Evaluation of Prelim Task.

For my prelim task, me and my class had to create a copy as best we could of the music video Bad touch- Blood hound Gang. We had to go out and film the material and then from this all individually edit it to make it as similar to the original video as possible. We had to focus particularly on camera angles, framing, mise en scene, and lip syncing. The idea of the task was to give us some experience in using the cameras that we will be using for our main task of creating our own video. Also to give us some experience in using the program that we will be using to edit our film. 

When creating my Prelim task there were many factors, and issues that could have been planned better, completed better, and some that I felt were done well and were positive. I have broken down my evaluation into two groups. The filming of the video, and then the editing. 

FILMING

When I and my class started filming, I found that it was a lot harder then I thought it was going to be. We did not have enough time to rehearse before hand therefore, I felt that the whole class had a vague idea of what we were actually doing and I didn't feel that we were very organised. I think if I personally had watched the video more thoroughly I would have equipped myself with a better idea of the framing we needed to create as well as the camera angles. 

Adding to this we could have also had a shot list which would have helped us a lot, ( which I now will ensure I have when creating my main task). 

Moreover because of the costumes and surroundings, there were times when the people in the shot began laughing half way through or at the end of the shot, which slowed the whole process down, and knocked us of track. I think this could have been avoided if the class knew exactly what needed to be done in each shot.  Subsequently as this was mine and many of my other classmates first time using a camera/filming some of the shots were not steady, however I do feel that after this prelim I have a better idea and some experience of keeping a camera steady and controlled. As well as using camera angles. I also think that if we had taken more notice of how fast the lip syncing needed to be it would have made it a lot easier to sync when editing. 

However throughout filming I felt that as a class we worked as a team, by sharing the camera, all having a go at acting, as well as directing each other. I also think that we had good props, very similar to those in the video, as well as good costumes all on a low budget. I also think that by creating a prelim task, It put skills and techniques we learnt about last year for AS into practice. Overall I think that our filming of the bad touch video went reasonably well, but could have been planned slightly better by the students, as it would have gone smoother and not taken so long. However as a first time experience of filming and directing I think it was very helpful and has put the skills and techniques learnt at AS into practice. 

EDITING

When I initially began to edit the bad touch film, I felt really frustrated, as I didn't know how to use the tools, or the entire program. It was hard not to become very stressed, however after a little while of playing around with the tools, and the clips, it started to click, and I began to realize how everything worked, and begin to make progress with my editing. Adding to this I also learnt how time consuming the editing is, and how it can be very tricky and fiddly. From the editing I learnt many skills, these including, importing clips, and placing them correctly on the time line, cutting the clips to the correct position needed to match the music and lip syncing, moving and copying clips to different parts in the time line, resizing the window. I also learnt how to speed up clips,as well as slow them down, this assisted me in lip syncing at the right time, if the clip was too slow, or too fast for the music. Moreover reversing shots we very handy when in filming the shot has been filmed in the wrong direction, for example in the film when the girls were walking they were walking in the opposite direction to in the film, so therefore this tool allowed me to reverse the shot. I also cropped some of the clips to make the framing and camera angles more like the actual video, when the filming had not been tight enough, or was not framed correctly. 

When editing the program we used in class, was having problems and kept shutting down expectedly, which sometimes meant that we lost work that we had forgotten to save, however some good has come from this and I know feel that I am trained in saving work regularly which prevents me from losing my work on a regular basis so I feel I have developed a good habit from this problem.


In conclusion I feel that my bad touch video is a pretty good copy of the original and I put in a lot of effort to get every little detail right. I feel that this prelim task has given me a lot of experience and has equipped me quite well for my main task. If I could have done anything again it would have been to analyse the video a lot more before actually going out to film it, as well as planning exactly every little thing that had to be done. Also I would have been more patient and calm when I started my editing as I think this would have saved me a lot of time at the beginning  of the editing, and could have meant that I could have gone over the project and made it even tighter.


However I did enjoy the filming and editing and I feel equipped now to begin my own video.