Planning: Preliminary Task - Miss Begum

Introduction

The purpose of this is for our group to familiarize ourselves with editing and being infront of the camera, it also helped us think about what we could do to improve our final product. This has allowed us to work in a group as we have never worked together this way in a group before and with most of us hardly using video cameras we weren’t familiar with the functions or how to adjust the camera or view the recordings we took. Since Abass was set to be the cameraman for the final product I was taking the reins for the preliminary task as a way to get involved and try my hands at being in control of the camera. This helped us learn how to use the camera properly and prepared us in using it for our final product. Abass and Umut were cast as the actors in the preliminary task as a way to switch roles and get that taste of experience and see how it felt being infront of the camera.

Scene 1

This first scene proceeds with Abass and Umut talking about what they should do for their 

coursework with Abass being frustrated over Umut not working hard enough to put forward an idea or be bothered with the work.

Scene 2

Abass tries to motivate him to do the work, talking about the importance of it down to the fact they will get a lower grade if he doesn’t pull his weight.

Scene 3

Umut then tries to act as if he is involving himself by making an irrelevant suggestion; He suggested that the coursework should be two people talking about the video game ‘Fifa’.

Scene 4

Abass explains that it is a stupid idea as they can’t be converse about video games for this very important piece of coursework and further spoke of how they could receive a low grade if they do that.

Scene 5

Umut says that he will not comment on what Abass said because he thinks that his suggestion is actually a legitimate suggestion and he thinks it might actually produce a good grade.

Group Roles are as follows: 

Cameraman

The cameraman will be the person behind the camera controlling it. They will be needed to handle the camera professionally without messing around and hold the frame still. Because of this I was also the person filming the preliminary task. It was originally Umut doing the filming but he wasn’t doing it well so I offered to take control of the camera instead. I was the best cameraman for the preliminary task mainly because I was the most ready for the task, however we decided that Abass would be filming the final product because I had other things to get organized and done.

Actors

Abass and Umut were acting in the preliminary task. Down to the fact Abass and Umut had done drama related courses in the past they had an experience of acting. This is why they were chosen instead of me. However, for the final opening scene Abass was put on the camera for the final task as I was acting and Umut has now left our group so isn’t involved in the final task anyway.

Editing

For the preliminary task we all took part in the editing in order for us as a group to find out who was the most comfortable with the program. As we were doing this we found out that Abass was the most comfortable with editing as he knew a lot about editing programs already. So we decided that I should be the one editing for the final task.

Difficulties

Some of the difficulties we encountered while filming were things such as were we the right place is the film the preliminary task because we were trying to find the best place for lighting and objects in the scene. The way we overcame this was by finding a place where there was good lighting in order for it to be clear. A difficulty I encountered was the issue of filming ‘over the shoulder shots’ because I couldn’t find the right angle but I overcame this by repeatedly trying different ways to get the over the shoulder shots until I finally got the right angles. As well as the difficulties we found during filming there were also some difficulties found during editing which included problems like learning how Final Cut Pro works. None of us had ever used Final Cut Pro before, even though Abass used another editing program called Sony Vegas it was far different from Final Cut Pro. The way we overcame this difficulty was learning how to use it while using the program because we found out how the program works.

What I learnt

While going through this preliminary task I learnt who the best at doing what in our group were. We found out Abass was the best at editing and filming and we found out that I was the best at acting and using sound. Abass learnt how to use Final Cut Pro as an editing program because he normally uses something else and he also learnt how the camera worked.

Conclusion

Taking part in this preliminary task helped us as a group get to grips with operating a camera and editing using Final Cut Pro. This task helped me in operating a camera for my media product as I may have to shoot a few scenes by myself because of the location of my house for one of the scenes. Also as well as handling a camera for the preliminary task, importing footage into final cut and creating a timeline was added to one of my many skills picked up during this.