During the process of our prelim task I learn a lot about camera shots and techniques, editing on premiere and I learnt about genres that I hadn't heard of before. All this came in good use when making my final film opening and I was able to use these skills I had learnt to produce to the best of my ability.
For our prelim task we were given the genre 'Urban Teen Drama' which I wasn't that familiar with. But with research put in I found out that 'Skins' and 'Top Boy' were Urban Teen Drama's that I could get ideas from for my prelim task when looking at the appearance of the actors, story lines and locations. Urban Teen Dramas include rough, low standard people that are into drugs and crime and walk around the streets or are in a school. We took the idea of them being in a school and started to produce our storyboard in which we learnt to label what was happening in each scene, timings of each scene, the camera shots and sound effects. With this research and planning I was able to produce my prelim task knowing what each are my shots were going to be in each scene such as the 180 degree shot, long shot and tracking shot. We also thought of a typical story line that would suit an Urban Teen Drama well about a girl who goes to school dealing drugs with a boy that doesn't go to school and committing crimes in the process. With the storyboard it was easy to know what camera shots we needed to use for each specific scene for example the 180 degree shot for the interview. This made the process run quicker and easier.
My tracking shot has improved because we started off tracking with the camera by hand but now we have learnt how to use the tripod and found this more effective. We have also used shots better for specific scenes and found out which shots work better.For example the long shot worked best on the teacher catching the girl and drug dealer as it gives us the impression that nobody else was around and it was just them and the picture, a close up wouldn't have given much away. We improved our drug dealing scene as first of all it was a long shot and we couldn't hear what they were saying in their conversation so we changed it to a close up. We are more confident with the equipment now as we know how the camera works and it's attachments that are used to upload the videos onto a computer and we know how the tripod can easily make a scene look better by different heights or the smoothness of the shot.
Overall I think our prelim task went well considering it was our first time practicing making up our own story, using our own camera shots and still learning how to edit. Although we didn't meet all of our tasks as our brief production diary wasn't evident and not all of the shots were included, we had our genre conventions, task idea, title and script included and our storyboard. We used premiere mostly to produce our prelim task but also used Prezi to present our research.
My tracking shot has improved because we started off tracking with the camera by hand but now we have learnt how to use the tripod and found this more effective. We have also used shots better for specific scenes and found out which shots work better.For example the long shot worked best on the teacher catching the girl and drug dealer as it gives us the impression that nobody else was around and it was just them and the picture, a close up wouldn't have given much away. We improved our drug dealing scene as first of all it was a long shot and we couldn't hear what they were saying in their conversation so we changed it to a close up. We are more confident with the equipment now as we know how the camera works and it's attachments that are used to upload the videos onto a computer and we know how the tripod can easily make a scene look better by different heights or the smoothness of the shot.
Overall I think our prelim task went well considering it was our first time practicing making up our own story, using our own camera shots and still learning how to edit. Although we didn't meet all of our tasks as our brief production diary wasn't evident and not all of the shots were included, we had our genre conventions, task idea, title and script included and our storyboard. We used premiere mostly to produce our prelim task but also used Prezi to present our research.
