1) The student fulfilled the criteria of the preliminary task by filming and editing under 2 minutes a video of a character opening a door using proper filming techniques like matching eyelines and match cuts. 2) They learned that filming during school hours without other students present worked best and that ensuring continuity of costumes between shots was important. Organizing actors and dealing with errors took time. 3) Through the editing process, the student learned how to upload footage, organize clips, trim clips, adjust audio and video, and export the final video, making editing an easier and more important skill for future tasks.

1. REFLECTION OF PRELIMINARY
TASK
BY AMINATTA SYLVA

2. DID YOU MANAGE TO FULFIL ALL THE
CRITERIA?
Yes I do think that we managed to fulfil the criteria as we did what was set in the preliminary task- continuity task
involving filming and editing a character opening a door. Max 2 minutes. We made our video under 2 minutes which
meant that we met the regulations for the length of the video. I think that our filming went well because we did things
like obeying the 180* rule, rule of thirds, eyeline matches, using match on actions to stop the audience from being
bored, cuts (the software wasn’t allowing me to use a fade on the subclips.). The shots we used- long shots, to show the
settings and mise-en-scene, close ups to display emotions, mid shots to show facial and body expressions, over the
shoulder shots, to make the audience feel as if they’re in the scene with the character. We didn’t use any tracking shots
because the dolly made the camera shake and it would make our film fall into the thriller or horror genre. We only used
diegetic sounds as the video wasn’t long enough to have an introduction that included non-diegetic sounds. However I
did want to do freeze frames to introduce the characters to the audience, but I thought that we would not have enough
time.

3. WHAT DID YOU LEARN DURING THE FILMING
PROCESS?
I learnt lots of things that I found difficult to do a year ago, such as editing and using Final Cut Pro and filming. I also
found that the filming process for ideas, locations and characters took a less time than last year. As we managed to get
all of ideas down on to a final product in less than a month. I found it a bit difficult arranging the actors for the scene,
as there would be some errors on the footage from them, such as facial expressions, mixing up scripts, not taking
acting seriously (which made us film the same scene many times.) and filming during different times of the day as it
affected the lighting of the footage (but we fixed it up on the filter changers available on Final Cut Pro), also the people
in the background. I also improved by cutting skills and made 3 match on action shots in the video.
So I learnt that it is best to film during lesson time as all the children are away, because in one of the footages a kid was
asking “are you filming?” which ruined the scene. But we lowered to the volume of that shot to hide the kid’s voice.
Another thing was the costume, actors forgot to wear the clothing that they previously wore in other shots, this caused
a delay in finishing our final product as we didn’t want to have any continuity errors.
We had another idea but it looked a bit boring and lacked drama and the audience would get bored so we switched it
to this idea. I think that we’ve only re-filmed twice due to continuity errors (actor wearing different coloured jumper
etc.), lighting and finding a vacant room to film in. Furthermore I learnt about framing during our filming process- how
everything significant had to be in the shot. I made sure that in most of our shots that the audience know that it is set
in a school. I learnt that not all places give out great sound quality in the footage, so we avoided the canteen and
playground as the sound doesn’t come out clearly.

4. WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT EDITING FROM THE
PROCESS OF MAKING THE FILM?
During the process of editing, I learned how to upload footages, create bins to store the clips in, mark in and out
to select the parts of the shot that you want to make a subclip, how to lower and increase the volume of subclips,
change the lighting through the filters and converting the video into a movie through quicktime player. Now I find
it a lot easier to edit, which is a vital skill for our next preliminary task as it means that the product will be
completed quicker.