Question 7

Question 7

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

Camera:

After filming our preliminary we realised that using a simple handheld camera was not going to work for our main task. We wanted our video to be shot using an HD camera as it would look smarter than the handheld. With having a larger more professional camera we were able to use a camera stand, which avoided the shakiness that we had in our preliminary. We used a Nikon J2 as it was easy to carry around to the various locations and recorded in HD and strongly picked up the colours.

Mic:

In our preliminary we used the mic that was on the camera, this meant that audio was quite quiet and blotchy in places. To avoid this in our main task, we used a proper microphone which we attached to the camera. This picked up better sound and avoided distortions.

Editing:

To edit our preliminary we used iMovie, though it was good, it did not have the extent of features needed to make our main task video look professional. So we decided to use Final Cut Pro as we could use colour correction, sound correction and add many other useful effects. We had never used Final Cut Pro before so we had to learn how to use the new software which was interesting and in the end I believe it paid off.

Acting: 

The actors in our preliminary task were fellow class members with little acting experience. We didn't think it would make much of a difference, however after watching it we decided we didn't like how wooden it came across and decided to get people with acting experience. 

Planning:

In our preliminary task the only planning we did was a story board, which meant when we came to film it, we spent a lot of time messing around as we didn't know what exactly to film. However to avoid this in our main task we spent a lot more time perfecting the script's and knowing which shots we would involve.