Preliminary Task Evaluation

In order for us to get to grips with some of the equipment and software we would be using in our final piece, we decided to make a short preliminary piece. We chose a small skit about a man trying to end poverty with a concert, a la Bob Geldof and Live Aid.

To prepare for the shoot, we sat down with some storyboard sheets and created a shot by shot telling of our story. This made things far easier when it came to the shoot. In total this took around an hour, during which we planned 8 shots. Each shot had a picture of what would be in the frame and what would be said, if anything.
During the shoot itself, we had an initial problem in finding a location to shoot in. We wasted some valuable time walking around and looking for a secluded area, eventually finding an empty classroom within our school grounds. With this hiccup out of the way, we moved into a relatively smooth running shoot, there were the inevitable re-takes after laughter but by the end of the shoot we had become far more professional as actors. To create the film, we used two members of the group as cameramen and the remaining two members as actors. Our limited resources meant we could only use handheld shots because we had no tripod. This meant that some of our shots looked very shaky, however now that we have seen just how shaky, we will invest in a tripod for our final piece. The quality of our picture isn’t too high either because we used mini DV cameras, however we have little choice but to do so again for our final piece as new cameras would be very expensive.

After shooting our raw footage, we had to edit it. To do this we used Macbook Pro’s which were loaded with Final Cut Express. This software allowed us to edit the basic footage we had captured, into the logical sequence we needed to create the story. We removed our outtakes using markers to include the footage we wanted. The whole process was very easy and we had a completed video within one to two hours. This even gave us time to add credits, fades at the beginning and end of the film, and to add the theme tune. We chose to use Green Onions by Booker T And The MG’s, as it was an instrumental song which required little manipulation to be used in the video. We merely lowered its volume and then raised it again for the ending of the piece.
If we were to shoot the piece again, I think we would have researched available locations a lot more, so as to save us the time we spent walking around just searching for a location. We would probably also invest in a tripod to improve the quality of our shots.

Overall the preliminary video was very easy to create and I believe a good stepping-stone for when we create our final piece. It has given us vital experience in creating and editing films and has also told us we need to be far more prepared in terms of equipment and locations when it comes to making our final piece.