Question 7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Our brief for the preliminary task was all about continuity. This involved “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”. The task had to demonstrate exhibit match on action, 180-degree rule and shot/reverse shot. These were all the basic requirements for our task it only included two characters also. 

Match on action was used in the preliminary exercise on scenes where the character was walking in and out of the rooms. We used the same in our new media product when Martin falls over and when Roxanne accidentally drops the drugs out of her bag because we couldn't change it easily without the knowledge or time to practice. The preliminary task helped us make our match on action shots more clean cut, precise and professional. However our match on action is not always accurate due to the timing of the film as we had to film in between days to satisfy every schedule within our group. 

The shot reverse shot was used to show the conversation and reaction of each character. In the new media product (Jackpot) we have down we used high angle shots when Roxanne was first introduced to Martin when he falls over and she looks down at him because it would represent her power and the representation she carried. We didn't use high angled shots in our preliminary exercise as we didn't have the experience or how to do it but now we know how to use it, we used it for affect of representation of power.

We used continuity within Jackpot because all of the props, setting, costumes Etc so the person who played Marin had to bring the same costume every time the same for Roxanne this didn't change because; it would affect the believably of the media product and the social realism. When we first filmed the 2 minute film, we didn't think it looked very good so we did it again to get all the shots right because the continuity was very off. The problem was that we needed to re-shoot everything due to mise-en-scene continuity. We didn't have this problem in our preliminary exercise because it only took us one session to do it right. I have learnt that if a scene is wrong in the film industry that the production company would match up the continuity as it will cost them more to re-shoot everything and waste time and energy which wouldn't be good for the actors/actresses either.