Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When comparing our preliminary task with our final production I feel as a film maker I have come a long way and improved my skills and techniques. We showed some good strength within our preliminary task such as holding a steady camera and using match on action effectively. Although as a group we knew we could improve. Looking back now I feel we definitely improved and were proud of the film we produced as a group.

We took some great strength from our preliminary task such as the shots we used, the shot types and the quality of the shots worked very well. We learnt a lot from our preliminary task and from this we learnt how to create titles with after effects and how to edit our thriller. We learnt skills such as how to fade to black and jump cuts to make our thriller build tension. We used a canon 600D camera to help make our preliminary and our production. This helped us with the quality of shots due to the quality of the camera we had. The shots we used we felt were brilliant and really showed what we could produce in our real production; this was due to the variety of shots we used. We improved framing in our production with more quality and it helped our shots look professional. I also think for the first time editing it was quite a good job that we produced. We added sound and used match on action in our first attempt at creating a sequence. The editing skills we used in the preliminary were very basic but they helped us as a group get an understanding of how to edit a production and it helped us improve as editors and familiarise us with the editing side of things ready for the final production.  

The weaknesses from our preliminary task, a notable one, were definitely the titles. This was because we used hardly any titles and the titles we did use were very basic. We didn’t do much research before the preliminary task into the titles and we used very poor and boring titles which weren’t very exciting and something our audience appropriately picked us up on. We used this to our advantage to ensure we produced exceptional titles and definitely improved from our preliminary. We did this as our audience did pick up on the titles in the preliminary task and we was driven from their feedback to please them with exciting titles. One thing we did realise as a group when doing our preliminary task was the mistake of only shooting one shot once. This meant that we only had a small quantity of shots to work from making the preliminary look unprofessional and a bit messy. We took this into consideration when producing our final product by shooting every shot we did at least 3 times. This was very effective as we could use the shots and choose the best one and had a range of shots to work from to ensure our production look professional.

When producing our preliminary task we had to learn and stick to rule that are associated with the filming industry and a vital part of making a professional production; these are rules such as continuity,180* rule, shot reverse-shot and match on action. We had to ensure the continuity improved from our preliminary task as we felt the shots in the preliminary were a bit jumpy. Our aim for the final production was to ensure our continuity improved and kept it up throughout.

We did this by starting recording before action took place so we could get the continuity right and sharp. This helped us with our editing and shooting of shots as it proved we could have a real sharp and professional production without any long pauses which were present in our preliminary. When it came to the 180degree rule we didn’t know about it to start with but we soon learnt about its importance and that we had to stick to it to ensure we didn’t disorientate our audience. When reflecting on the 180degree rule I felt we did very well of sticking to it in both productions and I didn’t feel as though we broke it at all. We developed our knowledge of the 180degree rule by watching clips of the camera’s position and how the rule can be broken. We ensure we took in the information from these clips to make sure we didn’t make the mistake of breaking the rule.

We did use the shot reverse shot within our preliminary task and it could have been improved as the camera could have been placed in a better position. We did take notice of this and we were expected to improve it when we did our final production. Although we didn’t actually use the shot reverse shot in our production; although we have justified our reasoning behind that. We chose against using the shot reverse shot as when we did our research we found that the shot reverse shot was commonly used when a conversation or some sort of dialogue was on screen. We didn’t have any dialogue in our final production and found that dialogue wasn’t a common feature within an opening title sequence and this is why we chose against not using the shot reverse shot. Match on action was an important feature that we used in our preliminary and final production and found is a very tricky but effective feature. It helps the production in many ways as it can help show continuity and action and if the match on action is done correctly it will make the film flow and look professional and make shots link together. It really helps tie things together and bring a real professional look to the production.

An example from our final production would be when Liam (the killer) is walking towards his car and intends to get inside his car. As a group we decided that match on action would be appropriate to use at this stage. What we did was cut the shot as he approaches the car door, the first part of this shot is filmed from behind the killer we then cut the shot and placed the camera in front of the killer. This is where match on action occurs as we cut the shot and return to the action at the same point ass the action was in the other shot when the camera was behind him. This helps us a lot, especially with continuity and helps the film flow more and give it more of a professional look. Another important feature we used a lot in our production was the graphic match. From our research we found that the graphic matches helped build tension and that they can be used to symbolise some parts of the action on screen. We chose to use a lot of graphic matches to create a lot of tension and scare our audience and get them thinking of what’s happening.

When we were planning for our thriller we used a different range of techniques to obtain ideas and research. By doing this we used a Vox Pop to obtain information of what people looked for in a thriller, we gathered a range of ideas from a range of different people in our target audience. We then gathered all the information and worked out what was the best way to please our audience and developed our idea from there. We used the information from the Vox Pop to come up with an idea for our narrative and we found it difficult at first but the information we gathered from our target audience really helped to accelerate our thinking. When we had done that we decided on what sort of sound we should use and how certain things in sound changed the feel and atmosphere of the scene. We then split up the group and delegated jobs to a member of the group and all played our part in producing a shot list, filming schedule and storyboard.

In general I was very pleased in myself and the group in the final production we produced. I feel this because when we compared our final production with our preliminary we can see vast improvements and as a group we felt we had done a good job. A big strength we decided as a group which we felt was a great improvement from the preliminary was our titles. I extremely like the last title, the title of our production. To link the title to the car in the production which was where the idea of DrIvE came and also the words DIE within the words DRIVE helped us and to get the letters ‘R’ and ‘V’ to flash out really shows how far we came from our basic titles used in our preliminary. I felt the production kept to the conventions of a thriller extremely well and would really have pleased our audience.

If we were to do our thriller again there would be thing I would improve to make it better although I felt there weren’t too many improvements. The final scene for example, with the pick axe makes it look a bit odd, and a pick axe isn’t a weapon particularly associated with murders in thrillers. I would of use a spade as it shows the body is about to get buried and a spade is a weapon that isn’t always in a thriller but does make the odd appearance. Another improvement that I feel we should make is the scene when the killer turns on the music and the music of the background changes, it seems a bit random and doesn’t seem to work as well and that was something as a group we had doubts about.  

At the start of the task we produced a preliminary thriller, this helped introduce to use the different types of shots to use and introduced us to the editing side of things. This helped us get up and running and we developed these skills into making our thriller as good as possible. Although we used this preliminary task to receive feedback, we showed our preliminary task to a variety of people to find out what they thought. Although this was a very basic type of thriller and didn't aim to excite or thrill our audience straight away it still followed a lot of the conventions which we asked people if they enjoyed. We found people said the camera shots and angles helped develop the narrative which helped us in our final production as we knew to use a range of shots. I believe the preliminary task was a great way of helping us as a group identify our strengths and weaknesses and also our audience identifying them for us helped drive us on in making sure we corrected our weaknesses and kept to our strengths. As one big thing in our production that our audience was critical of in our preliminary task was our use of titles.  They were at a poor standard and let our preliminary down as a result of this, we took this into consideration and did research into thriller titles and we really worked hard to ensure our titles in the final production were as good as possible as we wanted to show progress and improvement to keep our audience happy.