Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Preliminary Brief: Film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character. A couple of lines of dialogue must then exchanged between characters & matchon action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule should be demonstrated.
Film Brief: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes (all video and audio material must be original, produced by candidates, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source).

Our preliminary task has created a large impact on our final opening sequence. I learnt a lot from our preliminary task which I bought forward to our opening sequence. The preliminary task helped us with the brief, pre production, production and postproduction.
THE BRIEF
-The impact the preliminary task brief had on the film brief was that we realised we shouldn’t make shots too complicated and be too experimental as it would be hard to edit and would disrupt the continuity.
-We realised we should check whether locations were available and we had permission before shooting there in order to prevent other people from being in the same place at the same time. This problem occured very often whilst shooting our preliminary task because we had a very limited area where we could shoot. Because we were shooting in my house, I was easily able to chuck my parents out for a few hours every time we shot!
-For our opening sequence we had a target audience and could therefore work around it by using our own range or props, characters, costume etc. Finally for the opening sequence we did detailed research on previous successful films in order to make our own successful.
PRE-PRODUCTION
-From our preliminary task we realised research was essential. We drew out a story board many times until we settled on which one worked the best, we used a script as we learnt, from the preliminary task, how smoothly it made the shooting run. If it wasn't for our preliminary tak we wouldn't have thought about actually making a storyboard at all because we wouldn't have known how useful it would be.
-From the tight timing of the preliminary task, we learnt how to use our time efficiently during planning for the opening sequence. Finally we were more creative with shots for our opening sequence as were confident with what kind of shots would look good or bad and how we could edit them.
PRODUCTION
-The preliminary task came very useful in the production of the opening sequence. We learnt to shoot every shot at least three times because once we put our footage onto the editing sweep we noticed many things we didn’t realise whilst shooting.
-We realised the microphone picked up unwanted sounds and that setting up took up longer than expected, therefore we made use of the time we had efficiently when shooting for our opening sequence.
-Finally we were very aware of continuity and we made sure that every thing was kept in the same place for every shot and that the actor had not changed position or appearance between shots. If we didn't do the preliminary task we wouldn't have known the notion of a master shot, how to do cut away shots or match on action shots.
- From the preliminary task we learnt to always say 'Camera ready, sound ready, actors ready, roll camera, ACTION!', before every shot so that it is easier to capture.
-We also figured that running on the action was very useful so that we could cut into the shot, making it look more realistic.
POST PRODUCTION
-Editing for our preliminary task made us aware of how to use the editing computer and the individual timelines. We noticed how flexible the non-linear editing programme was and therfore we were aware of experimenting on other timelines. This made editing sessions much more time efficient.
-We learnt we should name our footage as soon as we’ve captured them to make editing much easier.
EVALUATION
-Reflections for my opening sequence were much more detailed and critical in comparison to reflections for my preliminary task. This is because I had a target audience to get feedback from for my opening sequence whereas we only had other media students to criticise our preliminary task. The evaluation for our preliminary task helped us improve our opening sequence and prevented us from making the same mistakes again.
-I learnt how important audience feedback is, and how it much it helps to improve our sequence.

Overall, we benefited a lot from our preliminary task. We were aware of any problems we would've faced and how to over come them. We were aware of how long the shooting and editing process would take and we noticed how important little things in the production process were.

Overall I think our opening sequence was to the best of our ability. It fitted in well with the genre and targeted our audience well. It looked professional and of high quality. If I were to do this project again, I would use more protagonists to make the opening sequence more interesting. I would also re shoot the end bedroom shot where the bedroom door looks like its closing in one shot and then is suddenly closed in the next shot. Fnially, I think we could've been slightly more experimental with out shot types as they were all very much the same (straight on), other than that I think our media product would run successful with our target audience and amongst horror fans.