Preliminary Task - James Amey

Preliminary task

My groups preliminary task was to create a short children’s film opening which presented our knowledge of the different types of camera shot that you can use. During this task I believe that my knowledge of the rules associated with filming has been increased, an example of this is the fact that while filming we broke what is known as the 180 degree rule and although we managed to fix this using the ‘flop’ tool in Final Cut Express (which helped me to familiarize myself with the way that the program worked) it has taught me a lesson about... Not breaking that rule. An additional problem that we encountered during the filming of our ‘production’ was the fact that not all of our groups members were present at the time (Yes, Hello Josh, I know your reading this ;) ) this resulted in our first ‘extra’ person we ‘recruited’ to assist us running off half way through due to embarrassment, and then our camera died before we could drag him back. As a result of this, we were confined to a 30 minute time frame during our Lunch break the next day when we managed to recruit somebody who saw the productions filming through to the end, unfortunately part way through one of the filming sequences there was a related discussion going on behind the camera that was audible, however this was easily fixed by lowering/muting the audio level which familiarized me with another element of Final Cut Express. Overall however, with the above complications noted, I feel that we made a fairly good production, it was by no means perfect and could of benefitted from a lot more time to make music and such but we managed to include all the shot types in the criteria and worked well as a team. I think that the group will do well in future projects.

-James Amey