Question 7

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

I certainly feel that we have improved our media skills considerably, since we did our preliminary task. A lot more thought and effort went into creating our final product than did in our preliminary video and that is very clear by the difference in quality.

The major factor in creating a better product this time, was our extensive planning. For our preliminary task we simply created one basic story board and a vague shot list. For our rom com opening we did a more detailed story board, a photographic story board, a detailed shot list and a mood board of initial ideas of how it would look.

Story board and shot list for preliminary task

2 story boards, a shot list and mood board for final product

We then did a lot of research into film openings and our chosen film genre. We created many posts on our blog about the conventions of a film opening, the conventions of a romantic comedy and wrote our numerous timelines of films, both in our genre and not,to gain a bettor understanding of titles and how they are done successfully. 

For our preliminary task, we wrote a post which was only two sentences, about the genre on the film. We then created the film with very little idea of what would make it successful.

This was the only title in our preliminary task film.
It was very basic, just over a black screen.

These are a couple of titles from our final product.
We learnt title orders, so the film title came in the middle of the film.
We also included the names of everyone who was key in making the film, as professional openings do.

We also planned out our resources, this time. While we had used any location we could find for our preliminary film, we took careful consideration of what type of location we wanted for our final film, in order to make it fit with the storyline and genre. 

 Above is a screenshot from our preliminary task, where you can see that we simply shot it in school, as that was easiest, without considering how that wasn't appropriate of the Thriller genre.

To the left there are screenshots from our final video, where we have carefully chosen the females bedroom, the males bedroom and the restaurant settings.

As well as this, we carefully considered our actors costumes and props, this time, thinking about representation of our characters, by their rooms and their costumes. We particularly wanted gender to be represented stereotypically, so we specifically chose locations and props that achieved this.

Here you can see we specifically chose props and costumes the gave our characters the desired representation, where as in our preliminary task (as seen below) we just let the characters wear what ever they had, with no consideration of genre or representation.





























Research into audience was also a large part in making our final film more successful. We researched similar films in our genre, to see what their target audience was and how they appealed to them. We did extensive research into our target audience, from getting images of what they would like, to the type of hobbies they would have. We even carried out questionnaires, to learn what audience members would like to see and expect to see in an opening like ours. During the editing process, we would ask people for their feedback on rough cuts. This allowed us to develop our piece in a way that made it more appealing to it's audience, from the ways they would like to see it improved. 

Audience theories were also a great help. We were able to learn the different ways in which audiences can receive a film. With this wee could then include the necessary elements to make it received well by our desired audience.

In contrast to this, no audience research was carried out while creating our preliminary task film. This is clear in the way in which the film doesn't seem to have any appeal to any sort of audience group. If we had thought about a target audience and their; age, gender, interests, demographic group etc. we could have included parts which would directly appeal and relate to them, making the film more successful as it would be particularly enjoyed by a certain group of people.



However, the camera work and editing we did/used was quite similar.

For example, we used the 180 degree rule in both our preliminary task and final task.

We also used an over- shoulder shot in both films

Editing was very similar, as both pieces just used cross cuts and a fade to black at the end.

To edit, we used iMovie, for both films. However, we spent probably 3 times longer editing our final piece than we did our preliminary, as we wanted to make sure everything was perfect and we waited for feedback from audience members, when we shown them a few rough cuts, and we then make any necessary changes.

After filming this preliminary task and a remake, we felt a lot more confident with the camera equipment, which enabled us to try out different types of shot, to make the piece more interesting/appealing. For example, we experimented with;

...a sweep round and in shot

...a pan up 

...and a pan round.

We had a better overall knowledge of what we were trying to achieve, when creating our final film, and previous experience from the preliminary task and remake films, along with extensive research, allowed us to gain better skills and therefore produce a quality media product.