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

Looking back at our preliminary task, I feel that we have learnt so much more on how to create a visually interesting media product. At the time we did our preliminary task, we had no real previous experience in creating a media product from scratch. We had done a re-make of collateral, but when it came to creating something completely new, we were completely clueless and new to the experience.

However, the preliminary task was what gave us the experience to go on to create our thriller opening. We learnt more about camera angles and techniques (e.g. Dolly-zoom), mise en scene (e.g. how to do make-up). Our location was a lot better and fitting to our storyline (unlike in our prelim where we just used the only space that was available to us). Even small things like lighting made massive improvements from our preliminary work to our final thriller opening. All these things contributed to making our thriller opening much better and more professional-looking than our preliminary work was.

Also, from our preliminary work to our final thriller opening, we got a lot better at editing (e.g. got better at match-cutting and the 180-degree rule which didn't really work out in prelim due to lack of space in our filming location), and learnt a lot more about techniques in Final Cut Pro and how to edit footage effectively and creatively (I feel our prelim was just standard editing to piece footage together without any real creativity involved). In our preliminary work, we did not add any sounds, we just used what was in the footage. However, in our final thriller opening, we learnt how to use Soundtrack Pro to add sound which makes the media product a lot more professional-looking and interesting for the audience.

At the time of our preliminary work, we also had no knowledge of title sequences, which are of course integral to any film opening. However, once we started our thriller opening, we had learnt about title sequences (e.g. the conventional order of the titles) and knew how to creatively and effectively create a title sequence to add into our footage.

I also feel that our thriller opening is a lot more creative than our preliminary work; we learnt how to create more interesting storylines using storyboards, and although I feel we had very little time to come up with an idea for our thriller opening, it was a lot more well thought-out and interesting than our preliminary storyline was.