task 7 - looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

The preparation and planning for the prelim task was very different to the main, which was in a lot of depth, we made prop lists, cast lists, story boards and shot lists and were constantly changing our ideas. Where as for the prelim very little planning was put in, there was only a shot list for what to do for each section.

the development of our film making skills improved massivly during the transitions of our prelim task to our our main task. for example in our prelim task the close up of the girls face, didnt have her whole face in the screen and things such as using lots of wide shots with the whole room in it.

this is in comparison to the use of close ups we used in our main task and on different objects such as the gun

and close ups of her moving feet

we used a variety of different interesting shots in our main task, such as pans, shot reverse shot and we also did the whole sequence mainly handheld to give the feel of the chase. where in our prelim we used on wide, medium and close ups and did the whole thing on a tripod and didn't use an awful amount of imagination.

Having to think how to tell a story visually not with dialogue posed a challenge at first, but when we knew what type of mood and tone we wanted to convey, it seemed easier just to portray things visually rather than with speech.

The use of sound in both has completely changed, in our prelim task there was very little sound and all of it was diegetic, which in retrospect made the whole sequence extraordinarily dull. Where as in our main task i was confident in using sound track pro and finding the ambient sounds that are a main feature in our film, and then compose the rest separately. While composing it and copying it into final cut pro i changed the sound levels during it to give it a rough edge and to help heighten the tension. Another instance when the volume of the music was used effectivly was when she goes into the room and the music drops down quieter, giving a sense of tension and suspense. We also used a lot of stock sounds such as the bones breaking and the gun fire.

In our main task we used After Effects successfully to do the credits, which the prelim task didn't cover and this is something we have looked at during the course.

This was much more sophisticated than anything we had done in our prelim task. The way in which we can now use Final Cut Pro has dramatically changed since our prelim, we are now confident using cross fades and preventing shots from jumping from one to another.

Overall, the skills we have acquired have grown massively over the time we have spent, from rough work in our prelim task to much more competent filming and editiing in our main task.