question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt from it to the final product?

Since making my preliminary task i think i have improved in all areas of the film making process through theoretical and practical work. Our preliminary task required that we create a short scene that included a match-on-action shot and shot-reverse-shot without breaking the 180 degree rule.This taught us the complete basics of how to use a camera and how to create scenes with it.
As well as this we also created a short film entitled "The Package" which we designed and filmed ourselves. This gave us a flavour of what film making was like and it also allowed us to test out editing for the first time using Final Cut Pro X. It was these base skills that i developed and furthered through practical work that lead me to create my final piece.

For my piece I decided to work on my own as i felt that nobody wanted to create the same style of piece that i did. This meant that I was involved in every aspect of making my film from planning to construction. 
In terms of planning I learnt a great deal; previously for our preliminary task and the short film task called "The Package" we had done minimal planning other than an extremely basic, rough and brief story board. When planning my film i learnt to make a detailed and clear storyboard that displayed camera movements, the framing of the shot and also denoted any sound effects or movement withing the shot. As well as this i learnt how to create a 'shot-list' which told me the type of shot, the content of the shot, the type of cut between shots and the actors on screen during the scene. 
These were exceedingly helpful in the filming of my piece as it allowed me to work efficiently on location, organize my actors effectively, get the footage i needed and, most importantly, produce a high standard of work.

After all the planning had taken place the next area that i moved on to was the filming. I feel that I have improved a huge amount from my preliminary task when comparing it to my final piece; for a start the camerawork in my thriller opening is vastly more developed than in my preliminary task. In my opening i used a variety of different shots to create certain moods and to give my piece a certain style. One thing that i feel i used effectively and to a great extent was the use of manual focus. I wanted to use manual focus because it gives footage a unique quality that makes it appear very professional. It also distinguishes itself from the highly stylised hollywood definition of  an"action-thriller" which often look like the frames have been meticulously crafted piece by piece, creating a more slick film. This is not want i wanted to achieve when filming and so i used this technique.  I did not use manual focus in every shot as i did not want to limit the type of shots i could achieve but it was an integral part in making my film look the way it does.
I also learnt to use camera levels and angles effectively to shift the balance of power between characters, thus building a more interesting scene.As my filming was outside i found trying to attain certain shot compositions, in particular closed, very difficult as i was not able to control the general public moving in and out of my shot. This was one limitation that was not easy to overcome however  i overcame this by making that anything moving in and out of shot was in the background away from the main focus of the scene. I feel that i have developed my skills in camerawork ten-fold since my preliminary task.

In terms of using Final Cut Pro X, i have feel that i have become reasonably adept in the skill of editing. For my preliminary task the only editing that took place was cutting the length of clips and putting them together. This was not the case for my final piece as i used a number of different techniques when editing. The first is the titles that appear during my opening; this was the first time that i had attempted using titles in any media piece and i had to make sure that the font, the way they entered and left the scene and finally the placement of the titles in the scene. I think that i pulled this off very well as they are clear but don't detract from the story on screen.
A second element of my film that i utilised was the use of sound. This was an extremely complex aspect of my film as i used multiple types of sound; I included some copyright free music that built tension and gave the piece a creepy feeling, i used a voiceover to explain the backstory of why the main character was out for revenge and in the scenes that required ambiance i took recordings of the surroundings and looped them so that there was diegetic sound in the scene and it wasn't silent. I also used the directional microphone to record dialogue which i then synced to the video footage and also added effects on the narrative, such as a bass amplifier to make the voice more masculine.

Overall i think i have developed my skills as a film maker and editor to a great extent. I feel the area that i progressed most in was sound as i had minimal knowledge of how it worked and how i was able to manipulate it. I also progressed on the editing and camerawork side of the task and i thoroughly enjoyed making my film. I am happy with my title sequence and it really displays the amount i have learnt since the preliminary task.