Evaluation of the Preliminary Task

I find that it is always important with the benefit of hindsight to look back upon something that has gone before and seek out improvements as to what could have perhaps gone better. Hindsight brings with it benefits of experience and time that has passed since the event. This provides time for due consideration and reflection upon what clearly were the strengths of something and what could have been done to improve the outcome of what went before. I find that evaluating something allows you to cast a critical eye over your work as to what could have been done differently; this is exactly what I aim to do with my preliminary task, whilst as I feel that it mainly was a success there are still aspects of the final product that I would look to perhaps change, build on or strengthen.

 

 I believe that as a whole, the preliminary task was a success as in completing it we fulfilled the aims and mandatory requirements of the task whilst also using the task as a valuable learning tool in which by completing, allowed the whole group to gain both knowledge and understanding of basic media camera techniques as well as editing techniques, so in this regard I think that the task was a success. However, I feel that if I were to produce the task again I would fulfil a number of small changes to the film. The first of these would be to perhaps include a wider array and variety of shots than the ones we originally did, as in doing this, I believe that we could have allowed the narrative and continuity of the story to flow in a smoother way, thereby making the narrative easier to comprehend and follow for a viewer of the piece. There are only minor subtle changes that I would make to the piece if I were to do it again. In the shot- reverse- shot of the man in the black leather jacket’s feet walking towards the camera, a pen can be seen flying through the air in the right hand corner of the shot. Although not clearly visible, unless paying particular attention to the object, it is an annoyance that I would like to see rectified if we were to re-film the piece.

 

 On a more positive note, I was pleased with how we, as a group, met the technical aspect set of requirements. In particular, I was very satisfied with how we shot the part of the sequence where the two card player’s converse with one another as we stuck to the 180 degree rule particularly effectively. This paid particular diligence when editing the scene/clip together  as the scene had a nice flow to it. However, I feel that in some parts of the sequence, the cuts become fairly noticeable and apparent to the viewer. In an ideal world, the cut would be seamless where the fact that the clip has been edited at all is barely noticeable due to the quality and precision of the cut. Also, if we were to re-film the sequence I would consider a more authentic and realistic location for the scene in relation to the context. As the scene is supposedly set in a poker house, if we were to re-film the scene again, I would look at dressing the set in a suitable way to match the requirements of the contextual setting. Having said this, however, I believe that the location in which we chose to set the scene was a good neutral location with minimal background noise which ultimately didn’t detract from the quality of the sequence. I believe that in a positive light the group was very successful at acquiring and practically demonstrating the required skill set and with the noted improvements we would take into account next time, I believe that the Preliminary Task has been a great success, fulfilling its required aims and benefits of acquiring a new set of skills that we can take forward into our main task at a later date.       

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3yMlJ8V91k