The preliminary task is a compulsory piece of coursework that all students must complete as part of their Foundation Portfolio. The purpose is to train you in some basic camera and editing techniques, that you will then use and develop in your main production piece.

It’s an opportunity to learn some new skills and whilst it is coursework it doesn’t matter if it goes wrong, as you don’t get any marks for it. However, if you don’t do it and embed it into your blog it will cost you 15 coursework marks!

The brief for the preliminary task is:

“A continuity task involving filming and editing a two characters in conversation, with one character who leaves the room’.

This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.”

You should copy and paste the brief as a post into your blog.

 

Examples

Here are two example preliminary tasks made by the media teachers, spot the mistakes:

Here is the script which we would like you to use on the shoot.

You will be working in pairs for this task and should film about half of the shots each. As actors you do not need to learn the words and the present can just be in a plastic bag.

• Please annotate the script with the shots you will want to use  – CU, ECU, LS, MOA, SRS etc
• The camera has to stay on the tripod and try and avoid movement shots at this stage.
• Keep the script and annotations as this will be uploaded to the blog too.
• Make sure you film the person leaving at the end.