Evaluation of Preliminary Task - Danielle Irwin

The preliminary task went well, considering we had to film everything in the school environment. After storyboarding and writing our short script, we had to find actors, which proved to be difficult, especially as we only had lesson time to record. Once we had found our actors, it was hard keeping the consistency as we filmed over three days. Things like clothing and props had to be kept the same, and little things, like our actress' nails are painted in some scenes, but not in others, were only noticed afterwards. In our main task, we will carefully look out for these things.

Another deterrent, was the heavy snow that caused school to be closed, and therefore filming to be put back. We worked fast to make sure we could present our extract for the later deadline. Having a group of three has helped, as we can work well, and effectively together.

Once the filming was completed, we had to transfer it to the Apple Mac using a Firewire. We had trouble with this, as we hadn't rewound the tape to the beginning before filming. This meant it was difficult to find our recordings, and some things had to be done again. Next time, we will definately make sure that we start from the beginning of the tape, to be more efficient and save time.

Editing was difficult to begin with, because we haven't had a lot of experience with the Apple computers. Working together, we managed to teach ourselves the basics, like cutting, and the effects. Once we had cut out all the mistakes our actors made, and the uneccesery scenes, we put them all together. We then used Garage Band to create our sound effects; this was quite rushed because our deadline was under an hour away. Next time, we will definiately organise our time better, and make sure we don't spend a lot of time on one thing, and not enough on another.

We didn't use too many effects, to keep a sense of realism, and not to make it too over the top, however, we used a ghost effect when our actress turned around near the end of the actress. We also altered the colours, to give a more professional tone and to emphasise certain darker colours, like purple and blue.

For the transitions, we used all cuts to keep it fast paced, and stayed clear of tacky wipes etc, to escentuate the professional tone once again.

The preliminary task has really helped us to gain further knowledge in the production of short extracts, and will make the main task easier to complete, and better in the long run.