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

Both of our tasks began with a rule of thirds shot. They help us to focus on the character and the surroundings within the shot, they help the audience to quickly understand the situation and what is going to potentially happen in the next couple seconds. I think we have progressed to more interesting rule of third shots throughout this process, the preliminary task featured the shot throughout and opened with it, which was impressive. We also started the opening to our thriller with the shot, however we included much more of the scene and by comparing you can see how we have progressed. 

We used the rule of thirds throughout our tasks, it was the best shot along with the wide shot, to show what was happening. In both tasks we either followed Arthur or he came from behind the camera, this makes the audience feel like they are following or within the action themselves, however in the preliminary we should've used a dolly to get a steady following. So we learnt from it, and made Arthur walk out from behind the camera instead of move the camera.

Here we used a wide shot to show the two characters, I think that with our progression we have started to film with more interesting camera angles. In the preliminary we panned the rest of this shot, which looked good, however with the tasks we learnt how to edit better and so in the opening, we edited to show the characters going through the train door. This looked much better, and less amateur. I think without other tasks, our progression would not have been as good and thus we wouldn't have achieved a successful opening.

In this shot we can compare how far along we have come since the preliminary task. In the shot of The Job we can hardly see Aaron due to bad lighting. Even though it was meant to be dark, it was too dark and thus had to lead to us trying to fix it with contrast in editing. In Station 43 you can see that we picked a good time of day to film, but it’s also a good shot because of the shadows cast by the light. 

Lastly, our credits have improved. For the preliminary task we placed all the names at the end, not making the title stand out. So for Station 43, we made sure the title stood out and was by itself. All our fonts matched throughout from the countdown to the ‘6 months earlier’.This gave it a polished look, and looks much better. We also filtered the cast names throughout so that they were not all bundled together, this looked more like other thrillers. 

I think that our editing has been quite good from the start; our whole group grasped the concept of continuous editing and match on action really well. For example, for the preliminary task we had to come through a door and show the character both sides of the door to show how we can use match on action and continuous editing, we did this well and transferred what we learnt from the preliminary task to our actual opening. The couple went through train doors in the opening, and I think our editing was best here. 

We made sure to follow the 180-degree rule, we did this in both The Job and Station 43 and thought it was really important to not mess it up otherwise the audience will feel disorientated and confused about where the actors are. 

Moreover, neither of our tasks show any extreme close ups of the face, I think this would've added tension to the scene however we didn't really think about doing it. I think that it adds mystery to the opening, as the audience don't know how the characters feeling. In The Job we do a reverse shot, we don't do this in our full opening and perhaps it would've worked if we could see the stalker approaching Eryk, although not seeing the stalker adds thrill to the opening. 

In conclusion, from the preliminary task I have learnt lot about how to edit and how to continuously edit, it made me realise just how important it is in a movie to film from different angles to make it look professional and real; and if you don't use jump cuts in editing it is hard to make it work. We have come along way in terms of filming our product, as we thought about the process; we learnt it would be a bad idea to film somewhere really dark as we struggled in the editing process of The Job. Also, our preliminary task made us aware of what camera shots look good, and made us want to use the Rule of Thirds throughout our opening.