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

The pre-lim that my group made has been uploaded in the blog below this one, so take a look!! 

The camera work in my pre-lim is very basic. This is because we had just started to use the camera, and it was the first task we were given. It was more of a task for us to feel comfortable in front of the camera and to get to know how to use it. The camera work in our thriller is a lot more advanced and complicated which shows my development in understanding how to use the camera. We have also learnt a lot more camera shots since the pre-lim and we learnt how they can be effective, so we had a lot more of an idea of what we were doing while thinking about the shots and which ones we wanted. Obviously we still used the simple shots in our thriller, but we also included some effective and eye catching shots. 

An example of a simple shot would be an ECU: (this is a screen grab from the preliminary task)

In our preliminary task we did not use any mis-en-scene, but in the thriller, mis-en-scene was used quite a lot. We thought about our casting for a long time, because we wanted our piece to be as realistic as it could be. While shooting the thriller in the pub, we used two lights, so we had to work on that for a while, setting them up etc, but the lighting didn’t have any meaning to it, it was just lighting to make the faces brighter. But in the pre-lim the lighting was very basic. 

We only used one prop in the pre-lim, we used a spray paint can. Whereas in the thriller we had quite a few props, to make the story line clearer and to add effect to the opening title sequence. 
Locations was very important for the thriller, but for the pre-lim we just used a set that was built in the studio, but it worked fantastically! For the thriller we used a restaurant, a car park, a cafe, and a kitchen, so it was a lot more complicated and professional than the pre-lim.

The editing in the pre-lim, is again very simple. I was just getting used to the editing program ‘final cut pro’ so i hadnt had any experience with it, and i wasnt really too sure what I was doing. In the other hand the editing in my thriller is alot more experienced, and effective. The pre-lim was just simple editing, whereas the thriller is a lot more complicated and has sections cut out, and boxes opening and closing the screens and it is alot more visual and interesting to watch. 

Again the sound in the pre-lim is very boring, it is just speaking because we were given a script to work off. Where as in the thriller we didn’t have a script to work off, and if we wanted speaking we had to make our own script. We could include anything we wanted. If we didn’t want sound we didn’t have to have it we could choose music instead. We didn’t include any speaking, we just use music and sounds of cars moving around etc. So it is a lot more active. 

We didn’t use any make up in our piece, it is all very raw and natural. With the costumes, we told the people what sort of character they were playing and we gave them some kind of idea what we wanted them to wear. For example, Theo was playing a pass over person, so we just told him to wear some clothes that might make him look a bit dodgy. This is sort of thing that he wore --


These are some of the photo of us filming our thriller at the cafe. 
We all did some filming each
so we all got a chance to use
the camera. We as in the pre-lim i was acting so i didn’t get the opportunity to use the camera, so it was my first time using it, and i really enjoyed it and picked it all up quickly. 

Preparation and organisation for our pre-lim was very minimal. We didn’t do much in advance, Alexandra and I just learnt our lines so we didn’t mess it up on the day, but that was all the ‘planning’ we did. Whereas for our thriller, months of planning went into it, we made 3 story boards, made a shooting schedule, sent out emails to get our cast sorted and a lot more. So this really taught my group and I how to organise it all and keep it up to date because we were really excited about our idea for the thriller so we wanted it to be as exciting and perfect as possible. I think that organisation is really really important because the more organised you are the less stressed you are and the more smoothly your shooting day is going to go. If you are un-organsied it will make you behind your shooting schedule and you might not be able to finish shooting in one day, which would be a big problem because each group only got a day to shoot. I feel that organisation is key to a good media project.              

In my pre-lim group there was me, Alexandra, Toby, Ellie and Louise. I think that we all worked well and we all did our bit in the group and no one was not doing something. Alexandra and I were acting in the pre-lim, Louise was continuity girl, Toby was filming and Ellie was doing the lighting. So everyone had a role and was happy with their role. So everything was perfect and organised and our pre-lim was shot quickly and promptly. 
For the thriller i had a different group, but i still had Toby in it. Because Toby and I worked in the pre-lim together we got on really well working in the thriller and I think that our group in the thriller worked a lot better. Maybe this is because we are also friends outside of the classroom and we get on well outside of school and we are quite close, but we all also had a role in the group and we stuck to it and we have had no problems so far! So all our communication skills and team working skills have improved since the pre-lim. 

I think that the pre-lim was a good starting point for us all because it gave us the experience that we needed for the thriller and I think it made us all more confident in using the cameras and editing. It was a really interesting and good task to start of the year.