the audience is supposed to see is very small and is right in the corner of the screen. Whereas, in the left photo of our opening sequence we can see much more of the subject. We can see facial expressions, emotions of the character and the audience can engage more with the character.