Preliminary Task Evaluation

AS preliminary task from Jemma Goulds on Vimeo.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

Terry, Josephine, Dwayne, Myrin

For our preliminary task we had to direct a short scene of an individual opening a door, walking across a room and sitting down to have a conversation. In this scene we had to include 3 different camera shots, a shot reverse shot, match on action, and also follow the 180 degree rule.

Planning & Research

Before we even were allowed to set our eyes on a camera, we had to conduct all of our planning and research. For this we looked at previous AS preliminary tasks posted on the internet (YouTube), we discussed our views of the various videos we watched and compared them to one another, this was a hard process because it was such a short task and the videos lasted for about 00.30 seconds each, so it was almost impossible to notice any sort of variation which we could comment on, however, this was a good task which would develop our understanding of the different camera shots and looking at what other groups may have not included or if they had included anything extra in their preliminary task, which was not needed so that we would learn from their mistakes and not waste time on including certain camera shots/camera angles which are unnecessary and that wouldn’t gain us any extra marks.

We formed our groups and started to brainstorm, thinking of suggestions or ideas for our own preliminary task. This didn’t take us long as many people had chosen to work in the same groups they had decided to work with on previous/future tasks, which is a good idea when getting the work done more quickly, as you don’t have to spend time on breaking barriers or introducing yourself to people you don’t know or haven’t worked with in the past.

We researched into the different editing techniques, we tried to gain full understanding of the editing techniques described to us, however, there were many occasions where we didn’t understand what a description meant, and this lead to s having to watch clips of editing techniques on the internet, this was a better way of learning as you could be given a definition/description of an editing technique, and also be given an example if you didn’t understand the description which would enable you to understand it better.

Pre-Production Planning

After conducting our planning and research we started developing our storyboards, this was quite a stressful process as we had to figure out what our storyline was actually going to be and also our location. When we had worked that out we used two sheets of A4 paper to draw up our storyboard, this would consist of the dialogue and actions used in the scene and the camera shots used. We planned thoroughly what we would include in our production we wanted to express our skills fully, and this was hard because we had a larger group we all wanted to have a say in what our production would include forgetting that this only a preliminary task.

Production Process

We decided to be a little bit different from the rest of the groups in our class and opted to film our preliminary task outside. We asked for permission to film in a local café just down the road from our school, the location we chose perfectly fitted the storyline/plot and made our production look more professional and showed our creativity as we thought outside the box.

We used various editing techniques in our preliminary task such as dissolve and jump cuts, etc. We tried not to include too many as it was unnecessary and wasn’t part of the criteria to pass the task.

Evaluation

What Went Well?

· Making sure we had included every camera shot we needed to include.

· Finding a unique location

· Creating a convincing storyboard

· Research on other examples of AS preliminary tasks

· Teamwork

Things to Improve?

· Focus in lessons

· Staying on task

· Carrying out even more research

I believe that our preliminary task successfully achieved the criteria.