Editing Our Preliminary Task

  Editing our Preliminary Task.
Our blog just after we posted.



By Scott Cawkwell

Photos Of Our Preliminary Set

This is the staircase that we used  to film our first couple of shots.

This is the door that we walked through halfway through the scene.



















By Scott Cawkwell

Preliminary Activity

This is our finished priliminary activity.

By Bart Lang, Scott Cawkwell, Josh Thomas and Ian Slade.

Post Production Preliminary Evaluation

When we were editing the preliminary activity we found that the speech during the dialogue was inaudible and the wind noise in the other shots made it sound unprofessional. I then decided to remove the raw audio from the video and replace it with a tense, pacey drum track I recorded myself. For the conversation part, I decided to re-dub the audio by recording the exchanges again later in the editing studio using a microphone. This meant the audio was clear and high quality but, we had trouble syncing the audio with the speech. This was what most of our time editing was composed of. When we did this and played it back to ourselves after uploading it to YouTube, we found the final exchange to be far louder than all the others. We put this down to the voice actor holding the microphone too close to his face. This should be avoidable in the main task because we now know the affect it can have on the audio. Furthermore, we plan to stay away from dialogue in general.

Any further problems were avoided due to the use of our storyboard. This meant we had a clear image in each of our heads of what we wanted to do. This meant we filmed quickly and easily, and had time to try new shots and perfect current ones. This is a lesson we will definitely take to our main thriller because it helped us significantly in the prelim task.

Overall the prelim was definitely a useful task to do because we learned how to use our cameras and editing software. This will give us one less hurdle to jump in the main task and allow us more time for blogging and any re-shoots we need to do.  In terms of editing we learned how to do basic cuts and fades. We also learned how to use effects and change them to suit. We also learned what looks good on an actual film. We also learnt about how different length of take gives a different feel to a scene and how to make the audience differentiate between real time and reel time.

We have had positive feedback from many peers and both our teachers. One teacher, upon first seeing it described it as “epic”. However many people did comment on the aforementioned loudness of the final exchange of dialogue.

The final preliminary we had did not match the image we had in our head. This was mainly because we filmed in a different location to where we wanted to at first. This actually turned out to be an advantage due to the better lighting conditions and cleaner look of the place we finally settled on so we figured it was for the better. We also added in a quick establishing shot of a CCTV camera to make it clear to the audience we were filming from the perspective of a surveillance camera, due to audience feedback.

By Bart Lang

Production Of Our Preliminary Task

When we filmed our preliminary task we had a few problems, these problems included, when we were filming on the staircase we had people always trying to walk so we had to tell them to wait until we had finished the scene, this was annoying as some people did not listen and walked down with us so we had to then walk to the top of the stairs and start again.   Another problem we had with our prelim was that when we went outside to film our voices could not be heard over the wind so we had to dub the voices in later.  Also it started to rain so we had to quickly rush all the shots before it rained.  The final problem we had was that the camera was slowly running out of batteries and we had none spare so once again we had to make sure our shots were quick and over and done quickly with no out takes.  

Our group learnt a lot of lessons from doing our preliminary task, one of these lessons was that we should always make sure that the camera has fresh batteries in them and also we should always bring spare batteries as if we run out on set then it would be very difficult leaving the set and try to find a place that sells batteries.   Another lesson we have learnt for the main task is to make sure that nobody speaks in our film as the cameras are not good when it comes to picking up sound so we had to take further measures to make sure our voices could be heard. 

I do not think the shooting took long as we did not have to do a lot and as we were used to the camera as we used our own camera.  Also as there was a group of us there we all discussed our ideas and then put them onto camera and after we filmed everything it was then up to our group to choose what shots go where and if we needed to re-film anything, but after looking at all the shots we decided that nothing needed changing so then we edited it.  Also the main person who actually filmed the shots does photography outside of sixth form it was easier for us as we had his advice on the lighting and the framing of the shot, this helped us a lot as because of this advice we managed to choose a location which had near perfect conditions. 

I do not think that our group would change anything that we did for the preliminary task as we worked well together and the final production was a mixture of all our work and not just one person’s ideas.  The preliminary task really helped our group as it showed us all that we can all come up with ideas and that our group is capable of creating, filming and editing a piece of work that can become really good.

By Scott Cawkwell

Pre-Production (Planning your prelim)

For our pre-production we started with making a storyboard to plan our prelim. The storyboard was useful to us because it helped us plan our prelim and also helped us decide the type of shot, how many seconds the shot would be, if we was going to use a cut, fade or dissolve, the shot size, the camera angle, the lighting, the colours in frame, the setting of the shot, props, costumes and sounds that were going to be involved in the shot. Also the storyboard helped us visualise the shot as we drew a picture of what the shot would look like and also have a brief description of the action in the shot.

Also before we started filming our prelim Year 13 students that had taken Media Studies in Year 12 helped us with learning how we used the cameras and tripods. This was helpful as some of us may not have known how to use the cameras or tripods before and we learned knew things about how to use the cameras and how to set up the tripods, also another factor is that the Year 13 students had been in our position before whilst making our prelim. This helped as they knew our situation and knew tips to give us as they had been in our position before.

Before we started our prelim we had watched other prelims from years before. This gave us an idea of how we should shoot our prelim and how long it should be. It also gave us ideas on what to do our prelim on. Errors we saw in these prelims was that some camera angles shouldn’t have been used, props, setting and the actual plan of the prelim. We learned lessons from these on what not to do in our prelim and what to do. This gave us ideas on how to structure our prelim and what type of camera angles should be used within it.

By Joshua Thomas

Preliminary Storyboard

This is the two page storyboard for our preliminary activity.

By Joshua Thomas, Ian Slade, Bart Lang and Scott Cawkwell