Evaluation- Question 7

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

Looking back on our preliminary task we feel we have learnt and progressed tremendously, we have learnt that a story board really helps to put the whole production together and helps to make sure that you get all of the different shots you need, whether than in the preliminary we just went out with all ideas and kept adding things in before the other so we had no real order or structure so it took us a while to do a small piece of film. Also a list of everything we need really helped us so we didn’t forget to wear the same clothes or shoes or small props we might of forgot about to keep continuity good, this wasn’t the case for the preliminary we just tried to remember everything.

We have developed with the camera work as with our final production we have got a lot more movement shots, before this they were all static. Now we have a lot more panning and tracking as it makes the movement of the characters more realistic and lets the viewer relate to the faster pace, for example when we are running in our production its very match on action. We have also developed our editing skills a lot more as we have gone from only using straight cuts to now fading in and out, cutting and overlapping this definitely adds more variation to the film and makes it more interesting to work and allows the film to flow a lot more.

The snapshot on the left is of our opening scene, this allows the viewers to gain a good view of where about we are and the main characters in the film. We have used an establishing shot here and have changed the colouring so it gives the impression it is been recorded on CCTV to develop the idea of your stereotypical ‘youth’ like, boys. The establishing shot was the best shot as that is what CCTV does and allows the viewer to get a better perspective. This however is not something we thought about doing in the preliminary.

This snapshot of the murder scene, is a close up to allow the audience to see the blood on the attackers hands, which clearly gives the viewer an idea that he must of killed the dead victim even though they do not actually witness the murder. This close up also allows the viewer to question what has happened and why he seems to be looking at his hands in despair. Was it an accident?  Is he upset? What really happened? Did he do it? All of these questions can be risen from this close up and it’s positioning.

This is a snapshot of our intro, this is a transition where the camera zooms in, we have decided to use this because it focuses attention on the boys. Also we have adjusted the speed it is slightly faster this makes it more upbeat with the music in the background and we wanted that fast pace to be a key aspect of our film so from start of it we have tried to gain this movement.

The sounds from our preliminary are all digetic but as for our final film, we have used both, non-digetic from the music playing in most parts and digetic when we have the dialogue. The music we choose suits the film as it is upbeat and is called ‘boys will be boys’ implementing on the stereotypical ‘boy’ image we were trying to portray.

In our preliminary we used straight cuts so our scenes cut quickly from shot to shot. In our final film we overlapped our footage and used dissolves to fade the scenes in and out, this allows the film to flow more. As you can tell in the example one scene seems to be crossing into the other.

In our preliminary task we used shot reverse shot, which was a technique we developed from research. This allows the viewer to see the persons from another characters point of view making it more realistic and easier to watch for the viewer. Although this is a good technique to use we did not include this in our film as there was not an opportunity for it.

An important technique used in our media piece is match on action we use this so the viewer can understand that we are walking away from school. This is used as it makes it easier for the viewer to understand what is happening rather than it just skipping from one scene straight another in a different location. This is also used when we are running away from the murder scene. As you can see in the snapshots we are running out of school and in the next shot we are seen walking away from school with it in the background showing we have left and that’s how far we got.

Answered by Roberto Pinto and Adam Lomas.