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

I feel that I have learnt how different lighting can create different effects and that you have to plan out all your shots and make them consistent.

Consistency in our shots became more important as time went on as in our movie we couldn’t have one shot with one person sat in one place and then in another the next, as it would confuse the viewer. We also had to make sure that we had consistent lighting and that if we made sure that everyone remembered their lines and said it exactly the same if we had to re-take a shot, especially when we tried a shot reverse shot. At the beginning, we didn’t think about this as in the preliminary film we just made sure the story and objective of the main character was clear

Looking back at having a rough storyboard, I have learnt that it is more important to have a detailed storyboard or having a few different storyboards is better. This is because if we got to filming with everyone and we had a minimalist storyboard and script we would have struggled as to where to start. Also, we wouldn’t have had a chance to film the shot and realise that it wasn’t quite what we wanted and chance it and it would have taken us a lot longer. Part of what we learnt was that time management, organisation, persistence and cooperation really help in producing an effective final film/ opening scene.

Teamwork was a very important thing that we learnt as we had to adapt to fit the idea that we both had in our heads. If we completed the work separately I think our work wouldn’t have been as accomplished as it ended up. This is as we have learnt that having two opinions and perspectives is a lot better than one and that it is way better for coming up with ideas. In my very first preliminary task with Rossi and Lewis, our ideas were more one sided and the co-operation was less as it was a much smaller task and I feel like I have learnt how to co-operate better.

I have also learnt the use of colours and what effect they can have on a clip. For example, we edited a shot of a wine class and the red wine was left red while the background was black and white. This foreshadowed the later blood on the table from one of our shots of a dead character. It also connoted blood and danger. In our preliminary video we never really thought about using colours or foreshadowing and I’ve learnt that really fining down all the little details really can make a difference and make the viewer pay much more attention to the video. It’s got me to think a lot more.