Preliminary task evaluation questions

1. What have you learnt by doing this exercise?

I have learnt I really do need to get better organized with planning for these things as twice now I have had to push back filming due to my actors becoming unavailable this happened twice but eventually on a Wednesday the second choices finally had a free period for us to film, I need to make sure that in future I plan better as this has made me very stressed about the work and was arguably putting me behind the rest. I also learnt more and more about editing on Final Cut Pro and now I am better on it, I also learnt more about directing, many times I would have to show the actors exactly what I wanted them to do, how to stand, how to talk and what emotion to show, they had both seen there character representation video and short summary of the story so they were not completely clueless about what they were doing. I also know if I had had more time spent on this video and editing it I am sure it could be better, I also have been given an idea on how much harder doing a final project will be and how much time one should have and spend on their video as due to difficult circumstances which led me to having not as much time as I would have liked to have spent editing and filming my own video.

2. What skills have you developed?

I think my director skills have definitely improved because several times I would have to get the actors to redo a shot because it just wasn’t what I wanted and I would act out exactly what I wanted. I want what is on film to look like how I pictured how it would look when I picture it in my head so if it is not I want to redo the shot a few more times to get as close as we can too my goal for the shot and in whole the film. I feel my editing skills on using Final Cut Pro have also improved. I started turning down the sound on the non-diegetic sound and turning up sound on scenes with dialogue in order to make it easier to hear the speakers. My editing skills also improved after I had to start editing down clips of the journey as from feedback I got it went on for a bit long so I was advised to trim some of the longer ones down. When doing this the music and cut parts when the non diegetic sound was quitter than the diegetic sound became messed up and in different places so I would have to work around this and move parts back together, at some point I even decided just to delete the non diegetic music proceed to edit all the longer clips and only once done that put the music back in and re-edit it around the newly edited clips.

3. What feedback have you received?

 I was advised to cut the music up so that in certain clips when there is dialogue I should lower the music and turn up the clips volume thus making it easier to hear the speakers but while still having the music in the background. I showed my other classmates and they told me they thought it was good or “very nice” by Stuart, they however only saw my final version in which I had edited down the journey clips but there was no more mention to them from my classmates so i assumed they had therefore been trimmed down enough I also showed my parents who said the same thing which is just to shorten some of the longer shots during the traveling scenes but other than that they said they also felt it was good. Other than this I have not actually gotten any other feedback, I have been told and do understand myself it is not brilliant for a final project but for a preliminary task project I am happy with it, I do feel there are things that could improve it however. My own feedback to myself would simply be the same as the rest of the feedback I got, edit down the longer travelling shots.

4. How would you improve your Preliminary Task?
Overall I am pleased with my preliminary task however there are some things I feel I could improve with it. These include things such as I would redo a few of the shots I took as several of them were not very high quality and also in several shots the acting was not that great like at the end when I did redo the shot a few times as I wanted character 1 to change the way she spoke and said "umm I think I might just wing it." While I preferred the one I put in the video to the rest I still feel if I had taken a few more there is a chance I could have gotten a better shot. In future I would also manage to improve tasks like this with better pre planning as I have said filming was postponed and also new actors had to be found which then also having changed genders made me need to change around a few character representations and parts of the story. If my original plan had gone to plan perhaps it would have been more relaxed and I could have spent more time on filming and editing which has a high chance my video could have been better.