Evaluation 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

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

Since first filming our Preliminary task to having finished our full opening I have learnt a lot when it comes to media and production. The comparison between the prelim which had little to no meaning and little thought process going into it apart from including a few shots with poorly recorded sound, to our final  sequence which has backing music to add to the tension related to our horror genre along with the mise-en-scene and the wide array of camera angles used, well they don't even come close when it comes to quality.

The sketchy use of Premiere Pro on the prelim shows elongated, jumpy and slow pace editing which doesn't flow to film or recognisable standard, however, our final opening is cut fine to the beats of our music and flows chronologically and follow-able where there is a gritty feel to it done purposely to get across meaning. Having said this, we were given a much shorter time frame to complete the preliminary task but still successfully included what was needed (continuity editing, 180 degree rule, action match, shot reverse shot and include dialogue with someone walking through a door. One thing that we adapted a lot from was the continuity editing meaning that audiences could easily follow along with the story line. Additionally, I feel like I am now more capable of making unique and interesting decisions to keep the audience intrigued and use a range of techniques and skills appropriately.

A further look on editing and you can see that in our prelim there is a fade in from black and an appearing title which was simply done by simple transitions and add ins, where as in the end using a combination of both premiere and after effects helped make our piece look aesthetically pleasing. Our final piece saw to the colour correction wheel function in premier to give our piece a subtle but effective chill. Further more, our titles were detailed in the fact that they were specifically place throughout and the font wasn't the first blood one we saw but one that we had discussed. 

At the start of our preliminary, we attempted a zoom out with a change of focus which was not steady and very rough which lowered the quality straight off the bat, however, in our final sequence one of my focus pulls was done to a high standard from the back of a headstone, to focus on one of our main protagonists.

We used a wide range of different camera angles in our final sequence to make our opening interesting where as our prelim was very basic and this when you look back would have also affected our target audience as if you look at inception and memento, they use camera angles and editing to almost distract the audience however they are not aimed at children as it would be too confusing and so if our editing and camera angles were very basic it could have came across quite childish.

The mise-en-scene has also drastically changed, one obvious change is our costume which we thought about so that it implemented an image or replicate a stereotype into the audiences mind, we used one of our protagonists (Aaron) to wear brighter colours so that it showed he was slightly separate from the group, this back up with him walking behind and being last to enter frames helped paint a picture of his weaker character. Additionally, we didn't just decided to film wherever, we decided our location and planned out what shots and what we would film and when before hand so it was a lot more organised. Furthermore, we changed the colour of the overall wash to be cooler to portray a eerie atmosphere. In the prelim we didn't really think about our setting apart from moving some tables around however there was often mess in and around our shots making them very unprofessional in comparison to our final piece. For example in the image below there is nothing in the background that is out of place and would break continuity.

We tried to stick to the 180 degree rule and we kept it for the most part as our transitions were depicted through a whip pan and that allowed us to switch sides, however, our piece was meant to be the opening to a horror film and so a little bit of confusion such as when the story line changed or something specific happened it would keep the audience guessing and wondering, much like a physiological thriller/ horror such as the Blair Witch Project where you don't actually end up seeing anything, but throughout you are constantly looking in the background and seeing things but will never know what they actually were...