Preliminary task- Miss Georgiou

Our premliminary task was to film a short clip that would help us with the creation of our opening thriller and demonstrate our camera work. This was a Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. We were told that this task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule and should last around one minute in length. By baring these in mind we created the task which, is displayed below:

Analysis: 



My group members were myself, Sophie and Guneet. As a group we briefly outlined what we were going to do and were all quick to conclude that we felt we should recruite people to be in our task so, that we could focus on the camera work and making sure the shot was executed correctly. We asked the permisson of both Bobby and Anna to be included within our task and they performed the dialogue and the rest of the task under our direction. By doing this it allowed us a group to work together and really focus on what we were trying to achieve and how we were going to achieve it. By having eachother on hand we could give eachother advice and consultance on ideas and suggestions that we had which, all ultimately led to the task running smoothly and efficiently.

The purpose of the task ultimately was to prepare ourselves for our thriller opening. We were able to test and use the equipment we may choose to use in our thriller, such as the camera and the tripod to make sure we could use them correctly. We were also able to edit our videos afterwards which, insited us as a group into what our editing stages of our thriller may be like. For example: We found that Sophie was very good at editing and could do it correctly and well in this task, so, as a group we concluded that when we are to film our main task perhaps, Sophie would be a good choice of person to asign the role of editing to. Alongside this, the point of the task was also to demonstrate that we could film a clip and produce one well.

Our task involved a series of things. It involved us working together as group and coming up with sensible informed decisons, it involved us fitting the brief we were given, finding characters, using the camera correctly and ultimately, producing the clip to the correct standard. All these involvements in our task has set us up for our future work together and has also made us create a clip that we feel as a group is a good starting point to our group work together. It was important that we were all involved in the creation of this task, and that we were all working hard to make it as free flowing as it could possibly be. A way we did this was by asiging roles but also, shadowing eachother while we did these roles so, we felt like we had support the whole way through.

By putting together this clip we also learnt how to manage our time correctly, how to work as a group, what our strengths and weakness' are and how to listen to eachothers ideas and choices as they may have an important impact on our ending outcome. We learnt how to use the equipment efficently as, we hadn't yet used the tripod or camera before. Now that we know how to use these when it comes to our own thriller opening creation, we will find that we can get into the task a lot quicker as, we have now learnt how to do all the things needed on the device. Overall, the task was a real eye opener and learning curfew for us all as to when we do our own thriller.

Like any task, you find things that went well imediately and things we struggled with. We found it quite hard at first to figure out how to use the camera but, with a bit of time and care and some outside advice we managed to figure out that issue relatively quickly which, as a group I feel is a strength of ours. The main issue that stood out to myself and the rest of the group was fitting in with the time allocated, our clip had gone slightly over the mark it should have done and in the editing stages we were to fix this. Luckily, as said previously, we found that Sophie took a flare to editing, where as I was more efficent at the camera work and Guneet was skilled at keeping up our time allocations.

If we were to complete this task again there are things we would carry out differently after having learnt what went well and what didn't when carrying it out first time round. For example: as stated above as a group we had an issue with timing and was saved by Sophie's editing, but, if we were to carry it out again perhaps we could have taken out some planning so we knew how long each shot would be. This would then allow us to have a clip that is of the correct timing and would also make Sophie's job of an easier nature as she wouldn't have to cut as much as she did before. By identifying improvements we can apply them to our next task. 


To conclude, overall the prelimiary task was succesful for us as a group although, it was a learning lesson for us all as it was new and un-touched before hand. We all agreed as a group at the end that the task will deffiantly help us when formating our own thriller opening as we felt we had, had a true taster of what was to come. Had we have not been set this task, I think that our creation of our thriller wouldn't perhaps run as smoothly as it will, as we would have had to get to know everything to do and would have had to taken a lot of steps back so, we could learn all the requirements.