Evaluation of The Preliminary Task

I felt our Preliminary Task was extremely useful in developing my skills with the equipment, I also learnt from the mistakes that were made:


Camerawork
This was the first time using the media suite cameras. Firstly, we had to put the charged battery and the blacked out tape into the camera, then attach the camera to a tripod and dolly. I found my way around the camera, for example I learnt how to focus and white balance the camera using a piece of white blank paper. Using the tripod and dolly we filmed still and sharp shots. I was able to view the footage just filmed on the camera screen. When necessary I used the rewind and play buttons to skim through the footage to find the exact shot to check. I made sure they were in focus and not shaky. If I were to film our Preliminary Task again I would include many different types of shots such as extreme close ups and low angle shots.


Editing
It was also my first time using the editing facilities. I had to find my way around the computer including uploading/capturing the footage we had filmed. The keyboard was new to me therefore the Preliminary Task helped me to find my way around the keyboard using mostly the cut/razor tool and the select tool. I became familiar with the 'timeline' and the view window as we edited our work. We were using Adobe Premiere Pro 2 which had many more features and flexibility than what I was used to using - iMovie. I understood that the software we have available to us is incredibly advanced. Now that I have spent time using the software I feel I am well prepared to edit our Thriller Title opening sequence (using continuity editing mainly) once we have filmed.

Sound
The first time we shot the conversation, we didn’t check that the sound of the characters speaking was being recorded, so when it came to editing, the dialogue was nearly mute. So we recorded it again and learnt that you must always check the microphone is on and working properly by plugging in a pair of headphones. Another mistake that is evident in our Preliminary Task is the fact we did not mute the background noise when there is no dialogue. The result of this oversight is that we now have people speaking in the background while Liat is walking towards the table which is very distracting and amateur. 

Overall lessons learnt from Preliminary Task

I have learnt that filming and editing take much longer than you would expect it to. Furthermore, I have learnt that the same shot needs to be filmed numerous times so the editor has a wide range of shots to chose from and is not restricted to one. If we were to do this task again, I would check the sound while filming, aim to improve on the continuity and film the same shot many times. In addition, when filming I would add a few seconds at the beginning and end of each shot as it would give us much more flexibility in the editing suite to make cuts. Finally, I would allow more time to film and edit as there is limited amount of equipment and editing time in school.