Thriller evaluation Q.7

Q.7 Looking back at your Preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When we created our Preliminary task I was new to media and the technologies involved so our prelim only had the basic features used in it. When we started our thriller opening though I understood media more as I became more aware of how to use the Apple Mac’s, cameras, blog and more in order to make our thriller more effective.

An important skill that I was taught at the beginning of starting media was the important 180 degree rule. This is a rule where when filming a conversation between two people for example you must film from the same side of the conversation all the time in order for the audience to understand the scene. This is because if the camera shot changed to the other side half way through a conversation then the person you were trying to watch then they would be in the wrong position possibly confusing the viewer. Two examples of this rule are shown below.

Continuity is an important factor when filming because it allows the whole footage to be smooth, in time and relevant to the chosen subject. In our preliminary task we did alright on the continuity as we included good transitions and the shots that changed location were edited well to stay in sync. There was only one mistiming on the prelim though. You can see from the video above, it was when the main character played by one of our group members went to open a door at the top of the stairs and it came out a little jumpy. The problem was with the footage filmed in this scene so the only thing we could do was to try and smooth it out as much as possible. So we could have improved on this scene by filming more accurately in that particular incident. After our prelim we now knew to take even more care while filming to ensure that we could edit the clips so they had continuity. We did this in our thriller and I don’t think there were any jumpy moments at all in our thriller which showed that we learned from our mistake. Another issue that might have affected the continuity of our thriller and prelim is keeping all the props and costumes the same throughout them both. We did not have a problem with this though as the props and costumes were all kept the same so that the audience could not question anything. An example that we kept the same costumes on our characters are shown below as you can see that one of our characters has the same clothes on from two different scenes.

By producing our prelim before our thriller I feel as if I know a lot more about the types of camera shots and which ones are effective in a thriller. To set the scene in our prelim we used a long shot which is shown on the left below. I thought that this shot could have maybe been shot a bit better. This is because we could have moved the camera more centrally overlooking him and position the character more in the middle of the shot so that the “golden mean rule” would apply. This would increase the effectiveness of the shot used. So to improve this situation when we used this shot in our thriller as you can see on the right below, we made sure that the character and the camera were more central. We also ensured that the scenery around the character was suited to the camera shot. From this I have shown that after time I now know what features need to be involved in order to make a good camera shot.

In our Prelim our music soundtrack was only the music of the Apple Mac’s because we were new to the music programs like audacity and more. So when making the thriller opening we made some really impressive soundtracks that made our thriller better than if we had of used the basic music of the Apple Mac’s. We decided to make our own soundtrack as it suited our thriller better and it made the scenes in our thriller more effective as a thriller. This shows that I now know what type of music suit the thriller genre. Below are two files showing the soundtrack we used in our Preliminary task at the top and the soundtrack we used in our thriller at the bottom.

I was also able to understand more about the thriller genre and what was needed in our thriller in order for it to be an effective opening. I would not have been able to do this if we were making the thriller project at the start of the year when I only had information of thrillers when I had watched thriller films. I also understood the lighting used in thrillers better. This is because in our thriller we did not tamper with the lighting colours used in our Preliminary task that much. In our thriller though we changed the lighting by editing  nearly all the clips in our thriller in order to make the thriller more suitable for the thriller genre in being dark, mysterious and eery. An example of the lighting change can be shown below as in our thriller can be shown below as the image on the left shows the sky we filmed with the lighting changed and the lighting changed on the flashback scenes on the right hand side. These editing skills show that I have learnt more about the use of editing since the prelim continued into the thriller task.