What I've Learnt:

I learnt lots about the evaluation process such as the importance of teacher feedback and how to organise a film screening for audience members. 

I also learnt more since the preliminary task about working as part of a team, having meetings to discuss ideas and sharing work about the group, and I am very proud of how our group worked together!

The Main Task:

The preliminary task taught me how to create continuity in a film sequence, and make a simple narrative make sense to the audience. When the main task came along we had to think about much more than just making the film make sense.

The main task taught me about identifying and planning to appeal to a specific audience, as well as making the much more complex narrative sequence flow and make sense. 

As the preliminary task just took place in the foyer and one room of our schools media department, the planning surrounding the shoot was not overly complicated. However, when doing the main task we focused a lot on the planning of the location and the storyboard in detail as we aimed to have the sequence use every floor of the house and much of the surrounding area!

I also learnt more during the main shoots about the workings on a shoot and how important it is to get shots not from just any angle, but angles that will make sense in a continuous sequence.

Using the knowledge gained from the preliminary task we always had a master-shot for each area, and during the main shoots I learnt about the importance of master shots to establish the setting and context for the action in the scene. 

On top of this I realised the importance of keeping a shot log, and keeping any actors involved (especially if not part of the group) happy - something that was not really an issue during the preliminary task as the actors were both part of the group.

Even though we had encountered continuity errors in our preliminary sequence, I think the main thing I learnt in terms of the production during our main task is how important it is that the actors do EXACTLY the same thing in each angle or take of the same shot – one wrong placement of a hand and it can all go wrong!

To see what I mean watch our 'Behind the Scenes' exclusive video which I edited:

To see where we went wrong watch this Exclusive 'Errors' video - highlighting all the hidden mistakes...

The Preliminary Task:

Preliminary Brief: To create a continuity sequence of a conversation between 2 people, including within it the use of shot-reverse-shot, and all the rules of continuity, (e.g. 180 degree rule.)

The preliminary task focused us on creating a continuous real-time sequence that made sense to someone watching it.

Titles: Adobe After Effects

At first the plan was to fix the titles onto various surfaces in our sequence like the Tv drama Heroes...

Unfortunately, we did not succeed but we came close. We used Adobe After Effects to try and achieve our desired titles but the process of tracking the motion path of the titles in three dimensions was frustrating and very time consuming due to the fact that it was very hard to find suitable tracking points.

We also realised that our idea would be much more achievable if we had still shots – but this may have taken away from our final sequence.

Advice to future groups: It is possible to fix the titles to surfaces, just make sure that you have 2 or 3 perfect areas of high contrast for the computer to track, otherwise it just won’t work.

Editing:

We used Adobe Premiere Pro to capture, edit and export our sequence...

All being confident users of this program from previous projects we tried to use this program to its full potential. Unfortunately, due to the nature of our film, no crazy or fancy effects were called for when we produced our film, but we did make the most of the blur effect and obviously the lighting and contrast adjustors. I also made use of the main audio mixer when, dubbing, and mixing our final sequence audio.

Tripod:

As most of our film was shot handheld, we not did not use the tripod to a great extent, but instead did make use of it as a sort of extension/crane for the camera operator. 

(Tom and I operating the tripod as an extension. This shot is when Matt runs out of the window room and stops as he hears the door being kicked down!)

We did use the tripod for some still shots in more difficult positions...

We used the tripod for the master shot of the car pulling up...

Advice to future groups: If you want to fix the titles onto surfaces quickly, make sure you have STILL shots – only obtainable with the use of the tripod!

Camera:

We experimented a lot with our camera before we started the real filming:

We particularly focused on working the manual exposure settings and the manual focus, both of which we used a lot in our sequence. We were able to work the manual focus and exposure settings well according to our environments lighting, but we did not attempt to use any focus pulls in our sequence as although possible, the focus wheel was tricky and inconsistently sensitive when operating it. 

I would advise all future groups doing this project to utilise the manual focus feature of the camera as it gives a much more professional look to the film and can be very rewarding when trying to apply greater meaning to a shot.