Looking back at my preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Throughout the production of our opening scene, I have learnt many new skills and developed any skills I already had. From the preliminary task to finishing, I think all of us have definitely improved our camera and editing skills. We managed to use far more complex camera techniques and pulled off some rather complicated editing sequences. I feel I have radically improved my skills in media from the preliminary task through to finishing. One very important thing I learnt during the process was that nothing is ever as simple as it may first seem. Editing is a very long and difficult process, also when putting in special sound effects you must be careful to keep it all in time with eachother otherwise things can very easily fall apart.

Our preliminary task involved filming a short scene which involved a conversation, 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot. We were told to film someone walking through a door, we used match on action to show Michael walking through the door and we then showed the shot reverse shot technique by demonstrating a conversation between Michael and I. We had to story board this and edit it, which gave us an opportunity to use the equipment in order to try and get used to it.

Our main task required us to shoot the first 2-3 minutes of a film opening. We had to come up with our own plot for an entire film and then create an opening scene for the film. We had to conduct research into film genres and audiences; storyboard the opening scene and edit and enter sound effects on the opening scene. I feel that we came up with the plot for our story very quickly, we drew out the storyline from a voiceover that Michael wrote, which we used in our opening scene. However, when we began filming we encountered some problems; when 2 of us were free to film the other wasn't or a group member was ill. It was difficult to find the perfect time for filming, we had to change the storyboard quite a lot as our ideas changed throughout the film-making process, also because we had problems with the original plan of filming the scene at night because we could not make the film show properly. We overcame this problem however by changing the setting to daytime and adding a dark fog effect onto the film. 

I feel incredibly proud of the progress I have made from the start of this project to completion, and I am also very proud of my group members, we worked together to create a fantastic film opening and overcome any problems we encountered!