Question 7

Question 7- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

My preliminary task was to film a 30 second to a minute film of someone walking into a room and having a conversation. The point of this task was to get used to the camera, equipment and different shots. The 5 shots we had to film were; over the shoulder, long shot, mid shot, close up and a high angle shot. For this task we had to quickly film it on the spot so that we could edit it and watch it over and over to see how well our filming and editing was which would of got us prepared for our actual filming and editing on our opening thriller sequence. 

From this task i learnt how to use the camera and tripod to its full abilities. For example; how to extend the legs out to the perfect height i want the camera to be in when filming a certain scene with a certain camera shot. By learning this meant that i could have the correct camera shot, for example; a high shot to show the vulnerability of a innocent victim, which would build a relationship with the character and audience and make them feel more sympathetic towards the character. I also learnt which angle and camera shots to use for which parts of the film, for example; low angle shot to make the antagonist look bigger than the victim which will portray the victim as more helpless and weaker. I also learnt which certain shots create which certain effects, for example; close up would show a facial expression more and if its used during panning then it shows movement between two characters that are being filmed. I learnt that for my film to look professional and neat i need to keep the camera still so it does not looks shaky on the screen and this can be done by me using the tripod. This helped me learn and know where to position the camera in a shot to create effects i want to be put across to my audience to help them focus on a certain thing within a shot. 

However, there were points of this task when i struggled a bit and did not know what to do. For example; i struggled on filming the over-the-shoulder shot because it didn't look professional and neat as i wanted to get the positioning perfect but the other persons whole back was in the shot instead of just half of his body so i had to keep on re-filming it. I also found other shots difficult to do, for instance, i found filming tracking shots very hard. Panning shots were another type of shot i found difficult to film as the camera would lose focus as i was moving it, which made it look blurry and unprofessional. Attempting to film the panning with the camera on the tripod made it even more difficult as it was stopping it from running smoothly as it was very stiff to move around. The last difficulty i had was filming the low angle shot as the tripod was too tall even when the legs was on the shortest it would go, which meant that the only thing i could do was to film the shot handheld. However, this was a bad thing as it meant that the shot would be shaky and look very messy and unprofessional instead of neat and steady. 

However, from this task to filming my full product i learnt many things, which meant i done things differently this time and saved so much time instead of wasting it on learning how to use the equipment and how to follow through and film the shots correctly. I learnt how to watch the recordings back which saved time as i could see straight away if a shot was wrong or if anything was in the background which would of lead me to needing to re-film anything. For the full product i also adjusted the tripod to the perfect size it was needed at did not just leave it at the lowest or highest it went to like i did in the preliminary task. Learning all these things in the preliminary task and putting them all into full affect for the filming of the final product has majorly helped me make the film look more professional and to a high quality which will definitely help the film become way more successful. The thing the preliminary task helped me with the most is understanding which shots are the most effective at which parts of the film and what kind of affect they would create to the audience and how the relationship built between the audience and characters would affect their feelings towards the characters. For instance, a close up will show the facial expressions most of the characters and having a certain angle can portray the status of the character in the film. For example; a low shot will make the character look more bigger and overpowering making the audience think they are dangerous and can do anything to the victim. I used this knowledge i learnt from the preliminary task in my production of my own thriller as i used a certain shot to make one character look stronger and more powerful than another.