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

There are many differences between our preliminary task and our thriller project. Our thriller contained a lot more demands and requirements such as using more complicated technologies as displayed in another blog post. With our thriller, we had a lot more time to shoot and edit our work containing more complex media aspects.

In pre-production, the main difference has been the element of planning. For our preliminary task, we did plan yet it wasn’t very thought through in media terms such as mise en scene and specific shots weren’t planned. For our full product, we produced a series of plans displayed in the thriller planning blog section including font decisions and storyboards. Doing this made us a lot more prepared making our shoots run more smoothly improving the quality of our final product as the process was a lot more thought out which gave more meaning to our thriller and gave it more professional elements. In addition, we checked our locations for shooting which clarified if the locations were usable and suitable allowing us to get a rough idea of composition of shots and props. By contrast, for our preliminary task, we had the intension of shooting elsewhere yet as we didn’t check the location, we had to change last minute to a less suitable location.

Through production, the elements were more complex as we used a greater variety of shots such as extreme close ups to add meaning and depth to our full product. We learned how do to this in our preliminary task as we experimented with the filming equipment so by the time we produced our full product, we were more familiar and confident when it came to filming as we had the knowledge required to produce effective shots. Another way in which our full product developed by comparison to our preliminary task relates to location. For our preliminary task we used one location which didn’t include any planning or connote any meaning. We had multiple shoot days to film our thriller in different locations and in addition to this, we had to do pickups where we reshoot a couple of sections as we were dissatisfied with the way they turned our within the editing component. Being able to reshoot improved the quality of our thriller.

In terms of post-production, our editing had to be a lot more specific and follow the laid out plan we created. This made our work easier as we already knew what we had to do so it was less time consuming in that sense. In editing, our preliminary task taught us how to use the software and develop skills in how to edit, this made our final piece more precise and used a wider variety of the editing tools we learnt about such as how to add text and sound and create sequences of shots that are coherent.