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I created this at the start of my AS year. I believe that I have made some good progress since then. Our aim was to create something from a scenario: A character opens a door, crosses a room and sits down in a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple lines of dialogue.
What was successful?
I believe that overall my preliminary task was good and it was a good way for me to get familiar with the technology I will need to use for my BSR project. I believe my digital technology use has improved greatly. My post production skills made the whole thing very good. I believe the match on action looked very good at some parts. I continued to use this in my BSR production too. However I believe the match on action in Cornered was much more slick and professional.
I also believe that the actual creativity and imagination of our story was successful. When listening to other people's ideas, everyone was doing a funny happy theme however me and my partner wanted to go through a different, dark route. In doing so I believe we have come up with a deep yet interesting topic that does occur regularly. Even though we stepped out the box we still kept to the brief and did follow what we were supposed to do. We did the same when creating our BSR film. I believe our story was very original because there is not a film out about an abused pregnant teen. Even though it is different it still fits into the brief and the genre of a BSR because it is set in urban London and includes themes and characters that are seen everyday in the girtty parts of London. I also liked the fade I put into my preliminary because it displayed a transition that made it aware to the viewer that there was a flashback. In Cornered we only used fades in between graphics. I also believe that when planning our preliminary task we were very good at keeping up to time and we used all our research to make the task as good as it could of been.
What was unsuccessful?
Even though I believe my preliminary task was overall rather good it still had some drawbacks that could of been improved on. I think that our idea was very creative in the essence that it was different and stepped outside the box however I do not believe we had portrayed the emotion of shock and sadness like we would of planned. Looking back at it, the acting is amateur and the awkward shot types make the task as a whole humorous rather than sympathetic. I used this to my advantage when creating Cornered because I made sure I displayed Becky's rebellious attitude through the gritty camera movements and facial expressions seen through close ups. At the time I created the preliminary task I was unaware of the LiveType programme and so I did not create any stand out graphics and make the task more original. However when I created my BSR production I was taught how to use it and used full screen graphics and supra graphics throughout. Eventhough I believe my timekeeping was successful I believe that the actual planning of our task was poor. We did not take into consideration the light intensity of the shots and in some shots the light in the background causes the colour to dim and cause some distortion of continuity. Me and my partner definitely learnt from this and we know how to catch the light in our shots to make it look clear yet it still followed the 180 degree rule.
How Did I Improve?
I believe that I have improved since completing my preliminary task.
The digital technology aspect of things I have improved greatly. In my BSR I took into great consideration the shot types such as close ups because they are common in BSR films and because it is the best type of shot to display a characters facial expression. I used many of these close up shots and long shots to display our characters body language which I had a lack of in my Preliminary task. Also when editing I believe that my match on action shots have become much more tighter and slicker which makes it look more professional. In my preliminary task it was very basic and you could evidently see the change of shot, however I believe that in Cornered the match on action is so slick that you can not even tell that there was a different shot. I used the long takes to my advantage because it is a common trait of BSR films so I didn't use a lot of quick cuts like I did with my Preliminary task. For next year I would definitely set myself a target of attempting to plan what I am going to do properly. For example to choose a day to film where I know for definite that the actors are available and that the weather is okay so I am 100% sure that I am able to shoot so there is no hassle and stress which me and my partner had to go through.
