Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the thriller? Evaluation Task 7

'Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the thriller?'

After finishing our editing of our thriller and seeing the final cut in HD and then watching our preliminary tasks, there are many differences between the two. Throughout our preliminary task the camera was not properly focused, so watching it back whilst editing we saw everything was slightly fuzzy around the edges, the editing cuts were not as slick and instead are quite jolted and the camerawork is not very inventive and is instead basic and quite plain to watch. We used a wide shot, a medium close up and over the shoulder shots whereas in our thriller we experimented with extreme close ups and many more interesting shots. I would say the camerawork is definitely more effective in our thriller because the variety of shots help the audience to see the important and small elements and the pace is completely different, helping to establish that it is a thriller.

The pace for our thriller is quick, without being too quick so that the audience miss any important elements whereas the pace for our preliminary task is quite slow and some of the shots we do have our out of time with the rest of the video, for example in a wide shot Leila goes to throw the gun at Georgia and then there is a cut to a medium shot of Georgia to show a close up of the gun when it is thrown at her, however there is a gap of about three seconds before the gun comes into shot which is out of time and if I could go back I could make the transition between shots smoother and would cut the beginning of the shot out so that it flows from the wide shot to the medium shot. I feel completely the opposite when watching our thriller back, I feel that our cuts are quick and slick and we did our best and we're all proud of the finished product. One thing I would change is the beginning as when filming we decided Tommy should enter when the light is switched on after Bobby has already woken up and turned his light on, although this makes sense as it helps to show that Tommy is above Bobby, I would prefer for the first shot to be of Tommy as that automatically gives of a sense of foreboding and I think it's a creepier idea that Tommy has been watching Bobby for a long time rather than he enters whilst Bobby is awake and waits for him to fall asleep. When editing our preliminary task we were still new to  Final Cut Pro whereas when editing our thriller we were putting special effects in and cross dissolving and fading clips and the music together. I also noticed how much longer the thriller took in general, filming our prelim took one hour whereas our thriller took an entire day and in some other groups, two or three days and the editing for the prelim took two hours whereas the editing for the thriller took two or three weeks. This gave me a real understanding for how long it can take to film and edit an entire movie and it also helped me to realise how much more important the thriller is compared to the short time it took to make the preliminary task. The mise-en-scene for our preliminary task is boring, it is in a classroom and if I could do it again, knowing that we were using a gun, I would have changed the location and put it in a back alley or somewhere slightly more scary and dangerous. The lighting is not interesting and there is no variation. However in our thriller the locations change from a grungy attic/ ventilation shaft to a warm cosy hotel room. The lighting in the attic is dark, to display the dark nature of our thriller and the dark personality of Tommy, our assassin. The lighting in the bedroom is light, to display the good nature of Bobby, the victim, in the bed.