EVALUATION :PRELIMINARY TASK

By Fahmida Begum

PLANNINGWhat have you learnt about planning? (Take account of ideas, research and mise-en-

scene)

During the planning process, I have learnt many new things and I have also improved on skills that I already had. First of all, when given the task, me and my group had a clear idea of what we wanted which was a 30 second trailer to advertise the audience of the consequences of illegal downloading.

First of all, each member of the group should have pitched an idea each and then we should have evaluated each idea to ensure that that idea would be possible to turn into a product. Instead me and my group came up with one idea and went with that idea. Because we were only focused on one idea and didn’t look at any other ideas to compare it with, we found that when it came to storyboarding and filming, there were many restrictions that we didn't think about at first; therefore we had to change many of our ideas and shots. I believe that if we had started with more than one idea and then eliminated each one as to what restrictions there were, what aspects we have more freedom in, etc, we would have come up with a final idea which wouldn't have needed as much altering throughout the process and we would have had an idea which wouldn't have been that hard to film due to restrictions out of our hands. However, it could be argued that because we had only one idea which we kept developing has enabled us, as a group, to gain knowledge and experience in how to solve problems as they arise.

The research part of the planning process should have included research on existing products, research on the target audience, etc. However, my group didn’t really conduct any research which I think is a bit of a disadvantage as we didn't look at what works and what doesn't when working with a topic such as illegal downloading as there are many obvious adverts aimed at it. Although our target audience are mainly young people who are in the same peer group as me and the members of my group, we should have done some research into the target audience to see what they may have been more interested in and to link it with starting with a brainstorm of ideas, we should have pitched some of these ideas to the target audience to see which idea they preferred.

One thing that my group took into reasonable consideration is mise-en-scene. We planned what the characters would have to wear such as the police officer in a police uniform but during the filming process, we couldn't get our hands on a costume so had to change it. We also ensure we had props such as DVD’s and computers ready at hand for filming.  

STORYBOARDAs a group we came up with what we wanted our final product to look like, including what shots need to be included and then I went away and drew it up. Although our final product is completely different to our storyboard, it helped us to see what problems we may have, as we didn’t really do much research. One thing I need to change when doing the main task is that each scene needs to be produced on a storyboard of its own instead of just continuously filling up sheets of storyboards with all the scenes together. Another thing is that I need to add in more shots in between the main shots so that everyone can understand what is happening as not everyone in my group could read my storyboard.

SCRIPTOur script was useful in the way that it gave us a starting point because at first we were quite stuck as to where we could put in dialogue but within the time limit of 30 seconds. Once we had our basic script set out, we managed to develop it further throughout the filming process as our original idea had changed.

FILMINGWhat have you learnt about using equipment?

As the person who worked on the storyboarding, I got the chance to do most of the filming as I was the one who knew exactly what shots we needed, the actors movements, etc. As I hadn't filmed before, I gained very valuable knowledge and experience of the filming process, especially in using the camera and sound equipment. For the main task, I now know how to use the camera to shoot my advert, zoom in, zoom out, achieve different shots, how to involve sound, how to make effective sound effects, etc.

EDITINGWhat did you learn about editing? (How to piece your work together)

After the filming process, we then moved onto the editing process which we done through FinalCut. Again, as this was the first time I have used FinalCut, I gained a lot of important skills and knowledge as well as experience in editing. I learned how to separate my footage from what I wanted to keep and what I didn’t. Video transitions, changing sound levels, adding and taking away sound, changing the speed of footage and adding text are most of the things which I learnt.

THEORY TO PRACTICEWhat did you think about linking theory to practice?

From our understanding of textual analysis, our group did focus a lot on the camera shots and mise-en-scene aspects and have used this knowledge to produce our final product. For example, point of view shots such as the one used when the downloading was taking place shows what the character was viewing on the computer which quite similarly the audience also see when they download illegally. We also ran out of time to add in sound effects and sound mixes but in the main task I will plan my time efficiently to ensure I don't run out of time.