AS Media Studies: October 2015

Describe the set brief for the Preliminary Task. What was it that you were asked to create? Use the correct media specific vocabulary and show that you understand the meaning of these terms.

The Set brief that we were given for the preliminary task was to film a scene of two people, one of which opens a door, crosses a room and sits down in a chair opposite the other character, she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task had to demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Explain everything that you did leading up to the point when you started filming (pre-production). Discuss how this process helped to prepare you for filming.

As soon as we had our set brief for the preliminary task, we research the meanings of the media terminology used in the brief. These included match-on-action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. We used the OCR Guides to explain each one of these, in order to understand what was need to be in our preliminary task. We then studied the different types of shots we could use in the task. Afterwards, we made our own examples of these shots and posted them on our blog to show that we understood how to use them.

After gaining enough information that we needed for the preliminary task, we then wrote up our group brief and scenario. 'Clayton "Pac" Pakowski walks upon some stairs and down a corridor. He then enters into the room and sits opposite another student, Thom, who says 'I suppose that you are the good cop'; Clayton says that they should 'start again' and that Thom should tell him everything'. Thom then replies with "where should I start'. Pakowski replies only with "at the beginning..."

After deciding upon the scenario, we create a basic 12-shot story board of all the shots we would use in filming. We had to write down the cast needed, location, shot number, type of shot, if there was any movement/dialogue and a quick sketch of the scene. We then used slideshare to get them onto the blog as to outline the basic plot of the task. This helped us to prepare for when we were actually doing the film as we know what shots we needed to film and could tick them off as we filmed. It also allowed use to keep our filming organised and be efficient in the task of filming.

After doing the storyboard, we went to each of the different locations we would be doing the filming and the made sure they were suitable. We then took pictures as to know where we were going to film and posted them on our blog. We then casted the actors who were going to play each character and posted a picture of them on our blog, in addition to explain why we chose them.

When then practiced using Premier Pro, which we would use to edit the clips together. This meant that we could learn the things we needed to edit the preliminary task; so we knew what we needed to do.

Finally, before filming we made a schedule of timings for the filming so that we could make sure everyone knew what they were going to be doing.

Describe the filming process itself (production). How did this go?

Our filming went smoothly. I feel this was due to the planning that we had done prior to filming. Because we had story-boarded the shots, everyone knew what we needed to do and how long we had to do it. I also feel that due to the planning that, we had chosen the correct person to play each role and filming was much easier. Looking at where we were going to film meant that we already knew what angles we were going to be filming and didn't have to spend more time looking for locations.

Explain the editing stage for your preliminary Task (post-production). This should include how you applied new skills you have learnt.

The new skills I learnt included copying videos into the software, learning how to cut the clips and how to remove the clip's respective sound if need, putting each clip into the correct order, editing them to have perfect match-on-action, adding music into the background and the use of transitions. I applied these skills to make sure that the clips flowed well, in order to achieve match-on-action, editing together the relevant scenes that were needed for to meet the brief.

Evaluate your finished Preliminary Task. How well does it meet the expectations of your set brief? Which parts of it do you think are particularly strong? Where are there weaknesses? What can you identify as being an area for development when it comes to producing your Main Task?

I feel that our preliminary task meets the expectations of the set brief that was given. This is because we had two characters, with one walking into the room and exchanging two lines of dialogue each.

Some positives were:
- All scenes were filmed in the same orientation (i.e. portrait).
- The filming was to the point and was done easily and quickly.

Some negatives were:
- There was a lot of background noise in some scenes and quiet in others; making the piece quite inconsistent.
- The speaking of the characters was not very loud which may be down to the filming equipment that we had used.

One area of development for our main task is to ensure that we use better quality filming equipment and make sure the actors speak louder so that the equipment can record their voices. I would also make sure that we had multiple of each shot as to ensure that we can be confident that each scene is the best it can be.