1) The student learned that location and continuity are crucial when filming. Their preliminary task was filmed in a school hallway, which caused interruptions, so they chose a friend's home for the full product. 2) They created storyboards using sticky notes to plan shots and rearrange ideas easily. They stuck closely to the original storyline to stay focused and save time. 3) Feedback on their animatic advised changing the location and increasing camera angles. Their first recording also needed improvements like adding music, transitions, and better blood effects.

1. Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?

2. Preliminary
We wanted our Preliminary task to be of a thriller genre. Our male protagonist,
Elliott, was to be an inspector, researching a death, but as his identity is unknown
until the end, the audience think he is the killer. We didn’t do too much planning
for our preliminary, we mainly bullet pointed each step, and wrote down our
storyline. This helped our OTS, as we knew we shouldn’t change our storyline, as it
helps our understanding and doesn’t waste time. The main problem we had was
our location, we filmed in school in a hall way, to avoid people using the hallway
we had to film during lessons. Cal was the editor for our continuity task as well as
our OTS, but he hadn’t done Media at GCSE level and so struggled using iMovie.
Elliott and I helped him, but Cal edited it and it worked great, and so in our OTS we
designated him the editor. Our preliminary task taught me that the location is
crucial, we needed a place with no interruptions that wasn’t in school, and so
chose Cal’s home. Also, the continuity must flow, if not it will look unprofessional.
Finally, it taught me that feedback is needed, as we got no feedback on this film.
When Elliott’s face is
finally shown, he is in the
shadow, representing him
as mysterious, secretive
and a could be murderer.

3. Timeline - Storyboards
We got our ideas through watching similar films, not those just of the Film
Noir genre. In the beginning, we based our film on Casino Royale. To begin
planning, we created storyboards. To create our storyboard we used sticky
labels, which was a good idea as we could easily re-arrange and change our
ideas without creating a whole new one. We stuck with our overall storyline,
there were some minor things altered, but like our preliminary we thought it
was a good idea to just stick with our original ideas to save time and keep
everyone focussed. At first we planned for Elliott to be the male protagonist
and to be filmed smoking a cigarette. We changed the anti-hero to Cal,
because he fitted the role better with his looks. We had to scrap the idea of
smoking, as Cal doesn’t smoke, but changed his actions to those that were
also conventional of Film Noir.
I also wrote the storyboard
pictures down, so we could
read what we had to do if the
pictures confused us.

4. Animatic
We then created an Animatic from our storyboard. An animatic is
a photographed storyboard. We shot our animatic within school,
which was problematic due to the props and background. This
advised us on where to shoot our OTS, which we decided would
be Cal’s house, as it is easy accessible. Also, as we were in school
we wore our normal clothes, but as the idea of the animatic was
to practise our camera angles, and work on our timing, this didn’t
matter.
Our feedback was to change location and increase the amount
of camera angles as they weren’t so diverse. Our feedback was
given to us by our teacher.
We had to use building blocks
to make up for the lack of
props within school.

5. First Recording
My evaluation to our first recording is
in a link to my blog. I used
WiseMapping to create a mindmap of
the strengths and weaknesses of the
video.
We asked our teacher how we could
improve the aesthetics of the blood,
she said we should use jam, and so in
the final OTS the blood looks more
realistic.
On my blog, I have made a post
explaining how we made my bullet
wound. I researched online how to
create it with make up, and Cal used
wax and make up to create it.
Strengths Weaknesses Improvements…
Editing Actress breathes while
dead
Add voice over
Use of spotlights No bullet wound and
male protagonists blood
is unrealistic
Add music
Props Background mise-en-
scene
Add foleying noise
Continuity No transitions Improve continuity
Quick shots should be
added
Improve mise-en-scene
No title screen Include bullet wound and
better blood
No underground casino
scene
Include title and
underground casino
scene

6. Second Recording and Final OTS
We recorded our OTS twice, but as we had technical difficulties,
we have a second recording and a final OTS, both including the
same recorded material but the final OTS with the voice over. Our
final OTS doesn’t include our foleying bullet sound or our
background music, our teach tried to help our group, and others
in our class with this problem by getting technicians into our
lesson to help us. Sadly, they didn’t have long enough to solve our
problem, and we couldn’t download our music as explained in a
different question. His leaves our OTS unfinished, but to an
audience who wouldn’t know this, hopefully our OTS will look
finished to them.
Things we did well
Less continuity errors – making sure
the money was in place was hard, we
decided to film each segment with me
in first, so the money wouldn’t change
place.
The “Underground Casino” scene has
been added, which gives the audience
background information – hook and
enigma.
Wound created and blood more
realistic.

7. How to improve final OTS…
• Some parts have bad continuity due to Cal
editing parts from our first recording into this
video. When getting our class feedback and
showing them our OTS, we asked if they
could see any continuity errors, they
answered no, and so we chose not to re film,
as it would take too much time and the
continuity errors weren’t strong enough for
us to change.
• The beginning is a little pixelated, this is due
to the low quality cameras, and we can’t help
this.
• Finally, our OTS isn’t finished as it doesn’t
include background music or our bullet
sound. We’ve tried to make it work, but the
Macs in school will not let our group, and
others in our class, upload some
music/sound. Although we could improve on some things, our feedback results
were amazing considering our unfinished OTS.