Evaluation Q8. Looking back at your perliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Prelim Video:
First time filming with the techniques we were taught.

MISE EN SCENE

Props used in these two images are a Paper, Pen and Phone which was used as a way to  show the character is doing work initial we thought this was a good idea but as we continued research we realised that it didn't look realistic and in a way was comical. Obviously it was suppose to be suspenseful and i didn't think that particular shot suited the genre. 

We learnt for our final film that were had to think about mise en scene carefully and that they are used to create part of the actual storyline. In the first image you can see a closeup of a cup, lipstick and makeup. In a way an innocent girl can be perceived and the makeup is used to indicate her persona and what type of character she is. However the medicine shows a bit of the suspencefull side.  The other shot is of a shot of the calling card being a scarf. This is something where she leaves behind at the end. This mise en scene was much better suited for the story we were trying to get across.

EDITING

The first shot with door and a girl is my first prelim film. You can see we edited this as a match cut of her coming in and shutting the door. This did not turn out very good. The second two images are from our final film. This is a much better match cut of her drinking the water and then places it down back on the table. This was useful as we were stuck for time and only had a 2 mins Maxim title sequence. Looking back at the prelim could analyise that the match cut and editing i have learnt has been very successful. 

LIGHTING

The first shot is from our prelim task, as you can see the Lighting is very bad due to being in a class room. This is very bad to lightening as it is to dark and the lightening portray a successful piece of work. I brought this knowledge and mistake with me along to my final thriller as i remembered that lighting is important and it should be clear who characters are. The JVC cameras helped me with lighting issues (the GAIN button) increased the light tensity and made shots brighter if we didn't have any natural light at that particular shot. As you can see the second shot is much better with the natural light. 

SOUND

Our sound in the Preliminary task was BORING it was just one consistent sound and had no excitement. We did not use any sound at all just the sound from the video. After analysing this I then decided that for the final film we had to make sure that the soundtrack was very tense and suspenseful to create the mood. We ended up creating very unique and catching sound sequence from using the programme sound track pro. From all our audience feedback they all mention that our sound really did fit with our sequence, pace and titles, this allowed me to believe that it was an effective and successful piece. The sound is very important in a thriller movie as it creates feelings and the mood. 

CAMERA

These two shots are from my prelim film, They are actually really bad shots. One of the characters are practically cut out of the shot, this is bad as i later learnt that if this was shown on a big screen for example in the cinema it wouldn't fit in the frame and that part of the shot will be cut off. The second shot has allot of space at the side. Allowing the audience to be distracted and it doesn't look really professional. These two shots show a lot of the background which does not look very good a lot. 

These two shots are taken from our Final film. These shots are much better and do fit the content more. They show that i have learnt skills and my progression has been clearly stated. The first shot is a nice big  extreme closeup of the props, and its nice and clear. The second shot i would describe as an close up. This really captures on how the character looks and also it pays more attention to the face rather than the background which i wanted. This is also quite unusual and wanted a jerky shot so it looks more suspencfull. A variety of shots were used to really show off our skills and knowledge.

Titles and Fonts

In my prelim i did not use any sort of titles. However learning this skill i have used it in my final thriller movie using black screens. We Used fonts that is quite simple white, but quite suspancefull. 

Skills I have Learnt:

During my time i have also learnt that team work is extremely important. My group consisted of 5 people, at times we had some difficulties were we didn't agree on particular ideas and decisions however we always tried to incorporate our ideas together. Meeting up to film in the mornings were hassle and there was always a group member late, but once we all were together we actively started participating and giving feedback on shots that we liked and didn't like so it was a productive filming experience. one thing that i liked about our group is that we always helped one another, constantly reminding each other about blogs that were due or planning that was needed. We usually allocated specific roles to our group members, for example Elias did soundtracks, Mariama and Myself done editing and Sheri focused on the titles and credits.

Being organised is sensual as you have to be very prepared to make sacrifices for example spend time filming out of college hours rather than going out with friends. We had to be on time when we were asked to collect equipment because of the simple reason that time slots were allocated and there are not enough cameras for every single group. This resulted in many people realising our responsibilities and recognising we had to work as a team in order to have a successful film at the end of the course.

I learnt that you had to be very careful with the equipment as they were very expensive and needed allot of care when handling. JVC camera, still cameras, memory cards, Tripod and flip cameras were the basics that i used throughout my filming process.
Overall my experience was great and i would do it all over again, i have some really nice memories and have learnt so much about technology and how to use Apple Mac computers

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There were a lot of differences between the two sequences, and in watching them, we could really see the differences and development in our editing and production techniques over time.My skills with editing have improved massively since the beginning of the course: initially, there were just lots of jump cuts and a various range of shots that didn't particularly flow together. Now i have learnt to use different techniques such as match cuts adding the titles, speeding up the video clip, chanaging the colour and black screens. I think this is a really useful skill to have as it can help me in future references if i want to continue to do this. 

Finally i have learnt that planning before you go our filming is very important as you have to organise who is bringing in particular props for that shooting day. Location for the setting, what time of day you are going to meet because when my group filmed at London Eye (Waterloo) we had decided to go in the morning as it is a tourist attraction so it often gets busy during the afternoon. You also have to do research so you know exactly what elements a thriller holds. As you can see i have come a very long way and has been very successful and determained to do a lot of hard work.