Whilst this material is relevant and important to show skills development, it would perhaps be best labelled as Skills Development, or Planning. The candidate is rewarded for this material in their AO3 mark. It is possible to include too much preliminary material especially if it is not directly relevant to the portfolio brief.
An interesting task for the candidate but it is not directly relevant to the brief. The preliminary task should focus on skills introduction/development that are directly relevant to the brief. Ideally, candidates will only need to do one preliminary exercise and then move on to the research and planning stage of the brief.
This is directly relevant to the brief. Some excellent research into the opening sequences of three films in a similar genre to the final product. The post should have been tagged as “Research” but the post is clearly relevant to the final product so has been marked for AO4.