The document discusses how the student's production skills developed throughout their AS media project. It began with experience from a previous GCSE project but required learning new skills for a Western genre film. Planning was challenging due to different filming locations, costumes, weather. Through preliminary tasks and constant planning discussions, the student learned about sound recording, storyboarding, costume details, location scouting, and editing techniques. Overall, the project helped develop their production skills for filming outside of school.

1. How did your production skills develop
throughout this project

2. Starting point
Fortunately, I did have past experience
from creating my GCSE media project ‘The
Disciple’. Our group had decided to allow
everybody to do every role, this meant that
I had some experience in filming and
editing by the end of the project. But the
Disciple is a completely different Genre that
follows different conventions than our
current project, this meant that we had to
learn new ways to meet the conventions of
Western movies, such as the shot/reverse
shot.

3. Challenging aspects
The Difference between our GCSE project
and our AS project was huge, which forced
us to learn entirely different skills in order to
complete the project. Unlike ‘The Disciple’,
‘A bullet for James Wesley Adams’ required
us to find a fitting location and costumes.
This meant that could not film during school
times. And when we did film, we had to
ensure that weather and time of day did
not differ too much between shots in order
to prevent continuity errors.
I was not used to working with these
restrictions and meant that most of the time
had to be spent planning the project in
ways that ensured that no time is to be
wasted during filming days.

4. Preliminary task
The preliminary task served to prepare us for the
final project, as it was the first filming task we had
done all year. From this we learned that recording
sound without a microphone was not an option for
the final task. And the importance of continuity
editing techniques, such as cutting on action or
match on action.
The fact that we had to follow the 180 degree rule
taught us the importance of planning every shot.
So we created a storyboard to help us decide the
framing and angle of every shot.

5. General Planning
Initially I did not think that the
project would require as much
planning as it did. Though this
meant that the group had to
have constant discussions to
make decisions such us date/time
of filming. Fortunately, using social
media made it so that we did not
waste too much time and could
discuss the work when we were
not at school.

6. Costume planning
For our task we needed costumes in order
to make it look as professional as possible,
fortunately, my group members owned
most of their needed costumes, though we
had to order some parts online, such as the
gun holster. I was unfamiliar with the
importance of detailed costumes. But as
our project included many close up shots,
the clothing worn had to look very realistic.
And it did.
I also learned to think about certain
connotations of aspects of the costume,
such as the color of the costume. (How
darker colors connote to evil

7. Location planning
We were tasked with finding an
appropriate setting for the ambition ‘other-
wordly’ setting that the story we thought of
takes place in. Luckily, one of our group
members had one in mind and it was
perfect. This was the first time I was to film
outside of school and it meant that we had
to have means of transportation. Luckily a
friend offered to drive us there and back.

8. Editing development
Although I did not edit much of
the piece, I learned a lot about
the importance of certain editing
techniques, like continuity editing.
Which allows our film to flow
smoothly. And color correction
which helped create the
atmosphere we wanted for the
film.