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

From our preliminary task we were able to transfer some of the skills we learnt to our main final piece. This has enabled us to learn from our mistakes as well as to adapt and apply our current skills to our main task to make it the best it can be.

We learnt the basic skills needed to film footage such as using a camera and tripod. Using the tripod was a skill that was essential to getting footage that was steady, because hand held filming is usually the type of filming used in documentaries. Although, we did use this technique when Fiona was walking through the tunnel and when she finally sees Ife lying dead on the floor. This was to show that as Fiona gets closer the event was more personal between the two characters.

We also made sure that we recorded each shot a number of times so that if a certain take did not go the way we planned there was extra footage for us to fall back on. If we did not do extra takes this would be a problem because we would have to make numerous trips back to the location to re-shoot footage. This would have wasted a lot of time that we need to edit and to write the evaluation.

We also learned that it is important to record a few extra seconds of footage before and after the action in the scene, this is so that when it comes to editing we have the ability to cut down the unneeded footage. This is useful because this way we do not have to go edit in the footage from the beginning of the clip, which allows us to add effects that would need extra footage like the fade in fade out. It also allows us to keep with the continuity as extra footage makes it easier to make it follow on.

The editing skills needed for the final task we much more demanding than that of the preliminary task, this is because we used certain effects and titles that were more advanced than the skills use in the preliminary task. The preliminary task aided us with basic knowledge of Final Cut Pro that we expanded on to edit the final task.

Some of the problems to encountered were very minimal and so we over came these pretty easily. Some of the problems are listed below.

The first problem we had noticed with our preliminary task was that the camera wasn't always straight. We therefore made sure that every shot we did was always straight and checked this with the spirit level on the tripod and with doing this all our shots in our main task are straight and not on a slant. We also had problems with capturing the sound on the preliminary task so therefore had to make do with no sound at all. However, on our main task we were able to add a sound track and sound effects on it as well as using the natural sound, this therefore made it more professional and film like.

Another problem we encountered during the preliminary task was the continuity in editing. We found that when it came to editing the door scene it was difficult to make the clips follow on, this was partially because Fiona’s footing changed each time we filmed the door sequence. We avoided this happening in the main task by making sure there was extra footage before and after each clip so that during the editing stage, we could cut it down as to keep the continuity.

It was difficult to get the over the shoulder shot of Caroline and Fiona because there was very little space between them and the table behind them. Although, the location we chose to film the main task was quite spacious so we did not have this problem with the filming.