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

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

2. Camera Work and Framing
I feel like the biggest progress I've made from my preliminary task to my
final product is the camera work and framing.
In my preliminary task I used fairly basic camera angles, the framing was
very simple, with the main focus of the shot directly in the middle, with the
camera still.
In my final product, we used more interesting shots (like over the shoulder
shots) to make the shot more framed, and look nicer by using the rule of
thirds. We also started to experiment more with hand held shots, rather than
using stationary, static shots (using a tripod) like in my preliminary task.
Looking back at the footage from my preliminary task, I noticed the bad
camera quality, as we had just used a basic camcorder, rather than the
DSLR we used for our final product, which made the footage nicer to watch.

3. Locations, Props, and Costume
When we were filming our preliminary task we didn't put much planning
into it, meaning that we only used what we already had. The room that we
used wasn't quite right for the 'narrative' of the short film as they didn't fit
together. When we were filming our opening sequence, we had a few
weeks to plan things like location, and think about how the location links
with the narrative (e.g. school in a coming-of-age film) and the costume
the actor were wearing. Also, linking back to camera work, we had the
time to think about the framing (rule of thirds) and what angle to film the
location from.
From doing our preliminary task we realised how important props were in
not only developing the character, but making the scene more interesting.

4. Editing
The area of making this opening sequence that I have improved the most in, is
probably editing as my preliminary task was the first time I had edited a video. I
have improved my cutting skills, including when to cut the clip (not too early, or
too late) and when too cut the clip so it can flow nicely onto the next clip, which is
important when doing a match on action clip (when our protagonist opens the
door). Because of where I had cut the clips in my preliminary talk, the video was
very choppy, and I tried adding transitions to make it flow better, which ended up
making the video seem amateurish. I have also learnt how to edit the picture in
the frame, (e.g. editing the colour and lighting) and how that can effect the piece
as a whole (low key lighting will creates a darker atmosphere), but on my
preliminary task, I only edited the clips together, meaning that the lighting was
just the natural lighting there was on the day of filming.