7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?

From our preliminary task we have learnt to enhance our planning skills. All of the members in our group sat down and discussed any ideas we had for our main task; we also made notes and then had a vote on the best idea.

We then discussed locations and it was evident that a shopping location such as Manchester town or The Trafford Centre would be ideal for our theme of our movie. We decided to film in Manchester town because we wanted to do the filming in an outside location as we felt the lighting would be much better.

We filmed during our media lessons, as it was the ideal time for when we were all available.

We researched into our main character. In our preliminary task we didn’t do much research and we actually discovered that research was very effective and helpful. We wanted to portray our character as an independent woman who is pretty and rich.

We then created our storyboard, which was the basic outline of our opening sequence. We had to decide what order the scenes would go in and what was going to happen in each frame. However during the filing we added more scenes especially during town when we added the entertainer to add a comedy element and the scene where the protagonist is walking with the big wheel behind her. We particularly liked this as it establishes the location and represents Manchester.

We learnt how to make our own soundtrack with Garage Band as we were not permitted to use an existing commercial song as we were planning. However we decided for our final product we decided to use a copyright free tune from YouTube.

Through the editing we learnt how to use the Apple Macs and Final Cut Pro. Initially we found it difficult and thought we would not be able to familiarize ourselves with this new technology, fortunately we learnt how to use Final Cut Pro and this should be evident in our final product.

From our preliminary task we also learnt how to use the 180° rule. If we had not taken this rule into account the film would not have smoothly and the footage would look odd.

Overall the preliminary task was incredibly useful as it helped us to be cautious during our main task and it enhanced our camera skills too.