As Media Project - Preliminary

Hiya I'm Sarah,

I study media studies at AS level, at Mayflower High School. Through out the course we have different types of tasks to carry, such as the theoretical side to media and the physical side, which is the actual filming and production of a film or part of a film.

One of our first projects was to film a scene which had to be 30 - 40 seconds long. It also had to show continuity, a slight bit of dialogue, the 180 degree rule, etc to show our understanding of what we had to do and whether we could demonstrate that in our film. Some of the jobs we had to do in the production of our film were the editing technique, acting, creation of the mise-en-scene.

However before we even began to film our scene we had to include pre-production, this consisted of creating a relatively detailed story board which included what would be in the scene throughout the 30 – 40 seconds, the positions of the actors and dialogue, where the 180 degree rule would be included, close-ups and zooming in out etc. This was a complex task and had to be referred back and forth within our group.

There was also the choice of genre and what would be included into our film, what would be the idea behind the idea, and how the audience would react what was being shown. This was all referred to within the group to make sure everything was equal. This whole procedure was the preproduction with in general terms was just to have a detailed plan on what we were going to do and how we were going to achieve it.

We then went on to the actual filming process, this was also a complex procedure as there we many obstacles we had to over come to ensure continuity and also make sure it is not perceived as a amateur attempt. We had many problems such and lighting within the house we used due to there not being enough of it and also the sound this was a slight issue causing editing to be an additional complication, this was due to a lack of technology. This could have been easily solved with an external microphone.

I found the whole filming experience enjoyable but I also found out that there was a lot more that had to be learnt and that the lack of technology can also be a huge disadvantage, and also the lack of knowledge of editing techniques. However many of the problems we had during the filming processes we over come fairly simply.

After we had filmed and edited our film we then went on to write and evolution on what we have done. This was basically to outline what we have done, how we did it, what problems occurred and what we did solve them. We also discussed what we could do next time when we film our actual task and how to carry on things that we didn’t do as well the time before.