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

When we filmed our preliminary task we practiced a number of techniques to help us develop ideas. This task also really helped us gain knowledge on how to use the equipment and we also gained a little more expertise in the execution of our camera work. It gave us an insight into what shots are useful in what situation i.e. shot-reverse-shot is used for conversation but also the 180° rule should be used unless you are trying to create a reverse shot.

As mentioned before the 180° rule is a very important editing technique if dialogue is used between two characters. We did not carry this technique into our final edit as no dialogue appears in the opening of our thriller.

Another very useful technique that we practised in our preliminary task was match on action and continuity editing. This is important as it makes a scene look more realistic. For example we filmed sombody opening a door and using a second camera filmed the person coming into the room from the front view. This is more realistic than showing somebody enter the room from behind as this doesn't show the audience what somebody would see if they were in the room when the person entered. We also used continuity editing in our opening to smooth transitions between shots where most of the aspects remain still but some parts of the shot move. For example in our thriller we used match on action editing to cut from an over the should shot of the girl getting something out of the fridge to a 2 shot of her seeing the killer apper from behind the fridge door. To do this we made sure to match the position of the fridge door to match to the ssme position from both camera angles. Otherwise the fridge door would have jumped from being wide open to almost shut.

The preliminary task also helped us familiarize ourselves with the editting software, specifically we larnt how to cut and split clips, only keeping the clips we wanted ans how to crop a video clip like when we noticed that the vey bottom of the second camera tripod was visible in the shot.

Another factor that helped us was using wo cameras, it meant we had to plan our shots more carefully so neither of the cameras were visible in the other cameras shot, however it was also far more convenient than refilming the whole scene from a second angle as this is impossible to get exaactly the same and creates continuity errors.

Overall, I think our final piece has beenm edited to a much higher standard due to the practise and expertise that we gained by undertaking a preliminary task.