Digital technology:
As we had to use new technology such as I movie on the mac's we had to learn from scratch. I think using a HD camera was much better as the shots were clearer, and more defined which makes it better for the audience. When i came to do my editing i found the software quite difficult at first, but then realised that it was making my work look alot better as i could try and make it as precise as possible with the new trimmer on I movie.
By having to use new software on the macs, it took me longer to get used to how to use different effects, trimming clips, adding in audio and adding in graphics. In my editing i think some of the shots weren't as clear as i had hoped them to turn out. If i could have had the chance to spend more time on some of my editing i could have made it more precise or even selected a better order for the shots. In the preliminary task we used new cameras which made the shots more clearer and better quality for example at 0:10 seconds we can clearly see how high the quality is of the camera, in the final product we also used these cameras. We found that the quality was just as good, but the natural lighting we used sometimes made it hard to see what was going on in the shots for example at 1:45 the lighting is very dark and hard to establish what is going on. When using the I Movie again in our final piece i felt like i could work better with the software and found it easier to cut and edit shots to fit with the music. However i still think that there is room for some improvement to make the shots as precise as possible.
Creativity:
The strength of my piece was that we used a lot of creativity. In the brief we was told what we had to do, as a group we developed this by creating a better story line behind it. Instead of them walking into a room, sitting down and conversing with the other character we made the characters more specific and gave them a more interesting role to play.
I think we made our piece creative but at the same time we had our downfalls as we couldn't shoot all the shots that we wanted to in our pre-production stage. By having to alter shots so they would work made our actual scenario for the brief not as successful as we had hoped.
I felt like we used simple shots in the preliminary tasks, whereas now i have developed my skills as we used a range of different shot types, angles and movements to make it a bit more interesting. In the preliminary task we mainly used close ups and long shots but by using a varied amount of camera language it made it more interesting for the audience. For example we would see a simple a static close up shot at 0:06 seconds in the preliminary task, but in our final piece at 0:08 seconds we used a close up of her feet which tracked with her when she moved across the room. This made it feel more like as an audience we were following her from the very beginning as it was the opening shot and made the audience more engaged in the action. I feel like i could still improve by using a wider variety, but now i feel more confident and know what shots will work better and which ones i should avoid as they are hard to film.
Post-Production:
When i came round to edit my piece i also had some issues. Some of the shots that we had previously filmed didn't really fit in with what we was trying to show, this meant that the continuity of my piece was not as precise as it could have been. I found it quite difficult to make the editing exact, for example if a shot was too long i would either crop it too much or not enough so there was always a space before or after the shot which made it less flowing. Some shots had dialogue missing so i had to edit the audio onto another shot to make more sense for the audience. For example at 0:27 seconds i added the mans voice to a shot where you don't see hes mouth moving as it would make more sense to the audience.
Our editing in our final piece wasn't exactly continuity however the first part had some. For example at 0:21 seconds we see the protagonist taking off her leggings and then pulling up her fish net tights which show her change in character from being an ordinary teenager to her role as a prostitute. We used continuity editing here as we filmed it in two separate shots and had to edit it together to make it continuous. However the montage that we used after the title was shown, was cut to fit the beat of the soundtrack so this meant that continuity editing wasn't really shown as the pace was fast as we wanted to show a lot of different shot types in a short amount of time. Next time i will maybe include more continuity as in the first bit before the title was shown was the only time that we could show off our knowledge with continuity editing. An improvement i would make next time is by showing off my continuity skills more, as it was hardly shown in our opening scene.
Research and planning:
When we was planning our scene we created a storyboard, this helped us to plan what shots we were going to film, the edit, the location, the dialogue, the lighting, props and any background sounds. By doing this it helped us go into production with an idea of what we wanted to do, if we didn't plan this we would have been a bit lost and i don't think it would have been good. The location that we used in our production was meant to be a dark room, we had a problem with that as at the time we filmed it was still light outside and that there were no blinds on the windows so light still got through. We wanted the room to be dark so it was more mysterious for the audience and it would have fitted our story line better. If we got too shoot it all again, i would have made sure that the windows were covered or that we shot more in the evening so that the light wasn't as bright as it was and we could create a good eerie atmosphere. From creating a storyboard in the preliminary task we felt as if this helped a lot when we got to the production stage. When we got to the planning for our final piece we felt as a storyboard wasn't necessary but a shooting script would mean that we knew about the shot type, movement, sound, costume, props that we would need and use for each shot. By planning things before we could make sure our shots matched our scripts that we had previously created before production. For example you can see the close up of the door handle in my storyboard and this was also used at 0:11 seconds. In our final task we used a shooting script, for example you can see at 0:01 seconds you see the production logo which we had planned to place at the very beginning of the opening scene. The research that we did with the preliminary task was finding out shots that were used in continuity editing and rules that we had to follow. We incorporated the shot reverse shot, match on action and followed the rule of thirds and the 180 degree rule. For example at 0:21 to 0:25 seconds we see a shot reverse shot between the boss and the younger boy. The research we carried out for the opening scene was by watching many Film 4 Films and finding the typical conventions of a opening sequence. For example at 0:04 seconds we see the Film 4 logo, which is seen at the beginning of every Film 4 film as well as other institutional logo's that have been connected to that production. Another example at 0:20 seconds was translated into our production was the positioning of the credits and the typography where we used a white bold font that was placed to the bottom righ hand corner so it didnt take attention away from the actual shots. I will improve my research and planning next time by making sure i always look back at my research when producing my work so that i know exactly what i am doing. With my planning i will make sure i give enough detail so if someone read the shooting script they would be able to produce something similar and this would also help us while in production as we know exactly what to film
This was the planning i used for my final piece, and i created a whole shooting script where we planned out the shot type, angle, movement and stated what was actually happening in the shot so it was easy for the actor to understand.
This was the planning i used in the preliminary task, i used this to show what the shot would look like, the angle, the location of the shot, the sound that we would hear and a description of what will occur in each shot.
Overall i felt like where the use of continuity editing wasn't there due to my opening being a montage, my skills since the preliminary task haven't really had the chance to develop. However i feel like the camera language used in my final piece was much more creative comparing it to what we had in the preliminary task where i used mainly close ups and long shots which were static. However the places i would mainly want to improve is my post-production which means that i should maybe focus on my continuity editing as i couldn't really show it or develop it since my preliminary task.
Next year i will aim to develop my skills mainly in these sections:
-my continuity editing and produce more of it
-improve my use of digital technology(making sure the lighting is correct and view able for the audience)
