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1. Question Seven
How have I progressed since the initial Pre-Lim ?
At the beginning of the year I produced a sheet stating how confident I was with
the programming and hardware, since I have produced this I realised that I really
didn’t know much about any of the equipment that I have used over the past four
months. First of all I am going to compare my Initial Pre-Lim with my Initial
Skills Analysis but overall I would definitely say that I have progressed massively
since the Pre-Lim task.
First of all, I would definitely say that overall as a group we have progressed
using a Mac computer, If we were to rate our skills now I would say it would be
an eight, this is because now we each know the individual main commands that
we have needed during each task such as taking screenshots, copy and pasting.
As well as this we’ve learnt how to simultaneously multitask on the Mac, which
allowed up to progress in our overall analysis of moving images because we
were able to watch the images at the same time and instantly analyse the image.
Our overall camera work has improved also, this is because of our prolonged use
of the camera and tripod, the group has just picked up on what looks good and
also it became a lot easier to set up each shot as we just had the eye of what looks
good. In the terms of the camera we began using more advanced cameras
compared to the pre-lim task. There were a lot more things to think about when
using the DSLR camera’s as they were a lot more complicated to a standard
camcorder. But by the end of our final product, we knew what all of the main
buttons where such as the zoom, colour correction and how to focus the camera
which led to the overall quality of our final product being that of a higher
standard compared to the pre- lim. Our Camerawork has also drastically
improved from the Preliminary task, for example as you can see in the pre-Lim
tasks you notice that the panning and also just moving the camera has became a
lot smoother almost looking like we have professional camera skills.
Photoshop is another aspect that I felt I
was a bit sceptical with in the first few
months of using the program and the
other members of the group also felt that
it was alien to them in the terms of what
does what and how to use some of the
tools. First of all we knew how to use the
simple tools such as the magnetic lasso
and also the way to layout on Photoshop,

2. ie layering structure. However since the first Photoshop task we feel that we are
progressing well, here is an image of our first attempt as a group on making our
production logo.
Since the Prelim everyone feels that they have improved when using the editing
software such as Final Cut. You can see this when you compare the prelim to the
final product as in the final product there is a lot more variation in terms of
editing techniques. I think from the prelim we have improved in a lot of aspects
apart from this, it is evident that we have became a lot better at planning as you
can see in the final product that it has a lot more structure which you can only
gain with the correct planning otherwise the final product would be all over the
place. In the terms of editing techniques we have became a lot more confident in
using them, most notably, cut and fade and also colour correction tools which
allowed us to get the perfect lighting for our final product. We had also began to
experiment with colour masks which gave a blackout type fog on the edges of the
screen which I think adds a sort of sinister, dream atmosphere to the overall
product. Cutting and shortening footage also allowed the product more
structured in the terms of that it adds suspense to certain parts which shows that
we have thought about each shot carefully to make sure that it is the best it could
possibly be.