Preliminary Task Evaluation

All in all I think the preliminary task was a success.

There were many things that went well in the preliminary task, in fact pretty much all of the task went well. Personally I think that the acting was a very good part, as we had Matt in our group who has done GCSE Drama, and is currently doing A level Drama, along with outside of school Drama based activities, meaning Matt is well educated in that area, can offer his skills and advice to the other actors.

My part in the task which was filming was also a success  it was the first kind of filming like this that I've done, and I think it was successful because we studied all the different camera shots in lesson, so I could apply those to the context of the scene. We also chose a setting which offered a variety of camera angles.

We did have some difficulties, such as various people in our group being absent, the room we chose to film in was occupied by a lesson or a meeting, and having to re-shoot various parts because we had cut it midway through a part, and continued the next day with everyone wearing completely different clothes, these obstructions meant that we had to use our free lessons, lunch and after school hours to ensure the clip was completed by the deadline, which we did manage, so eating into time outside lesson was worth it in the end.

In the last lesson, we watched each others finished preliminary tasks, and gave feedback on each video. To begin with it was pointed out that there were slight timing problems at the beginning of our clip, where Matt walks through the door at the end of the corridor, and Nadib exists the classroom, when you look back on the clip, when the two meet in the middle of the corridor, the characters haven't moved as much as they would have been expected to in the time that had elapsed.

On the positive side, our peers fed back to us that our shot reverse shot was successful overall, and most effective in the corridor when Matt and Nadib meet and confront each other, we took a shot from over each of their shoulders, and despite there not being any dialogue, you get to see their facial expressions as the shots that we took were both close ups.

Another positive aspect that was given as feedback was how effective the low angle shots we took towards the end of the scene, where Matt is talking to Mo and Nadib, which makes him look the more important and powerful of the characters from the audience's prospective. Unfortunately, it was just before this shot was taken that we had our last negative bit of feedback was given, despite trying to be very careful not to, we some how managed to break the 180 degree rule, this wasn't horrifically noticeable, but looking back on the clip, you could tell something wasn't quite right, in the future this is something we will try even harder not to do again!

As I said at the beginning, all in all I think the task was success, there are things such as the time lapsing and characters not moving that we will take on board and learn from the mistake to ensure we don't make it again in the future. Saying that we will also take on board the positive feedback and apply those aspects to future work to create the same good effect it had on this task.