The First Reflective Blog Entry on the Main Exercise

From filming the Preliminary Exercise, I have learnt quite a lot in the way of filming, mostly that there is far more to it than you initially expect.

Doing the Main Exercise first seemed daunting compared to the first film which was a way of getting to grips with the topic and filming as when you first do it mistakes are very likely to happen but you they are there to

help you build on. When we were first told that we were creating the opening sequence of a British film I felt very nervous as that has never

been the part of a film that I have concentrated on and it appeared much harder than the first film so I had no idea what to do. After Lee had taken us through it some more it became clearer and, although it still felt slightly daunting, I felt more comfortable in understanding it.

The planning of this exercise is far more thorough and I feel like I have to be far more precise with it so that myself and my group know everything about what we are doing when it comes to filming as we can't afford for something to go wrong. Because of this we have worked together on all of the planning although we have been allocated certain roles within it and this means that this person is in charge of that area of planning such as the paperwork and making sure it’s safe, doing a final draft version and so on. Overall though, we have all made valid contributions and the input of planning has been equal. The advantage of my group is that Charley does Film Studies and therefore understands what we are doing quite well, and Alex has had experience in the topic having done Media Studies previously before this year. On the other hand though, our weaknesses based on the Preliminary Exercise are that we need to be far more accurate with our framing and following the 180 degree rule as last time there were some problems in complete accuracy and we ended up breaking the 180 degree rule by placing both actors heads in the same part of the frame during a conversation.

As well as this we need to be far more aware of what is going on during the filming as we ended up not filming half of what had been planned on the storyboards, possibly because we weren't filming in order.

In the Main Exercise, we will be filming in different locations and we need to be fully on top of everything which will be easy seeing as we have learnt from our previous mistakes. Next time I think I will put more input into the research as this was a downfall last time. I was unsure of what to do properly and didn't know to what extent the research had to match the film we were creating so I found it difficult to find anything related. As well as this I have chosen roles more suited to me because, although in the planning

of the Preliminary Exercise, I chose to do the script work which went well as I enjoy writing, I also was put in charge of the camera and this was a downfall as I had no idea what I was doing.

This time I will be in charge of the editing and having had experience with windows media player previously I have a better understanding of what to do. I believe overall that the Main Exercise will go well. We have still got to find actors as we only have one so far but as all our roles are sorted out, as well as the storyboards and locations, we know what we are doing well so everything should go as planned. We have planned to start filming next week and carry on for as long as it takes which, due to experience from the Preliminary Exercise, shouldn't be too long seeing as we have better understanding now.