The document summarizes Sara El-Batal's learning from a group project to create an anti-illegal downloading advertisement. Key learnings included: 1) Developing a final idea through considering multiple initial sub-ideas from group members. 2) Understanding required pre-production elements like scripting, storyboarding, scheduling and risk assessment to organize the shoot. 3) Gaining experience with equipment like cameras, microphones and support tools during filming and sound recording. 4) Discovering editing software capabilities and limitations in finishing the project.

1. Media Preliminary Task-
Evaluation
By Sara El-Batal

2. What have you learnt about planning?
I started with making my own individual idea for the advertisement for either illegal downloading or anti-
smoking; two people from our group came up with an idea for anti-smoking and the other for illegal
downloading.
I chose to do anti-smoking; this is a summary of my idea: The camera will pan through the college (being a
hospital) as a point of view shot and then the camera will go into a room to show a person lying on a table.
There will be a high angle shot to show the person’s chest and there will then be a flash to show the
person’s lungs being all dark and non healthy as this person smokes. Then a healthy person will be running
and stops at the camera with a cigarette box and says “Stop smoking, it kills!” and throws the box on the
floor in slow motion with a ‘boom’ sound for impact.
We came together to discuss the ideas and our group in the end came up with a final idea to do with illegal
downloading which was what our task was based on: The camera will have point of view shot speeding
through the college turning corners then will zoom to a man and have a close up of a hand turning a door
knob and entering a dim light room where a mi5 style agent is sitting working on a laptop. The man
approaches him and they shake hands and sit opposite sides of the table. They then exchange a few words
about a hacker illegally downloading files off the internet. The man then turns the laptop towards his
friend and the camera focuses on the laptop and there will be a tracking system running to find the hacker.
There will be effects of the earth spinning and pinpointing a location and then zooming towards that
location. There will be a crane shot leading on from the zoom and will continue the zoom onto the hacker.
the hacker is then arrested by police in which a x-ray style effect show his heart beating as he knows he’s
in trouble and then he’s taken in to custody.
From this I have learnt how to come up a final idea from a variety to sub ideas; this allowed each member to
participate in the final suggestion and come together with a final idea.

3. Once we came up with the final decision, our group had to be allocated with different tasks such as a script,
story board, a shooting script and a risk assessment.
Part of the script: Plot overview Scene 1.
P.O.V with hand held camera speeding through the college, turns a corner and a man standing at a door comes
into view. P.O.V zooms in to a close up of his hand on the door handle. Man enters room then camera
position changes and appears in the room. Shows the man entering pans to him meeting another man and
reveals the rest of the room.
Agent Mills: [enters room] good afternoon sir.
Neo: Aaaa Agent Mills good timing.
Neo rises from the chair where he was seated and approaches Agent Mills and greets him with a handshake.
Agent Mills: what’s the latest on the hacker?
Neo: Step this way.
Neo sits back down on the seat he was originally seated on and slides towards a table centered in the room.
The camera pans to follow his movement. Agent Mills follows and takes a seat on the opposite side of the
table. A wide angle shot shows them seated opposite each other.
Neo: he’s been getting sloppy, he hasn’t changed his IP address in a week. I’m attempting to pin point his signal
as we speak.
From coming up with this script, the group were better organised and understood what they were meant to be
doing when it came to filming and the development of creating the short clip.
The group had to come up with major decisions such as location to make sure you come up with accurate shots
and sounding and we had to come up with the props that we wanted to use and we had to think about
the lighting so the actors could properly be seen and see where the best possible access was to get the
best sound and where the boom pole should be positioned when filming.

4. Storyboard
The storyboard was created to help our group come up with pictures of how the shots will look when filming
the real thing; the script was mainly used by the camera person (director) and the sound person so they
could understand how to position equipment to allow it to come out how the group wanted it.
From this, I learnt that during filming I needed this majority of the time as I would forget the positioning of
actors and props so this came in handy during the course of filming.

5. Shooting Script
The shooting script allowed the scene to become more clear
when it came to the shooting time and place; this
helped our group to become more organised with this
work. As we had a set amount of time to produce this
piece of work, we needed to be aware of our progress
as in with the dating and time of the shots.
From this, I learned how time management is very essential
when it comes to filming and was very important in our
case as we had a deadline to meet.

6. Risk Assessment
A risk assessment is important as they reduce the risks of accidents and ill health to you and your peers that
could be very costly both physically and financially; this helped massively as it made our group aware of
hazards during filming.
From this, I learned the importance of health and safety when it comes to filming and using space outside the
classroom.

7. What have you learnt about using
equipment?
The different names of the equipment we had to use as the camera, boom pole, microphone, headphones,
tripod and the dolly (when needed). We all had different equipment allocated to each person so I was
allocated as the sound person; I was able to use the equipment such as the boom pole and microphone,
by me using this equipment it allowed me to create a clean and exact sounds from the surroundings
during filming. As the boom pole was unsteady during filming, I had to take extra care and hold it with one
hand and position it out of the camera when filming; the sound allows the viewers to understand the
message being delivered to them from the dialogue been said during the course of the advert,
When people in my group had to use the camera and the added equipment, I saw that they learned different
techniques with the camera such as zoom, tilt and pan; this allowed us to create a better effect for the
advert and allow the audience to be interested while watching; also there were required camera shots
such as high angle shot, zoom in and over the shoulder shot which were all completed.

8. What have you learnt about editing?
When editing, we has to use ‘Final Cut Pro’ which had many
advantages but also had disadvantages which helped me and
the group realise how to improve next time and what we
don't need to do in the future while editing; also many of us
from the group experienced the same advantages and
disadvantages.
The advantage that I came across was that there were many
effects to choose from to add into our advert which is also
known as transitions; this allowed the advert to one look
better and allowed me as an individual to know how to edit
during the future.
The disadvantage that we came across was that we didn't take
enough footage of each shot that we needed which we could
have used in our advert to copy, cut and replace certain parts
of a scene and use some of the sound from other shots. One
part this was show was during on of the shots between Agent
Mills and Neo which jolted in the middle of the shot which
could have been shun from is we took more shots of the
same scene.

9. What have learnt about theory with
practice?
As I completed the planning before filming process, us as a group was allowed to learn the different stages
from identifying the components of mise-en-scene, sound, camera shots and watching videos to help us
with this.
This helped me to identify the different camera shots to put in the actual filming basis that were then
interpreted into the final product and helped during the planning process.