Emma Phillips Foundation Production

The first task we had to complete whilst starting As Level Media was to create a Preliminary piece of which was two minutes long, incorporating a range of shots and also editing to a high standard and to a finish. The piece itself had to include someone walking down a corridor, entering a room and then talking to someone about an event we could decide on. Throughout the process of planning and filming we were given a lot of freedom to explore our imagination and creativity, by doing so we came up with storyboards containing shots and angles, all of which had plenty of potential to be expanded on and improved.

All in all I believe my preliminary piece was a success for many reasons. Firstly, we were able to incorporate a range of different shots and angles, all of which added greatly to the overall affect of fear that we desired the audience to get from watching our media piece. We ensured we had the correct number of shots that we needed, even if it meant repeating the same shot many times until it was perfect, more than often with a time delay before and after the actor had started to speak, to ensure editing would be easier, giving time to cut and crop.

Through editing, we were able to gain a first idea as to how the Mac's work and how to gain the necessary affects required, as well as learning how continuity errors occur and how to overcome them. Effects, such as non-diegetic sounds (in our case, the door handle noise) were put into our piece in order to add a greater feeling of tension for the audience. Music was added in the background throughout the piece in order to add to tension also, as well as slow-motion movements, pans, slow zooms and a range of effects such as CCTV shots to give a natural appearance to the film.

If I was to repeat this task, I would have taken yet more shots in order to make the editing process even easier, as well as using light better in order to stop frames from being dark. However, I do believe that our first media task was a success, and I surprised myself how well we adapted to editing pieces and gaining the overall piece that we wished to have from the start.