Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the

progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation

Which technical skills did you learn while completing the preliminary task?

• Comparing our thriller and our preliminary task, my skills from using a digital camera and using it effectively have improved greatly. For example, in our preliminary task we used very simple shots and kept to certain lines and rules like the 180 degree rule and the 30 degree rule. Furthermore, due to our basic skills when setting up a scene we didn’t use additional light so our shots were very grainy and yellowy. Another thing we learnt that you shouldn’t film at night if you don’t have the right equipment because the film will look bad and wont be very good quality. Furthermore, in editing our preliminary tasks, we realised that through some of the shots people were talking or the shot was wrong and didn’t work so we ended up not having a completed preliminary task. This allowed us to learn from this and make our thriller opening more sophisticated. We also learned that filming more than one take of each shoot allowed us only to have a couple shooting days rather than many. We had a lot of footage to choose from, which helped because we could choose the best or cut between them. My editing skills were very basic at the beginning and I only knew how to trim clips and add them in. Now I know how to filter and change the colour of certain shots, adjust the volumes of the individual sounds, overlap and cross fade clips and how to use jump cuts effectively so it doesn’t look like a mistake but instead is effective and suspenseful. In addition, in our thriller, I tried to experiment more with our types of shots. Instead of just using simple tripod, still shots, I attempted at using the camera handheld and moving the camera in different ways so when it came to editing, I could try out different ideas to see what emotions or ideas that shot brought to the film. As you can see from the screenshots used, the first and last being from our preliminary task and the middle being from our thriller opening, I used the natural location around me to connote certain emotions like the internal framing of the branches reaching out to George rather than a simple establishing shot shown in the first screenshot which is quite messy with the props and framing.

What have you learnt about: working to a specific brief; working to a deadline; generic conventions; the importance of researching and planning; team work (please don’t slag off others in your group); creating an engaging narrative?

From our media coursework, right from the beginning I have learnt that working to a deadline is important.

This skill can be reflected in real life and it gives me a sense of timings and how you need to be planned and prepared to keep and make goals which are achievable and realistic. I have learnt a lot about conventions of certain genres of films and sub genres and how these can change the way a film is narrated or shown to an audience. Furthermore, I now understand the importance of researching and planning and how it can affect the shooting period (having a shooting schedule and storyboard of what shots you need to film) and how smoothly it runs. Research also allows you to look up whether your film is keeping to the conventions of that genre. This was important to me and our thriller because we chose to not go with all the stereotypes of a psychological thriller so we needed to know whether any other films went with the same themes we were going to use and reflect intertextuality and character profiles to embody our film into it’s own category. In my opinion, team work wasn’t always the best in our group. I think that let us down was communication. I think we needed to discuss certain aspects of our own individual roles with one another rather than all having separate ideas about what the film should about and mean. Next time, we would talk together about the decisions we are making and discuss them to see if it is the right choice for which direction we want our film to be heading in. Finally, I feel like I now know what key aspects of both themes, messages and micro film form aspects like cinematography and sound can engage an audience into a film and interpolate them into a narrative. These small ideas seem so insignificant, but when talking about filmmaking and choices you have to make it is very important to how a viewer will react to a shot or scene.