Evaluation, Task 7.

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

I feel that at the start of the filming, in the preliminary exercise our group was blank canvas we all had very little experience using the technology which we needed to make our film. We haven’t just learnt one or two things we have learnt many some were important and some just basic but all put together have helped make our film.

An important thing which our preliminary exercise lacked was a variety of shot types. We realised this when we looked back at it and saw it was very basic and only had basic shot types and only used about two angles. Due to this in our film we made sure that we filmed and placed in it:

-Midshots

-long shots

-long distance shots

-tracking shots

-close-ups

-extreme close-ups

-over the shoulder shots

And high and low angle shots.

We also tried to use the rule of three to make our shots look flattering to the audience. When it came to continuity editing in the preliminary exercise we didn’t have a clue! We got one where we saw an actress walk through a door and even this was very rough. Hence why when we made our film we recorded everything at least twice to ensure we got the right shot so we could make everything flow and look continuous.

There is also allot of Tromboning in our continuity exercise and most of that we cut out when editing, so we made sure we tackled this and you will find that there is no evidence of Tromboning in our finished product!

We learnt allot from the editing and many of the lessons were spent getting used to adobe premier pro. As you can see from out film we learnt the basics, capturing and adding clips to a timeline.

Then we learnt how to trim our clips, so they were tight and clean. When we also wanted to speed things up we used the razor balding tool. It's also quite obvious that we learnt how to transform it into black and white using an effect; we also did have some high contrast shots but removed these as we didn’t believe they fitted with the continuity but at least we learnt how to find it and use it if we ever needed it in the future.

The cross fade effect had been used rather frequently and the fade to black has too. We liked to use this effect and none of the above was definitely not used in our preliminary exercise because we didn’t know how to use them and we wouldn’t have known where to place them to make them look as effective as this did in out film.

Looking back if we had of used some of the techniques we have learnt while completing our project our preliminary could have looked allot better for example: there is a huge chunk of footage where we watch a girl walking to meet her lunch date this could have been easily sped up with use of the razor blade tool.

Not only do I think we have learnt allot since the preliminary, initial exercise but I also think that because we have a basic ability to use editing equipment, software and Dv's we have become more confident. At first we didn’t want to press a button we were not familiar with or edit our work with a tool we had never used before in case we did something wrong, but now we know that we can just undo the changes or improve it to make it look better or fit in with our work. We were also able to help others and use techniques which our friends were using wherever we deemed it appropriate in our film. Before we wouldn't have been that adventerous and would of just stuck to the basic techniques which the teacher has shown us.

It’s also quite clear that more or less every bodies preliminary tasks look very similar, but all of our finished full products look very individual and unique it is because we all discovered and learnt different ways of adding effects, angling things, different shots that work well together and overall different techniques which suited best to out films.