Preliminary task

 I have recently finished conducting some preliminary work, as practice for my coursework. For this task I completed the filming and editing of a documentary about the head girl at my school and how she achieved this position. I was very pleased with some of the shots that I produced, and I felt that my location shots were particularly successful, in both the angles they were filmed at and also the variety that I included. However when it came to the editing of my work I found that I did not have enough filler shots to break up the long interview clips and make the video more interesting for the viewer. I also found it very helpful that I had planned each of my interview questions that I was going to ask my interviewees, allowing them time to plan before hand what they were going to say, making filming much more effective and quicker.
 Looking forward towards my coursework mini documentary, there are several aspects of my preliminary task that I will need to learn and improve on. For example when watching my interview shots I later noticed that there was too much dead space around the interviewee, which made them appear out of proportion within their surroundings. However I was pleased with the angels from they were filmed and I felt as though despite this the framing of the shots were still successful. Another improvement I would make would be to ensure that I am using reliable people within my documentary, as I found it difficult to gain the time I required to film the head girl as she was often busy with her own work commitments. Moreover I had underestimated how long my interviewees would speak for in answer to each question, thus will need to offer more direction as to the points that I wish for them to require and be clearer about how long they will be allowed to discuss each one. This was something that wasted time during my filming and also meant that when repeating shots their answers would vary, as due to being left to consider their dialogue without direction, this had not been carefully planned and what they were saying did tend to vary somewhat.