Eval Q7 Learnt since Prelim

When I filmed our prelim I didn't have much idea about how much planning and preparation is needed to make a film look the way you want. The task was fairly simple: "A continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule."

Untitled from Roam Hamilton on Vimeo.

In terms of planning for our prelim, we did not use things such as a storyboard or a call sheet, which are features  that we included in our actual coursework task. For the filming, we didn't think about aspects of mise-en-scene such as props and clothing, which is something we considered in great detail for "Suburban Zombie" 


Some other things that we didn't include in the prelim, but that we used for our final coursework film are; rough cuts, company idents, a large range of shot types and a soundtrack.


One main thing we didn't include in the prelim is detailed research into the genre, which is something that we spent a long time doing in preparation for filming 'Suburban Zombie', mainly through a large amount of deconstructions of zombie films, that we split up between the group so that we could get more done. I deconstructed a few zombie films such as Day of the Dead and Night of the living Dead.

Our research into zombie films helped greatly with creating our film, as it gave us a clear understanding into the genre conventions, camera shots, soundtrack etc.

Another big thing that we didn't do when creating the prelim was assign group roles, which is something that was key to our creation of 'Suburban Zombie'. We assigned a cinematographer- Alex McCluskey, a Director- Sam Boyes and I was the Producer. These roles helped distinguish who needed to do what task, which in turn helped us to get the preparation for filming finished.