Alex Cojocaru, AS Media, 9244: May 2015

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

When we created our Preliminary Task, we had no experience with making movies, editing or filming in general. We had very basic ideas without a specific plot and everything was simply thrown together in an attempt to complete the task.

Point 1 - Setting

Firstly, we will look at our setting for our two separate products. For our preliminary task, we used what was available to us, which was the school hallway and the canteen (doors pictured to the right of the screenshot). We did not put enough thought into it at this stage and, although we had originally planned to use the English office as an ideal workplace setting illusion, it was unavailable to us at the time and so we settled for what we thought would be the next best thing. We encountered problems with this as, being the canteen, it was fairly noisy due to the fact that a lot of people and teachers would walk in throughout the day, and we could hear the noises coming from the kitchen, making our product look unprofessional.

For the opening sequence, we made sure to organise and ask permission for using certain locations. We mainly filmed inside two separate houses (where our actors lived), which was beneficial because it meant we could take our time and there were no restrictions in place. We also filmed out in the street as well, on the road next to one of the houses we filmed in, which was good because it made it easy for us to get there. Putting more thought into it meant that we could organise it in such a way so that we knew that we were not going to encounter any issues regarding the locations.

Point 2 - Continuity editing

In our AS product, we were very careless with props and continuity editing in general, as can be seen in the following screenshots. In the first one, the bags are visible behind one of the girls, but in the second they are gone. We did not consider re-filming everything before the point where we removed the bags, which was careless and made our overall product look unprofessional.

In our opening sequence, we made sure that we put more thought into the continuity editing. As can be seen in the two screenshots below, we had the character of Elisabeth carrying the apple core in her hand throughout the whole video. Bins were unavailable to us at the time so the actress had nowhere to throw it away, and we did not want to take it from her as there would be no continuity if she appeared without it without an explanation.

Point 3 - Match on Action

For our preliminary task, our match on action editing was pretty basic especially as we realised later that we should have done it while opening the door rather than it being already open. While the two shots added up and made sense when edited together, we thought that the set-up and the lead-up to it could have been done better, though it was not necessarily incorrect.

For our opening sequence, we repeated the shot but completed it through opening the door, as the effect merely looked better. We thought this was a massive improvement because again, we didn't put a lot of thought into our preliminary task match on action, while for our sequence we sat and planned exactly what was going to happen, even down to the opening and closing of the door.

Point 4 - Costuming, hair, makeup

For our preliminary task costuming, we were already dressed in smart clothing as this is our sixth form policy. However, we did not actually plan what we were going to wear, and this was a problem because while the costuming was smart it wasn't necessarily formal, for example, the girl on the right was wearing a coat over her clothes so that it wasn't possible to actually see her clothing. We all just turned up wearing whatever it is that we wore that day without making sure that our mise-en-scene was relevant to the plot of our task (an office setting, for example). Our actors also did not wear any make-up (quite unusual for this type of setting) and no thought went into making sure that the hair looked neat and linked to the plot of the video; our characters did not have personalities of their own and they definitely didn't become obvious through the clothing.

For our opening sequence, a lot of thought went into our costuming, as we wanted the clothes to represent who the characters were, as people, and what could be inferred about their personalities from the way that they were dressed. For example, the character of Ash was wearing a chequered shirt, leggings, smart shoes and a blazer. We also had her hair thrown in a bun to show that although she is trying to make an effort she is not completely prepared to make that commitment of essentially changing who she is as a person to conform to society's rules of how a woman should be dressed on different occasions, as she is represented as carefree and casual.

Elisabeth, on the other hand, is wearing very smart clothing, high heels and carries a Gucci handbag while her make-up is minimal and her hair is very neat. This all shows that she is in control of herself and her life, as she is shown to be quite a strong character whom does not conform to society's rules because she doesn't follow them, she makes them, which is shown in her confidence when it comes to selecting clothing and also from the way she walks. Her back is straight and she is walking quite quickly and confidently, while Ash is slightly hunched, showing that she is perhaps less confident than Elisabeth.

We thought this was much more effective than the preliminary task and we thoroughly enjoyed the planning that came along with this section of our planning stage.

Point 5 - Editing (quick cuts)

For our preliminary task, we used very basic editing; we simply cut and split clips and put them together in a sequence without thinking about how we could create an effect, although we did use some angles to show the differences between the two characters in terms of social standing or who was the most powerful out of the two. Despite this, our editing really wasn't that strong and it would have been hard for an audience to be empathetic as the editing was so bland that there was no telling what the characters themselves felt.

For our opening sequence, we edited using quick cuts because we wanted to show the frantic nature of the character, how desperate she is. We found that this would help the audience be more empathetic towards her as they could see what she was feeling inside. The screenshots below are all of the cuts that we put together; as you can see there is a fair amount of them, and even after being so frantic and trying to get things done the character still looks incredibly messy. This is a massive improvement from last year, because we managed to actually create an effect rather than leave it looking natural and bland.

Point 6 - Props

For our preliminary task, we did not have props that would normally be seen in a typical workplace office. We had a laptop but that was the end of our list of props, because of the location that we used. We filmed in the canteen so it was impossible for us to have things such as desks, comfortable chairs and other office equipment such as PCs and stationary. Our lack of props obviously made it difficult for us to create the same effect and recreate the location.

For our opening sequence, we had a lot of props available to us because of how easy it was for us to film in our chosen locations. For example, the alcohol that Elisabeth drinks was easily accessible, as was anything in the house scenes due to the fact that we did actually film in a house and did not have to recreate the set at all. It was also easy for us to use the most important prop of our sequence, which was the car, which was an essential object because it shows who Elisabeth is as a person as well as her financial status.