My Preliminary Task Evaluation

1. Media Preliminary Task
Evaluation

2. Pre-Development
Our group was a group of two, me and Matt Wells,
but we also had help from an A2 Media student,
Aaron Baskerville. We started off by creating a
storyboard for the project. This included a depiction
of the shots we were planning on using, and also a
brief description as to what was going to happen.
We then got to work on making a script for the
characters to say. We established that Matt was
going to be in the production, and I was going to be
the camera-man.

3. What went well?
• I felt that Matt and I were a good pairing, as
our ideas were very similar, and we got these
tasks done quickly and ready for filming after
a brief period.
• We established what we were going to try and
do early on, so our project was a smooth one
(without the technical issues).

4. Areas of Improvement
• Our storyboard may not have been clear to
others, mainly due to my poor, and partly
rushed, drawings.

5. Production
Our main “plot” was for Matt to be a drug
dealer on the way to meet a client. They would
then discuss business before going through with
it. For some of our shots we ended up having to
wait a couple of days to film in that location, due
to students being in the shot if we filmed. A lot
of the time when we were filming, people were
getting in the shot and ruining it. This was
because we were filming in a location with high
traffic.

6. What went well?
• We conveyed a sense of mystery to Matt’s character, by
having him have his hood up, and the audience never
seeing his face until he gets to the “drug deal”.
• I felt that our match-on-action was performed really
well, and I am unable to recall any mistakes that
affected the continuity.
• We quickly established which shots we were going to
shoot, and how we were going to do them.
• We used a wide range of shot types such as: mid-range,
point of view, low angle shot, high angle shot, leading
lines.

7. Areas of Improvement
• The cuttings between the lines of dialog were too abrupt,
which corrupted the smoothness of the scene. This was not
necessarily a continuity issue, and could have been fixed
through better editing.
• It took us a couple of lessons to shoot a close-up shot of
Matt’s feet as he is walking. This was due to having the
equipment available for a clean shot. We ended up using a P.E
athletics mat, which managed to sneak its way into the shot.
• The lighting varied in some of the shots. Sometimes it would
be too bright, and sometime it would be quite dark. This
wasn’t really our fault, as we couldn’t block up a 10 foot long
window.
• We could have included some music at certain points.

8. Post-Production
For the post-production, Matt and I had to edit our
task with Premier Pro. This involved making sure
the match on action flowed smoothly, cutting out
shots we didn’t want or need, and ordering our
clips. We ran into a huge array of technical
problems along the way, so it is a wonder that we
managed to get what we did. We uploaded all of
our clips onto the computer, only to realise that the
file types weren’t compatible with Premier Pro. We
then had to run all of our files through handbrake in
order for them to become compatible. This process
probably took up a total of 4/5 lessons.

9. What went well?
• With what little time we had, we did a good
job with the editing.
• Our match-on-action was edited really well.
• We included shot, reverse shots so that it was
easy to tell what was happening in the
dialogue section. This wasn’t as smooth as we
would have liked, but still came out well.

10. Areas of Improvement
• The time that we had could have been used
more efficiently, but as were new to the
software we weren’t really 100% on the
techniques.

11. Conclusion
Overall, I was happy with our final outcome, and
thought that Matt and I worked hard to get to
the end product that we came out with. I feel
like Matt was a great partner to work with, as he
performed his part very well, and left me to get
on with what I was going to do. He also came up
with a lot of good ideas for the project, and
played a key part in the final outcome.