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

For my preliminary task we used the editing suite as our location, the actors used in our prelim were inexperienced and we didn't experiment with shot types. We followed the storyboard given to us and we didn't have any freedom. We didn't experiment with things like panning or trying things like tracking shots or birds eye view shots. When we started editing our prelim, we had quite a view difficulties on learning how to use final cut pro so Matt explained to us all the necessary techniques to use in the program. However, didn't use anything like transitions, instead we just did basic cuts. Within final cut pro we learnt what the time line was, the bins on the left, what the two different viewers do along with in and out markers. Comparing this to the editing process in our thriller, we learnt only the basic tools needed and not all the different ones we used in our thriller. Whilst editing our thriller we added background sounds like a couple shouting and music playing from above. We also has a lot more freedom when filming our thriller because we were allowed to chose what we wanted to do, we used various shots like the shot looking down on Adam and the shot looking up towards the ceiling. This allowed us to broaden our knowledge on filming and it was a completely different experience to our prelim as we weren't given a sheet with exactly what shots we had to get.
In our prelim we didn't have any props, which was completely different to our thriller as we had to collect quite a few different props to create the right mise en scene that we wanted. With our location for our thriller we were allowed to pick where we wanted to film, instead of just finding any available room like our preliminary, and the way we were able to dress the set however we wanted to allowed to us to be as creative as possible.
In our thriller we had the choice to play with the lighting, we used red heads to keep the light natural through out the day and make it look consistent as the light outside was changing every hour. The read head lit through the window from outside, to darken the light we simply used a bin bag stuck to the window. In our prelim it was much more simple then this, we were just filming with the natural lights in the room. Unlike in our prelim, we used the camera in a much more creative way doing things such as panning and focus pulling.
Overall, I think I have improved all round, my favourite part of the process was when I was filming, I found this experience very enjoyable and it allowed me to expand my knowledge in this area of media. I was definitely able to deal with something going wrong better once I had experienced filming, the preliminary prepared me for a beginning look on what I should slightly expect during my thriller but obviously not as difficult. I definitely think I have improved my skills in this area.