Preliminary Task (write up)

The Preliminary Task exercise consisted of filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. The Task should have demonstrated match on acton sot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.  This task was to enable my initial ideas and skills to create a film opening, of the genre of our choice.  For this Task, i was working within a group which had its disadvantages and advantages. The Disadvantages of this, was that we had different ideas and thoughts about how to go about the preliminary task, which later developed into controversy. Also, I felt some were more motivated and hard working than others. The Advantages of a group was that we could get the filming and editing done in a shorter space of time, which left extra time to go over our work.  I was new to the software used e.g Final Cut Express.  At first I found it was difficult to get to grips with the software, and had to learn from others. This helped my understanding whereby i developed new skills, such as; Uploading film clips into a program, exporting them and editing.  Along the way we came across many problems, the camera angle wasn't the correct way which we had intended and we weren't able to adjust the problem.  Secondly, we did't leave enough 'handle' at the start and end of each clip this became an issue as we couldn't us transitions in between, instead we had to use the 'pen tool' and by hand we drew on the edits.  Thirdly, the lighting in the frame was poor because we didn't take this into account when filming in the dark/unlit corridor's.  The Task did not involve using a soundtrack, but we explored this idea because we felt it would add atmosphere to our film opening(Youtube converter > Soundtrack > upload). Overall, I was disappointed with the end result. Note: To improve the quality for my final film opening I will spend more time on developing my editing skills, make sure the camera angles are correct and leave handles, think about lighting also.