What have you learnt from doing the project?

I feel that when me and Kirsty began our final project Science Boys we didn't know much about what it took to make a film. From our project we learnt the importance of careful planning and we did this the hard way through having to re-shoot our film after a poorly planned shoot. Our first shoot meant we didn't have a working tri-pod (which we realised is vital in creating a professional project) and also we didn't have a clear plan about the shots we wanted. So, when we came to re-shooting our project, we had a clear idea of what we wanted and kept it planned out and checked off the shots we wanted when we got them. Therefore one of the biggest things we learnt was about careful planning. We also learnt that you have to know the genre of film your working on really well and understand its conventions. This helped us in creating a film which we think looks professional and like a real movie. 


We also learnt that your project can look so much better if you having cooperate actors who follow instructions well. We were lucky that our actors were willing to give up more of their own time to re-shoot but also that they followed what me and Kirsty said so we could get good results. As our film is a comedy, it was important that our actors portrayed this and we quickly learnt that to make our film look and sound more professional, we wouldn't want our actors talking as the sound wouldn't be of a high enough quality due to our camera. 


We also learnt about how to use the editing software PremierPro. Initially we didn't know much about the software as we'd never worked with it before but we did have to learn through trial and error. I think though that that is the best way to learn things as you can try things out and learn from your mistakes. We also learnt from previous project on how to edit which was useful when doing our final project.


However the most important thing we learnt from our project was to to play to our strengths and not be over ambitious in our project. We decided to use a school as our setting and teenage actors as we could gain access to these things easily and a real school will make our film more realistic. Initially we had hoped to follow our actors down a corridor in one long dolly shot but after a failed attempt we realised as media students we don't have access to professional equipment and therefore were over ambitious in our first idea. Although it is important to stretch yourself and try things, in our final project we also realised the importance of playing to your strengths so you can produce a quality product. The project taught us a lot and will defiantly prepare me for any future media projects.