What we learnt from our AS Prelim

We have now finished our AS A-level media course and are now moving on to our A2 course. Since doing our coursework in AS we have had some time to reflect on what we could have improved on either our prelim or our final piece. I think the area we could have improved the most was the camera angles/editing.

Our prelim was our first real experience with making a movie/opening, and so we didn't really understand what we could and couldn't do. In terms of our camera angles, they were really poor, in a sense that we only knew a few and so just used them through out the whole prelim. It consisted of mainly the 180 degree rule/over the shoulder shot. Because we just used this the whole time it never really made any sense, and so when we come to filming our music video for our A2 coursework, me and my partner have to make sure that we use a range of different camera shots and angles.

On our prelim we used a shot where we made it seem as though the camera was one of the characters eyes, and so we placed it in front of him and made him move his arms in front of a camera, to make it seem realistic. However, this wasn't the case, and it made the whole prelim seem like a bit of a joke. From this know though, we realise that shots like that do not fit in film or in the music industry (videos), and so we will make sure we don't do anything like this in out video's.

For the music video we know make sure that besides using a different range of camera shots, we have to make sure that they all are relevant to the genre. For example if the music is fast paced, then we need to make each shot really short (through editing) in order to keep the viewers attention. This is something we did not do in the prelim. Each shot was long, and as a result of this, it was very boring to watch.