Continuity Piece

This was our first practical piece of work in AS Media where we had to think of an idea, plan it, go out to film it and then edit it together. We didn't have much time or space to fully plan this work to our best ability, this unfortunately meant that we lacked in a good setting and costume/props etc. However we did feel that school was not a good enough setting for us as it had a lack of places to film, therefore we decided that we were going to film in a more appropriate place outside of the school premises. This made our continuity more realistic and better to work with.

For this practical work I decided to work with the same group I am working with for my Thriller Opening. I feel that this was the right decision to make as it made our relationship as a group progress further and the more we worked together the more we worked better together. This again made us work well as a team and to have the confidence to speak our own opinions when deciding on new ideas and whilst discussing aspects for our final piece.

I feel that we learnt a lot from working on this piece and our knowledge grew on the different thriller aspects like cinematography, lighting, sound and editing. As we were filming, we clearly understood the difficulties of working with only a small plan which lacked great detail as appose to a more elaborate one. This made us more aware so we knew for our final piece that every detail mattered and had to be planned out carefully. As a group we also learnt a lot about the computer software we were using and the range of effects it had whilst also learning the basic skills on how to edit our film. Whilst we were editing, we understood a great deal that music and sound effects have a huge effect on the outcome and the build up of a film and each soundtrack or just a sound can make any scene in a film seem different and all together better. We learnt that we had to plan out the sound we were going to use in detail so that it would fit well with the scene and most of all creates tension. If we had chosen a different soundtrack for our work it could have had a whole different affect on the audience and may not have even portrayed the right genre. However I feel that lighting was our downfall in this piece, this was due to the fact that we only used natural lighting so some clips were brighter or darker than others because of the inconsistency of the sun. We could have prevented this by using specialised lighting equipment or even finding another place to film.

I think that this piece, even though it was of a low standard, really helped us to learn the good and bad aspects of filming so that when it came to our final piece we knew what we would need to do to make it the best it could be. It also helped us to know what equipment was needed and how to use it properly and the aspects we would need to improve and develop on.