Prelim Task: Evaluation

Strengths: 

The first strength of the prelim task was the lighting, the reason for thinking that this was a strength of the video is because it was the lighting in each part allowed the people in that scene to look very natural and did not over power what was happening. At one point when they were handing over the brief case it showed the characters, as well as them standing out over the black background and table. By adding specific lighting it allows the audience to automatically know which part of the scene is more important over the other

The use of a split screen is classed as a strength in my opinions for the way that the movement of the lips was well matched up with the video, when it came to the timings allowed the video to go through a lot smoother. Furthering on this idea it allows the audience to get to witness the full conversation as it could change the whole dynamic of the clips if it only showed one person at a time. The split screen being used allows the characters of who are portrayed by Chloe and I to be linked to the whole plot, making the turn of the events look completely different.

Weaknesses:

In the prelim task I would have said that there is a lot more problems with the video, then there is to the positives. The first weakness of the prelim task is the background. When we were filming the over the shoulder shot from Elliot’s side we forgot to cover the whole wall with the black curtain which meant that it did not look very nice to the eye, as well as not looking professional. This means that a target for next time is to make sure that every part of the image in shot looks immaculate or the way it is trying to be seen by the audience. 

Another part that did not do the video any justice was the part when I was trying to shoot the back of Elliot’s head. At this point, I feel that the camera work and editing technique needed to be at a higher standard. The reason for this was that you could not actually see who was shooting him and you did not really know what was happening. To further on this the editing at this was not our finest hour. The problem with this was not how it faded to black, it was how the sound has been edited in 10-20 seconds late. This is showing that it has been added on top of the video at the wrong point which may suggest to the audience the lack of care and how the delay ruins the whole end of the clip. To try and avoid this happening in the final project, more care, effort and time needs to be used to add the simplest of sounds to show that the basic things can be added correctly to the video clip.

Another weakness for the extract is the ambient sound in the background. In the beginning we forgot to take the sound out and make the clips run straight after each other. This automatically tells the audience if they would like to watch the film or not, so the beginning has to start of the best, to make a good impression. Adding on to this, the ambient sound in this part of the extract distinctively shows that this was not meant to be there. To the audience it may distract them, with questions of which may consist of the ideas of what is that noise? what is it trying to say? This then distracts them from the crucial points, putting them off for the rest of the extract. 

Summary:

My overall opinion was that the four of us worked well in the group together, however there were a lot of bad things in the video that if it was our final video would easily get us a low mark. Adding on to this the benefits of the problems occurring is that when it comes to the final video, I know the specific details that needs to keep an eye on to make sure that it does not cause any problems for the way that the final video turns out.

Furthering my ideas of what i thought about the prelim task, was that in my opinion i felt like the group missed out parts of the video as well as unfortunately not being able to execute it to a very good standard. In the weaknesses section there were only a few things that were mentioned but i can automatically see a million more that i did not put down like: Camera was not steady, did not crop a video fully, forgetting to include from over Rachel's shoulder and many more fixes necessary.