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

By doing a preliminary task I was able to broaden my knowledge on camera shots and editing on imovie. Therefore I have improved since then and fed my new knowledge into my final product. For both my preliminary and my final thriller opening i made storyboards and shooting scripts to make the whole process more organised and made it a lot easier to get things started. I created a slide show that had our three main ideas on it, however we didnt use any of the ideas we first came up because when we presented our slide show the feedback we got from the class was varied and there wasn’t a favourite idea, so we moulded two ideas together and started planning from there. I then went on to create a spider diagram of location, plot, characters, shot types, props and costume. We thought that these 6 things were the most important things to consider when planning our opening as they would have a big part of creating a thriller and dramatic atmosphere. We didnt do this much planning for our preliminary and i think the planning we have carried our has had a big effect on the opeing and is a good standard. 

We had many strengths and weaknesses with our preliminary and looking back on it now they are quite obvious. Our strengths were we made good use of camera angles and shot types, our editing was good and we tried to make full use of the editing tools we were given, I also think the music fitted in really well with each clip. Our weakness’ however was probably the location as there was a PE lesson taking place in the background of one of our shots and the bright colours of the uniform made it stand out, although we worked around this and made it black and white and increased the contrast and put it in slow motion so they would move as fast and would blend in with the trees in the background. There was also an apple on the floor and when shotting we didnt notice it, it was only when editing it came to our attention however we were lucky that it was in all of the shots. i think the continuity of our preliminary was good as it flowed really nicely and was in time with the music. We tried to use the editing devices to our full advantage so this meant in all areas possible we edited. We made the whole preliminary black and white and made the contrast darker to make it look better and more professional, we also converted most of the clips to enable us to speed up or slow down the clips, as we didn't want anything to be sped up we mainly just used the slow motion tool. I think our match on action shot of Emily opening the door and walking through the door worked well and was very effective as it flowed really well without any sudden changes in camera work.


Throughout our preliminary we stuck to the 180 degree rule, this is when you keep the camera always at the same side so the audience isn't confused at any time of the movie. It was definitely a good thing that we were able to stick to the 180 degree rule, as it meant that when it came to filming our thriller we would of already had practise when using and sticking to it. However in our thriller the 180 degree rule wasn't much of a problem as most of our clips were stills, but the point in which the victim is being captured by the attacker i think we have kept well within the 180 degree rule. 

All in all i think our opening was quite successful. The feedback we gathered suggest this however there are a few flaws in it for example i think we could of used better music that wasn’t so repetative. I also think we could of done more with the titles because they wern’t very creative and a bit vague, however they still fitted in well with the thriller. Our strengths of our thriller is likewise with the preliminary the camera angles as we used alot of close-ups which are common in thriller films, we also used match on action and kept well with the 180 degree rule. We also used imovie to our full advantage and used all the editing quiptment provided. 

When shooting our thriller opening we were lucky with the weather because it was a dry day however it was a bit windy so it worked to our advantage and the wind fitted in well with the opening because it makes it more dramatic when in slow motion.

I feel that looking back on when we did our preliminary task in October we have improved our skills and increased our knowledge in shot types. The biggest difference bertween the preliminary and my final product is the amount of planning and thought that has been put into it and has definitely paid of.