Final Opening Sequence - Question 7

Q7 – Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Our Preliminary Task and Main Task were separate concepts, with the former obviously being more basic than the latter, which was an advance and stepping stone from the Preliminary Task, which consisted of a person filmed and edited opening a door, walking across a room and sitting down in a chair opposite to another character with a few lines of dialogue exchanged between the characters with mandatory elements such as match-on-action, shot/reverse and over the shoulder shot and the 180-degree rule being demonstrated. The Main Task however involved the titles and opening sequence of a fictional film that had to last a maximum duration of two minutes with the audio and video content being original albeit the music and special effects that are from copyright-free sources.

In the Pre-production stage of our Preliminary Task, which consisted of our research and planning aspects such as our script, storyboard and location, I was also with Hannah and Alexandra, so ultimately the element of continuity was there proved to be a strong advantage when we stuck together for the Main Task in terms of communication and understanding what our strengths and weaknesses were, with the most vital factor of it being timing but on the other hand, we were relatively unknown to one another despite having been in the media lessons together for a reasonable amount of time in the form of a month and therefore time was taken from us slightly having to comprehend one another and cover each of our weaknesses with the other’s strength and assigning ourselves roles that reflected our strengths, examples being Hannah being able to operate the camera more effectively than myself and myself then having the strength of acting, which was Hannah’s apparent weakness. To reiterate, learning each other first time round proved beneficial for the Main Task as we were able to conserve time and use that saved time to work on other ideas that would improve the Main Task and make it stand-out from the others. Furthermore, our script and storyboard in the Preliminary Task was a lot more basic and unimportant when compared to the script used in the Main Task, as a result there were little issues with the script in the Preliminary Task with their only being a lack of rehearsal from Alex delaying the completion of the task further, when the pressure of completing the task before the deadline time stemmed when we expressed difficulty in committing to our original storyboard, which involved deciding my character would be revealed and if not, how our selection of camera shots were going to prevent my character from being revealed but ensure that they were not out of the ordinary and didn’t display any inconsistency until eventually coming to a mutual agreement that the storyline was almost completely irrelevant to the success of our Preliminary Task and whether the revelation of the character took place wasn’t necessary. Regarding the script, this was a lesson that I felt honestly we didn’t learn theoretically, given that the script for the Main Task was completely different and slightly more complex editing-wise than the script for the Preliminary Task and we, as a group, didn’t have the incentive to learn the script as there were other issues that were more vital to the Main Task to resolve and we thought that the script can quickly be learned and didn’t bear any significance (it actually didn’t) to the Main Task. Me and Mitchell in the Main Task, having forgotten some of our lines during the vast number of 18 takes for the 23^rd shot of the opening sequence due to the poor acting displayed by ourselves, contributed to that number of takes we had to do. Quite frankly, there wasn’t a full commitment to the storyboard in the Main Task, particularly when I looked completely dumb-founded when Hannah suggested we make the most of the time allocated to us for the filming day to experiment with some new ideas, those ideas culminating in the envisage of a new storyboard at the last-minute, hence why I was dumb-founded, with the exception of a few shots, we as a group, complied with the ideas in the hope that it all worked out for the best, which ultimately did, this lack of structure and commitment to our storyboard originated from the massive change of the storyline and location mentioned earlier due to the little plausibility and high complexity the original storyline and location had so we felt like with the fact the storyboards weren’t rigid, we had nothing to lose than to try our new ideas both prior and during filming. There was, I believe, a combination of many factors that lead to the storyboard issues and wrong perception of the opening sequence. 

As for the production of the film, this was personally centred round the cast and crew, continuity/match-on-action and variation in shots. We pretty much had the option of choosing our own cast and crew taken away from us by our teacher for the Preliminary Task so for the latter me and Alexandra were the actors as well as crew alongside Hannah, who had a combine role on being the camera operator and director,  I think this was ultimately decided for the best given that it reduced the amount of responsibility we had as a group and who knows whether we would have struggled to find this is one of the primary themes highlighted when comparing the scale of the Preliminary Task with the scale of the Main Task, less responsibility/reduced workload. We were finally given the option to select cast only however it was limited to only members of our class being selected plus we only required one actor based on the storyline of our opening sequence featuring two mischievous people, and this is mainly where we rapidly came to the decision that Mitchell was going to be one of the actors alongside myself, he proved to be quite a popular figure for acting for others however this didn’t hinder us from getting his services as the other groups, who chose him as one of the actors, were filming their opening sequence on different days and we achieved the most vital thing in that scenario via focusing on ourselves and our product opening sequence). In hindsight, not over-thinking who might be the ideal person for our particular opening sequence and whether he would be available was great for us and the actors weren’t vital for the Main Task as long as the product was completed and was executed efficiently. Location-wise for the Main Task, whilst Hannah was making our new and imaginary storyboards come to life, it involved a slight change of location, with some parts of the opening sequence being set outside the Media centre rather than just inside it, like mentioned earlier on we went along with it and it worked thoroughly well, the Preliminary Task told a completely different story to our Main Task, with the nature of the Preliminary Task being more finite compared to the Main Task, only one primary location was necessary for the former and that being a classroom on the top floor of the Media centre, which was picked by us rapidly, with the eagerness of not wanting to procrastinate and leave and forget things till the last-minute so instantly when we were told that someone from each group had to go and find a location, we made sure that the responsibility was fulfilled scrupulously even if it ended up involving myself, going solely to search for a location and not consulting Hannah and Alex about it, which was something that needed to be done for the Main Task,  in order to push the team further and beyond their personal boundaries for the sake of the task. The variation in shots hinged on the nature of the Preliminary Task and Main Task and subsequently the storyboard, the script and location, meaning that if we consider once more, the nature of both tasks that can’t be helped, we had more of a variety of camera shots (e.g. the low medium-close ups and extreme close-ups) in the Main Task than the Preliminary Task, despite ourselves attempting to push the boundaries and implement as much variation into our shots in the Preliminary Task as possible like different camera shots of a person doing one thing. For the Main Task, our loose storyboard again provided us with the opportunity to experiment with new ideas that included different camera shots such as the total shot of Mitchell’s character entering the Media centre and the over the shoulder shot of his character on the phone, which evidently weren’t used in the final product, perhaps the vast variation of shots originally being implemented into the storyboard and committing to the storyboard and having security over it is one major thing we could all take onboard because it worked brilliantly on the filming day but retrospectively if we were to originally think of that from day one, then you wonder what more we would’ve been able to do in order to further improve for the opening sequence.

Post-production, the area where identifying areas of improvement and taking onboard every single detail from what was coming from our peers and teachers was as vital as ever, for the Preliminary Task we had approximately two hours (split over two lessons) to edit the footage whilst for the Main Task, we had approximately a week (over 5-6 lessons). For the completion of the Preliminary Task we edited the footage during the lessons although the Main Task required more dedication and compromising, having to sacrifice some of our free periods during the week to come and ensure that the finished product met the deadline, which was at the end of the week. Each of us opted to come individually to edit the footage, I wasn’t particularly a good fan of this approach and hoped that it wouldn’t be the case given that me, Hannah and Alex, we all have different intellects and that comes with different ideas so that would hinder us from discussing our ideas fully and potentially slow down the editing of the footage, the latter fortunately for us didn’t happen and whatever difference we had in ideas we consulted one another during the lessons in the week although concerns within myself grew that the product wouldn’t meet the deadline so I had to compromise the late-morning and a fair part of the afternoon on the Wednesday, which included another lesson I was meant to attend, to make sure that we weren’t falling behind, so in that sense the time-management wasn’t great nor was it bad at the same time, just that bit more of a structure and organisation would have been better. Little feedback was given for our Preliminary Task other than human errors in the form of leaving some props in a total-shot as well as some of the camera shots being too lengthy, which stemmed from poor editing, so the basic of all mistakes was to be taken onboard and ensured that the mistakes were learned from via making them our main priorities when it came to filming the Main Task, I think also, it would’ve been difficult for peers to spot unnecessary props in the shots due to the complexity of the Main Task in terms of location and other items in shots. Unlike some groups, who to their brief demise, went off with their peculiar ideas, we took onboard what was required of us via complying with the needs of the task and the sincere instructions given by the teacher. In regards to saving work, that was mainly a theme for us when it came to editing the footage, for the Main Task we obviously saved more versions of the footage, with some versions edited more than others, compared to the Preliminary Task, which had only two versions I believe. Saving different versions of the work meant in case of technical issue with the software and computer used (Adobe Premiere Pro CS4) that resulted in recent work being erased; it enabled us to have a good starting point rather than the original, which is pretty much starting from scratch.