Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the product?

In the preliminary task that we were asked to produce was a few seconds long however, the opening sequence that we produced is a two minutes thriller opening sequence. In the progression from the preliminary task to the actual thriller opening sequence I learnt a lot in terms of use of camera angles and different types of shots that made it look more effective and realistic. I didn’t know much about the use of camera angles during the start when we produced our preliminary task which led to it not being to a great standard. It was because in the beginning I didn’t know much about the camera angles, editing and shooting which reflected on our work clearly.  During my progression from the preliminary task to the actual thriller opening I did a lot of research into the actual codes and conventions of a thriller which was vital for the thriller to look realistic.

For the shooting of the preliminary task we used an IPad and the quality of the camera of the IPad was not that great which didn’t make it look professional. However, learning from this we made sure that we used a professional HD camera which made the quality far better in comparison to what we got from the IPad. This was partly because of less knowledge about of the task that we were supposed to do as we didn’t know what was best for it. Also, I thought more about the mis-en-scenes, props and costumes which are essentials for a film in order to make it look more realistic and relatable for the audience to enjoy it. In our preliminary task we didn’t really focus on those things and looked at it in much more detail during our research of thriller openings. For example, we filmed our opening sequence in a more realistic location (a house) and our actors were wearing casual clothes according to the need of the shot. We avoided the mis-en-scene in all of our shots.

In progression from my preliminary task I learned that target audience plays a vital role for a movie to be successful as it should meet all the criteria of a thriller film. We didn’t have much time during the making of our preliminary task to do a questionnaire for our target audience, however doing a questionnaire for our opening sequence helped us gain some feedback from the target audience which then we were able to apply to our opening. We kept the interests of the target audience in mind throughout in order to meet all the wants and needs of the audience. Doing the preliminary task was very useful as it helped us develop our skills in terms of research on what is expected.

Throughout the process of developing my skills I also learned how to use IMovie. As for our preliminary task I used the editing app on the IPad which didn’t have many features which could be added to create an effect, however, this wasn’t the issue with our main task as now we learnt from the previous task and used a Mac to do our editing, which had a lot more features then what was there on the IPad. This allowed us to use many different features that weren’t available on the IPad. After the completion of our final product my skills strengthened and I think I am capable of editing to very high standards as now I can apply several different transitions and editing procedures such as using ‘match-cuts’, ‘fade out’ without any visual failures as well as using the ‘180 degree rule’ which at first I was struggling to understand.  We also felt comfortable trying different editing apps in order to make our piece look effective.

During our preliminary task there was an issue with time as we didn’t get much time to film our preliminary task which then as a result wasn’t to a great standard. Despite this task we decided that we will have deadlines set for our main piece in order to have enough time for each part including filming and editing. However, this was still sometimes a problem as my team wasn’t able to collaborate with each other and give enough time to work. This lead to us being lacking behind in terms of our deadlines but we didn’t let that become an issue and tried to finish all the other things like blogging in the meantime, which also made me learn the importance of time.

Overall, to sum up everything, throughout both productions I learned many skills from editing to camerawork and I believe I have developed all the skills to a high standard which also benefitted my work. However, I believe the thing that affected us most was the use of tripod which helped us to get still/controlled shots which focused on the actual piece. I think I improved thoroughly from the preliminary task to the main product in terms of all the media aspects.