Question 7

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

To start doing either the preliminary task or the final cut my group and I had to do research and planning for both. This made me improve my research and planning skills greatly. For the preliminary task we had to create a short film based on a given word, the word we got was surprise. In this short film we had to use different camera angles including close-up, long shot, shot-reverse shot ( using the 180 degree rule. When doing the preliminary task, we only took ideas from our heads, instead of using different research source. This caused us coming up with a simple story line. Which meant we missed an infinite amount of things we were also meant to research and plan. These things included a variety camera angles and the reason to use them, what location to use and why, costumes and makeup used by the characters and what it represents, the use of diegetic and non- diegetic used and effect does this give on the audience.For our full product we learned how to research and plan better. We looked at horror film conventions to help us with the story line. We also saw different horror film trailers to give us more ideas. Whilst doing this I learned that there is always a reason to use a certain camera shot, location, mise-en-scene and sound. After doing the research on horror conventions we decided to do our horror film opening in Kennington park since it’s an isolated place. We got the girl idea from a previous film ‘The ring’. Another thing I learned in the progression to the full product was the use of camera angles. In the preliminary task I used the basic camera angles. Whereas in my final product I use a lot of variety of different camera angles and also different editing techniques. Another thing I improved was time management. For my preliminary task time management was not a problem. This was because we had to film during school hours. Although when it came to filming the final product we came across to time management problem. This was because we had to meet after school and not everyone was free at a certain. I learnt I had to think about any problem that could occur. Such as weather, low battery etc.