PLANNING PROCESS...the pre-preliminary task...

INITIAL IDEAS
our original group consisted of three members; Rachel, Roisin and me.
After looking at the task sheet for the first time (that outlined what our finished product would have to include), Rachel came up with the initial idea to film our preliminary task in the style of a Teen Drama, as this is a genre we had recently explored in class.
We finalised this idea as a team and found it so appealing because it was a unique and original interpretation of the task, and completely different to what each of us had filmed in GCSE media.

THE BRAINSTORM...building on the foundations
Our group then drew out a large mindmap, on which each member of the group contributed their ideas of shot types, plot line, mise-en-scene (location, costume, props etc), and any editing techniques/video effects we could use in post-production.
Although we wanted to create something 'individual', we had to ensure that our film fitted the brief. To do this we planned a variety of possible situations that demonstrated the techniques of; Match-on-action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.
The brief also instructed the action that our preliminary had to include; the character had to open a door, cross a room and then sit down in a chair opposite another character, with whom they exchange a couple of lines of dialogue.
After taking the task's outlines into consideration, along with the expectations of our target audience (being a teen drama the conventions would be: youthful characters,-often aged 16 to 19- a modern and contemporary feel to the mise-en-scene and soundtrack, unconventional 'wacky' video effects and editing style and including current stereotypical issues- in this case binge drinking) we formulated the plot - consisting of elements from each of our ideas - for our preliminary task, along with suggestions of shot types and camera movement to use.
[our basic plot: a drunken teenager bursts into her school, unsuccessfully trying to act sober, and greets her anxious friend who is fed up of her 'wild child', rebelious antics]

PRE-PRELIMINARY STORY BOARDING
Every group in the class was required to first create a 'pre-preliminary task' (a practise run of the real thing) to give us an insight into how the final product would look like and whether or not the techniques we wanted to include would work.
Unfortunately, I was on an art trip the day my group began story boarding, so the hefty responsibility of drawing the production out shot by shot, following the guide lines of our plot from the mind map, fell to Roisin and Rachel!
Day two of story boarding and I was back! As a group we finished off the drawings and annotated them with notes describing the camera work required, and reminding us to get the eyeline match perfect!!
(as this was only a 'draft' of the 'real thing' we decided to leave out elaborate and unnecessary props and costumes as we just wanted to focus on the basic foundation of the task...ACHIEVING CONTINUITY through camera work and editing)

FILMING AND EDITING OUR PRE-PRILIMINARY TASK
On the day of the filming Roisin was ill and was unable to come to school; but luckily a friend was able to step in for her role in the dialogue.
Rachel was also acting and I was in charge of filming.
We managed to film the whole of our pre-preliminary in one lesson, with most shots captured within just one take! This really shows how coherant we worked as a group and demonstrates our focus on obtaining shots efficiently. (Although there are some continuity issues within the footage...for example the magically appearing tripod in the bottom left of the frame during the hand-held track!)
Because we captured the shots we needed so quickly, we had much more time to focus of the editing of the footage (Roisin was back now!). I was very pleased with our straight cuts as the majority of transitions between shots were fluid and didn't seem to jumpy. Our match-on-actions worked really well and came across as one sweeping movement; probably due to the fact that we filmed the whole movement from each angle so that we could cut away at the shots slowly until the movement of the subject knitted together.
Once the shots were edited together, we added a 'ghosting' video effect on both the point of view shot and the hand-held track. This was to make these particular shots feel more distorted and separate from reality.
We also adjusted the colour/brightness contrast of the footage to make the colours slightly richer. We found, to our surprise, that this effect actually makes the product look more professional as the watery tones given by the cameras make the footage appear 'amateurish'.

One thing we struggled with in our preliminary task was shot/reverse shot editing, as this was something that was new to us all. But identifying it as a weakness in our pre-preliminary caused us to really focus on improving the technique for our final product.
Another thing that the pre-preliminary task taught us was to capture a shot at least three times over, even if it looked perfect in the first take. Although this method of filming is time consuming, it means that there is a greater variety of shots available to select from during the editing process (there were times during the editing of the practise task that we realised that some shots didn't match up-but they were the only ones we had and we didn't have enough time to film anymore)