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?

As a film maker I feel that I have developed in many areas. I find it easier to pick up faults and problems in a piece of media whilst still giving feedback on ways to develop this fault and fix it. With the preliminary task I often found it easy to ignore the problems just so that we could get the filming smooth, from this I found out that I could spot these faults all the time whenever I watch my Preliminary task. With the main task I spoke to another member of the group (Zander Parkin) about areas of which I had concerns and with any faults I could see at the time. I also feel that making sure of the footage taken is an important task. It is important for the footage to be clear, focused and non-blurry. It was not as often taken seriously in out preliminary task where we had a few shots in which we found were incorrect. We did not have any other versions of this clip so had to re-shoot it, this proved a problem as the people in the scene were wearing different clothing so ruined the continuity of this clip, with our main AS task the number of times we shot the same scene ensured that if something was wrong with one shot, then the chance of it being wrong with the others is reduced to a safety.

From my preliminary task I feel that we managed to include a wide variety of shots and did not just remain in one area during the filming. In our preliminary task I think we did not correctly use the 180 degree rule without breaking it and lacked in the continuity of the filming. One section of the preliminary task where we included a shot reverse shot one of the actors (Morris James) changed with his hair style and his shirt This Continuity failure would have been avoided if we recorded these scenes more than once.

I was important for me to develop my camera skills before filming my main task. After the failure of the continuity from the preliminary task we would need to ensure that if the filming span over more than one day then the same clothing is used. We decided that we would film the same scene in one area more than once to as if the filming did not work correctly we would not need to come back the next day when the weather and/or lighting would be different. With the 180 degree rule we struggled to make sure that the rule was not broken, this was successful after revising the camera shots and angles which were used in our final piece. We did not use a shot reverse shot in our media as we felt there was no place in the main task for it. Shot reverse shots are useful when there are two or more people talking or confronting each other, there were no scenes in our main task where we felt this would work. In our preliminary task we managed to get a shot reverse shot in the very first scene.

We attempted to have a match on action shot during the filming of our main task. When the filming was complete and we returned back to editing we found that the match on action scene did not work to the best of effects. Due to this we did not put a match on action into our main task. Match on action was also not used in our preliminary task as we did not correctly think of the camera shots in a wide variety. As it can also be seen we did not always get the characters of the moment in the shots correctly. The top shot with Morris in managed to include his face in the centre square, whereas the shot with James in did not fully reach the centre of the shot. In the shot where Morris is walking you can see that throughout that whole shot his body is focused mainly towards the left hand side of the screen. It changes the shot soon after but this means that Morris is almost always on one side of the screen when walking at all times.

I feel that the main task in which Zander Parkin, Morris James and I created was a successful Thriller opening although it is a borderline Thriller as it does sometimes feel confusing and as if there is no storyline to the opening, Other times it feels like a trailer. It is and opening though and with it there are conventions of the Thriller Genre. There is a protagonist aswell as an antagonistic character. The main antagonist is a dark and mysterious character which has been seen in the film as the dominant character. He is often viewed as being stronger and more cunning than the protagonists. This is given across because the camera angles nearly always show the antagonist being above the protagonists on the levels. We used the lighting to convey the message that the story line between these two characters is a long and dark one. I feel that one of the strengths of my Thriller is the conventions that we conveyed through lighting, set, location and clothing. For the villain we included a suit which was all black, with a black waist coat, shirt and tie. This conveys the ideas that this character is the villain and by wearing a suit he is in some sort of business. By wearing all black we get the feeling that this person brings darkness along with him in the way that he acts and the things that he does. This is a strength of our thriller as the costumes were well thought out. One of the weaknesses of our thriller was the story line. Whilst there was still a story line for people to see it was a difficult if not transparent story line. The story line was following a certain individual through the introduction. The story line that we ended up with seemed to be a slightly clichéd one considering there was one person in which the main character has crossed paths with before and wants revenge.

With the titles I feel that we did prefer to make the titles off of the Macs and in a way which resembled the thriller. For our preliminary task we did not end up having a single title on it, we felt this was a flaw in our preliminary and needed to work on this in the main task. In the main task we cut out pieces of a newspaper and stuck them to a piece of paper in order to install the feeling of insecurity and the feeling of being a detective onto the audience.