Summary of Prelimanary

For our preliminary task, we had to record someone walking into a room (ideally door opening) sitting down on a table and having a conversation with someone on that table.

When it first came to doing my preliminary, at first I had a couple of difficulties with the shots and getting the right ones that matched my storyboard, this is because when I originally did my storyboard for the prelim, I had created and drawn camera angles which were unrealistic and in fact did not fit the 180 degree rule, in basic terms I had out done myself and although the idea was creative, it would look unprofessional and confusing on actual camera. To add on to that, when I did it the first time round, the continuity didn't flow correctly and looked disorientated at some points of the clip. As you can see in the storyboard (which can be found in my preliminary section of my blog) it is not accurate to what was the final product.

So because of that, during the first times making the preliminary I felt disheartened as it did not turn out the way I wanted it to, and although only being a first time for me using such a high quality cameras (meaning there was bound to be mistakes) I ended up re-doing my preliminary two times before getting something which I could be happy and content with.

When actually creating my preliminary, one thing I struggled at was working the camera, I am not a camera person in general, but as the camera I used (Sony Handy Cam) was a very high tech camera, there were so many functions and buttons it at first left me confused and muddled on how to work it. However, this was resolved by asking fellow peers and watching others work the camera. Another issue I had was keeping the camera still and jolt/shake, as you can see in the beginning of my prelim I do the camera movement of a pan when Fahmida walks in, this at first was very difficult to do as my hand would not remain still, making the overall media product look quite amateur. I learnt from this lesson by using a tripod in my final media product to avoid anything like this occurring again.

Another issue I faced was generally getting all the right camera angles and sticking to my vision, obviously as a first timer I had to remind myself how I wanted my prelim to look and come across and try my hardest to replicate that, but this proved great difficulties as some angles were practically impossible to do, such as a low angle shot wouldn't be as effective unless me myself was to be positioned in a very high/upper place.

Despite this, they were some positives that came along with doing my prelim, for example, I developed more camera skills and it gave me a more realistic idea on how I wanted to construct my final product. My prelim also lacked creativity so this was something which I aimed to change when it came to the real thing. Another positive that came from my prelim is the fact that I stuck to the 180 degree rule. Overall despite the problems in the beginning, my preliminary turned out to be quite successful.