My preliminary task was a continuity video exercise where I had gotten one character to go up to another character and ask for a pair of concert tickets. This task included a set of continuous methods such as match on action and eyeline match. The point of this task was to learn how to make a continuous sequence so that I can incorporate it future projects, such as my BSR opening sequence task. The preliminary task can be seen here:
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY:
STRENGTHS -
The use of digital technology in this opening sequence was quite necessary as we were filming a project that needed to be recorded via a camera and edited via a computing device. During this production there were a few strengths that we found in terms of digital technology. One thing that we were relatively good on was the camera techniques. Here we found that the camera, especially through the hand held shots, was particularly static and was not as rough as expected. This was a good thing as the viewers were able to see the framing quite easily as opposed to having to go through a rough shot. As seen at 0:12, the character in the short sleeve black shirt (character A) is walking whilst the camera follows him. This did not take very long to shoot as it worked out with quite a bit of ease. However, although this may be a strength for this project, the camera work was the opposite for the BSR project. 
With the scene at 1:14 where Zakir is walking in the park and is looking at various objects there, the camera work was quite rough. The point of the roughness was supposed to make the intensity levels rise, but I feel like it was too rough, which resulted in the project looking slightly cheap. However a reason as to why it was particularly more difficult to get the scene to be as static as the preliminary task is because of the fast paced connotation that the BSR sequence aimed to present. The preliminary task was supposed to be much calmer than the BSR one, so it was much easier to film the slower paced movement whereas the fast paced one needed to be fast and accurate. However, I do feel that I have improved in terms of my camera work as during the part where we do see Zakir's face we see it quite clearly.
Another strength that I have found in terms of digital technology is the continuity. There are many scenes in the preliminary task where continuous movement is apparent, such as the use of eyeline match. At 0:20, character A is looking at someone and then the following shot denotes that it was character B that was being looked at. This is a great strength as it is clear what character A is looking at. This was also successfully incorporated in the BSR project at various points such as 1:18 where Zakir is shown looking down and the following shot shows that it was a bench that he is looking at. It is clear that it was the bench as his eyes are in direct proportion to the object throughout both shots. This was particularly useful as it allowed the viewers to understand his confused state of mind; as he is looking at random objects in the park, it can exemplify how desperate he is to get away from his current lifestyle. I believe that the way that I improved on this is by focusing on the meaning behind the shots. In the preliminary task, the eyeline match is very basic as it involved a typical eyeline with two eyes. In the BSR sequence I have incorporated more creativity as I have not only used an object but also added meaning behind the use of the object.
A final strength is that I found the editing on iMovie to be quite easy to do. As I was not used to this newer version of the software, I thought that it was quite difficult to get to grips with, but I had found my way in the end. I learned how to trim clips, make the sound precise, add in continuity etc. and it ended up being quite a good project. The use of iMovie during my preliminary task enabled me to have a greater understanding when working on my opening sequence. This allowed to have a head start on the editing as I did not have to worry about learning the basics of the software. As I went straight into it, editing was done quite quickly. Although I found out that I had to re-shoot and trim a lot of the shots that I had obtained, there were no big limitations created by the software.
WEAKNESSES -
As well as a few strengths, digital technology did not arrive without leaving behind a few weaknesses. One of these was that I had to find a suitable stand to hold the camera on during certain shots. For example, if I wanted to move the camera, I either had to turn the tripod bar sidewards or have a handheld shot. At this point of my preliminary task I was unaware of the use of a monopod so I did not know that we could incorporate it in our shots. If this was possible, we could have heightened the stability of my shots and made it look much more professional. This had helped me to create more clear shots during my opening sequence as seen at 1:15 where the pathway is shown. If I had the monopod like I did here, then maybe the shot would of had been even clearer and still in my preliminary task as a monopod is much easier to take control over than a handheld shot.
Another weakness faced because of digital technology was getting to grips with the newer version of iMovie. There was a great difference between the two pieces of work and I had to make sure that I learnt as soon as possible so that I could get on with my opening sequence task. In my preliminary I was guided through the basic steps of it and had found my way in the end. I feel that because of this preliminary task I had learned how to do it correctly enough so that my opening sequence project was not brought down because of it. When I first began editing on iMovie for my BSR task, I was pretty familiar with most of the things that I wanted to do as I had gone through the struggle of learning during the preliminary. This was very useful as it saved me a lot of time for the more important part of the course.
Next year, as I am very confident with iMovie I may not need to go through another task to gain any experience. However, I do not know everything there is to know about this software, so I aim to make the most of it before I have to actually make my final project. Also, another aim that i have for next year would be to look at all of the available options before rushing to complete a task. No matter how insignificant a task may seem, going through it thoroughly can result in better solutions as I would be much closer to gaining the best possible outcome of it.
CREATIVITY:
STRENGTHS -
Creativity is something that is very key in the film industry. In order to make people fond of my production, I had to find a bit of creativity in it. This was something I enjoyed as I find myself to be quite a creative person. I believe that one strength of my preliminary task was the creativity in terms of the camera work, in particular, the match-on-action. One moment that I was quite fond of was the part at 0:04 as it was not a typical kind of match-on-action. I believe that a typical use of this technique is when the camera shows the point of view the audience whereas I incorporated a point of view shot of the actor as well as showing it in third person. This enabled the audience to see the way that the shot was working from both character A's point of view as well as understanding how it looked from someone else's. I included use this in my BSR sequence as I felt that it would be quite useful to understand Zakir's state of mind. This can be seen at 1:21 where the character is shown looking at the tree through both the audience's point of view and his own. This was something that I felt I improved on as in my sequence the use of it actually had a meaning whereas in the preliminary task it seems as if it was put there for the purpose of just being incorporated.
Something else that I found I did well in with creativity was when I played around with the shots. At 0:09 there is a shot of character A's shoes. This shot can connote to the audience the wealth of this character as they are a designer brand. This use of creativity allowed me to look at the connotations that I could get from particular shots. I used this when thinking about my opening sequence task as I had wanted to emphasise on Zakir's wealth as well. I did this at 0:33 where Zakir's laptop is shown running out of charge. This can be a denotation of how he may not be able to afford much electricity as home due to his family not being able to pay the bills as easily. This small use of mise-en-scene had a connotation that some viewers may have noticed, thus adding to their opinion of him by making him seem like he has greater hardships than expressed through the obvious.
WEAKNESSES -
In terms of creativity, there were a fair share of weaknesses that I experienced throughout my project. One of these was the use of a typical eyeline match at 0:24. Although it denoted to the audience who character A was talking to, it was not very creative as it is something that most people would think of doing when thinking of an eyeline match technique. I believe that in the BSR task, I had incorporated a greater use of creativity with this continuity technique as there is much more reasoning and uniqueness behind my choice. At 1:22 Zakir is looking at a tree and it actually has a great meaning behind it. This choice was incorporated so that it could be hinted to the audience that he was looking for an escape and was so desperate that he looked at even the items that would help him the least. 
Also, during the preliminary task I aimed to have a creative use of transitioning through my camera technique and framing. At 0:16 character A walks towards the camera and the next shot denotes the exact opposite. This was intentionally a creative use of camera work as I wanted to make it look quite artistic. This was not the case, unfortunately, as it ended up looking quite cheap and pointless due to the flow not being apparent and there being no visible meaning behind the choice. I aimed to make the transitioning flow better during my opening sequence as when I felt that there was no better way of making the shots flow, I added in a set of credits between the shots, as seen at 0:54 where Zakir is walking and then after the credits are shown, he is running. This allowed the scene to seem fast paced so that the tension could build without having to ruin the continuity.
In terms of creativity, I plan on creating better shots that will actually look good on camera as oppose to just paper. This will help me to create a good project that would lead to viewers being quite fond of it (something that I aimed to do for this). Another aim for next year would be to have a true purpose behind every shot as opposed to having it there for the sake of it being there. This will allow me to have a more meaningful project that more people will like. Although I have met these aims in my BSR work, I aim to continue this for next year as it has worked out quite well for me already.
POST PRODUCTION -
STRENGTHS:
One thing that I found a strength in was the use of sound. As I wanted to denote a use of continuity in my work in my preliminary task, I got the sound of one clip (0:20), had it play with the visual work smoothly and then have it run over to the next scene as if character A were saying it at the same time that character B was speaking. This allowed the audience to feel as though both shots were shot at the exact same time when in reality it was not. I did not incorporate this use of sound in my BSR task as there was only one moment where speech was apparent and that was with only one character. However, I made it quite obvious that the voiceover from 0:17 to 0:43 included was Zakir's thoughts at that exact point as the voice was quite angry, as were his facial expressions. With the two put together, it was quite obvious that Zakir was thinking those angry thoughts as they both were correspondent of each other.
Another strength that I found in post production was that editing the scenes were particularly easy to do in the BSR task. With the preliminary one I felt that I did struggle quite a bit at the beginning of it but found my way in the end. This worked out in my favour in the long run as due to my struggle, I learnt a lot and was able to begin the work for my BSR task very quickly. This not only saved time, but allowed me to show off my newly found schools in a working environment. Also, due to me being knowledgeable of how to use iMovie, I found time to play around with the affects so that I could create a better production. For example, with the logos from 0:00 to 0:08 of my BSR work, once they were originally imported, they had a "Ken Burns" zooming effect. I did not want this as it was not very typical of a BSR film. After playing around a little bit I found out how I could remove this effect so that my film could portray the correct conventions of its particular genre.
WEAKNESSES:
One weakness faced in post production was the creation of the music. My preliminary task did not include any music at all as I felt that it was not necessary. Although I did not earn any creativity points here I do still stand by the choice as music may have changed the atmosphere (something I did not want). However, I did increase the use of music in my BSR task as we created an original piece of music for the street scene which starts at 0:46. As my partner and I were not very familiar with the Logic program on a Mac, we had to get help from a Music Technology AS student, Maninder Tack. He guided us through the available choices and helped us to understand what would go well with what. Although it ended up working in our favour, we did find that it was quite troublesome to get to that place. This enabled us to learn how to use the software properly and how difficult it actually is to create a piece of music using software like this.
Also, I found that editing the clips so that they were precise was quite a difficult thing during my preliminary task. I would make quite a mess of the work as I would either edit it too much or too little which would then result in disturbing the continuity. As at the time I was quite new to this version of iMovie, I found it quite difficult to make up for my changes. A moment in particular that was quite difficult was the transitioning at 0:16 where character A walks towards the camera. As this was not a very good idea in the first place, I suffered when it came to post production. I tried my best by adding in a fade to/in from white at the beginning and end of the shots so that there was some form of flowing in it, but this still did not work out as well. When it came to my BSR work, I was much more experienced in terms of continuity editing. I knew how to trim or extend clips as well as going back to what I needed to go back to. For example, the library scene from 0:17 to 0:43 had to fit the audio, so when I made the clips too long, I shortened them and vice versa. This knowledge on how to edit the clips allowed me to make the editing much more precise, thus creating a particularly continuous and flowing piece of work, something I intended to create.
PLANNING & RESEARCH -
STRENGTHS:
With the planning for my preliminary task I felt that one strength was my group; all three of us were fairly motivated and hard working so we all planned our individual sections according to what we were all doing. This worked out well as the entire project looks as though it was planned by one person. You can tell that this is the case as there are many bits of evidence where the planner changed but the continuity level did not, such as 0:10. This was the moment where my storyboarding came into play after one of my partners had just finished. Here character A is denoted walking and then we see an over the shoulder shot of him doing the exact same thing. This worked out in my favour as it presented the project in a particularly continuous way, which is exactly what I wanted to obtain. I believe that this had worked much better in my BSR task as I had chosen to work with one of the people from my preliminary. As we were already familiar with each other's work ethic, we got a long pretty well. We both planned the shots together and had made sure that the continuity of it all was very apparent as we did not want any errors. This was exemplified through many times, one of them being 0:54 where Zakir is walking and through the two shots it looks as though they were both shot at the same time.
Another strength that I found was that we had done quite a bit of research for my preliminary task in terms of what previous candidates have done. We noticed in other's work that certain rules were not followed and there was a lack of continuity. We took this in mind and made certain that we did not fall for the same trap. We improved on this in our BSR work as we had, again, looked at previous candidates' work (and here) to find out what worked well with people's productions and what did not. We found that lighting was a key issue in certain people's work as the light outside had gone from light to dark really quickly. We avoided this by making certain that we recorded everything within a certain time. We can tell that our work did not cross the lighting boundaries as we can tell from shots such as the ones from 0:17 to 0:43 and 0:46 until the end, the lighting did not change one bit.
WEAKNESSES:
One weakness faced in this section was that I did not spend enough time planning the shots. It is evidential that not enough thought was put into them as the one at 0:15 did not looked nice at all. If I had thought about this shot before I had went and filmed it, it may have turned out much better than expected. Unfortunately this was not the case. However, in my BSR task I believe that I did improve as my partner and I had sat down to think about what we were going to incorporate before we actually went and filmed. We also changed our minds about some shots as we believed that they did not work as well as we had hoped. One piece of evidence of this are the credits. We planned to make the credits enter in a typing formation to fit the blog convention, but we felt that in order to maintain an intense scene, having slow graphics would be very counter productive. This ended up not being incorporated as it was quite useless in terms of our representation. Also, we planned on using a shot of Zakir's word beings typed (a screen recording) but we found that it was too difficult to record, type and move the recording rectangle at the same time as it did not function that way. We ended up getting rid of that idea and replacing it with shots of Zakir's face instead as that was much easier to complete and still stuck to the themes and conventions we aimed to include.
When it came to researching for our preliminary task, I believe that in order to gain the best possible outcome, looking at a professional piece of work would of had given me the right sort of idea as the professional(s) would know more. I did not do this and it resulted in my work not looking as professional as it could have been. I also did not improve this very well when it came to my BSR work. Although I looked at many real BSR films, particularly Film 4 productions, I believe that I did not look at the right kinds of films. Although I looked at "Submarine" I feel as though I had analysed others such as "Kidulthood" in much greater detail. Nonetheless, both films are of the same genre and I have looked at many more such as "Looking For Eric" (something that focuses on mental behavior, like my film) etc. I have gained an understanding of what my film should be like, but if I were to redo it, I would look at films that are more specifically relevant to my own.
For next year, I plan on looking at more relevant examples as that is what can gain me greater understanding for specific pieces of work due to it targeting similar issues. Also, I would think more about the shots that I plan as it can save time if I think before I produce as I do not have to go through the trial and error hassle.
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