For the Prelim, I teamed with Abbie Bacon and Danielle Duffy, we choose task You’re Fired! Initial ideas showed that we were looking at an action, government conspiracy plot; we established that there’ll be two characters in the film, and the other filming. I felt the task went well, and pleased with the group’s dedication, especially as there were three of us so the work was combined or spilt evenly. Both the team and I worked extremely well together, all dedicated to getting the work done and placed in the hours getting the task completed. We were able to work close together as a close knit unit, learning from another’s skills and having the confidence to speak aloud their opinions when discussing and working throughout the prelim, this has also helped to develop my own individual skills. I feel like I’ve learned a substantial deal throughout the two weeks, for starters I’ve grown a great confidence in using the editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro, before I’ve always had a lack of assurance when using computers and would always deter from using them so knowing that I would edit the footage unnerved me however after an hour of playing around with the software, it became my job and my favourite part of the task, especially the ending of our film where the intensity of the scenes increased, needing to be fastest, energetic and climatic, engaging audiences to be at the edge of their seats. Another aspect that I enjoyed learning was the lighting. As this was my first time using this equipment, it was thrilling learning how to handle them, especially where we got to blend the tones from dark to light, deeming effective for the prelim as we relied on scenes needing to be darker showing mystery and creating an enigma, however lighting proved to be a nuisance at times as shots had to be redone due to camera stand caught in the background or being too bright creating a shine on our faces like in scene 00:01:23 pictured right. In terms of camera, I learnt about many different shots and angles, my favourite being the over the shoulder shot, pictured left at 00:00:46, which we used a few times throughout the film, it had great purpose exposing reaction shots and focusing on an actor speaking but adding that air of mystery of keeping an identity secret.

I also learnt the zoom button on the camera for certain parts of the film and realised how difficult it was to keep the camera straight and keep it on a particular subject, especially nearing the end of our prelim where we wanted to zoom in on the memory stick to expose its importance around scene 00:02:58, however ended up doing several shot reshoots as every time we zoomed in, it always missed the stick and we were determined for the stick be in the middle. I learned also how to use

a tripod, readjusting the height of the tripod so it could suit the type of shot being filmed, it was a great resources allowing the shots to be steady and still, this was useful especially when we wanted serious scenes to be filmed and then the use of hand held shots to give that shaky effect throughout the fights scenes to expose the desperate, climatic atmosphere at the end. Another camera shot I learnt was the match on action shot where the camera steadily followed the person walking into the room, these were important for us as we wanted to establish where the actors were and what they were doing. The

problems we experienced with the camera was the battery and the memory card being full, these limitations were time consuming as we needed access to a plug socket to recharge and sometimes we failed to have a charger on us so we had to halt our filming time and work on something else, another problem was the memory storage being full on

the camera, here when this happened we had to stop our filming and upload the clips onto the

00:01:23

00:00:46

00:01:13 (steady shot)00:02:16 (Handheld)

computer to than resume filming, this was a common problem as we had many shots to shoot and some had to be reshot due to problems. I played one of the characters in the film, my role was playing Miss Crawford, a character sent on a mission to retrieve missing code files that have been illegally downloaded onto a memory stick that has been intrusted in Chiefs hands played by Abbie. My character needed to be strong and

independent, have little concern for her victims, along with a flat affect and few demonstrable emotions. I really enjoyed playing this part, keeping to the strong character and portraying limited emotions to show her determination to the mission. The biggest skill I’ve learnt throughout the Prelim is the software programme Adobe Premiere Pro in a coherent, professional manner. I took the job as the groups editor as I thought it would be worthwhile to learn despite not being well experienced with computers, it was a great position and I enjoyed doing it far much more than filming itself, I learned how to cut and import scenes right down to the second, becoming very

familiar with the scenes being edited and always placing myself in the shoes of the watching audience, thinking what they would expect the edits to come out like. During the fight scenes, I became familiarised with the speed durations and was able to speed up or down the intensity of the scenes, I really enjoyed this and was further prompted to also edit sounds and cuts into our prelim film after the edits were completed. I teamed with Abby in installing the music and cuts using the

same programme Adobe Premiere Pro to put more of an authentic feel into the video, using the schools file documents we were successfully able to listen to all the copy right free music sources and were able to import, edit, cut and fade the music into the right slots throughout the prelim video. A difficult task was getting the music to match into the scenes at the right second, for example when the Chief emerges from the shadows without Miss Crawford knowing in the right picture at scene 00:03:50, I wanted the suspense music to rise right where Chief strikes, requiring strict timings and positions, however as soon as I got use to this I began to enjoy this as much as I did editing, again I positioned myself in the shoes of the audience and began to watch the prelim come to life with the music. I found that I would have liked to have spent a bit more time on sound, preferably turning the music sound down and turning the dialogue sound up so the characters could have been heard a lot more clearly. After completing the Prelim we had to present to the other group in which they gave they’re responses and critics towards our prelim, this task was done so we can familiarise ourselves with our strengths and weaknesses so we can develop upon this for the real thing. By reading through our feedback, I’ve managed to find out what the other groups responses were after they watched the prelim, our strengths was that we followed a good narrative that fits in well with the genre which was roughly a government conspiracy crime thriller. Feedback also stats that our editing went well with flow and ease which I loved considering that I completed editing and this was my first time doing so, I’m fully confident in taking over the editing role for the next thriller opening we do next time. Other feedbacks showed that our music was embedded in well and fits coherently with our prelim, I found this also pleasant to hear as we didn’t not get much time in the music editing department and I feel like I would of liked to have spent more time on this. But despite this, the other group did state that it was difficult to understand what we were saying at times, so I believe that dialogue was our main problem as it was difficult to understand, so I believe that next time I shall be more time conscious and make a time schedule in which I shall follow and make sure that I have given each element whether that being sound, editing, or lighting in

Photoshop enough time for it to go down well. Throughout the responses, audio was a big obstacle and always the one at the top of the list, I feel like they have a point as I felt like I would of like a little more time in arranging our sound better, so time was at our disposal as our prelim turned out longer than expected, ending at roughly 4mins and 30secs, I felt that we spent longer on filming than we did editing but this was due to our prelim being longer than expected. However overall, I do believe that this preliminary task went down a great success and with our feedback now in order our team have our strengths and weaknesses that have been identified by other people, I do believe that for the thriller opening scene that we have to soon start completing that our group will be a lot more prepared for it and can make the thriller opening even better than the prelim task.