The document compares screen grabs from the author's preliminary film project and full thriller product to show their technical and creative skills development over the course. The preliminary task used a handheld camera in a dark classroom with unflattering lighting, but this lesson was learned. The thriller incorporated more advanced techniques like filming from a moving vehicle. Comparing hot spots, the thriller used more purposeful lighting that drew attention to key areas, while the preliminary task had distracting natural light. The thriller screen grabs also showed more dynamic action compared to the static preliminary shot.

1. Look back at your preliminary task: what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product? Using comparative screen grabs from both the preliminary and the main product, show how your technical and creative skills have developed over the course. When we did our preliminary task at the beginning of the school year I didn’t have a clue about how to use a camera, or about any filming concepts. And the thought of having to film our own short thriller was a scary thought but by the time we got there I was confident about doing it.

2. On the left is a screen grab from our preliminary task. We shot this from in a class room and a hand held camera. The lighting is very dark and doesn’t work well at all but we learnt this lesson and made sure the same thing didn’t happen in our thriller. On the right is a screen grab from our thriller. We filmed Pip running from out mini bus as it was moving. This shows that we have developed in techniques a lot since the beginning of the year and also that we are a lot more confident about using the camera and trying different techniques.

3. Comparing the two screen grabs you can see that the hot spots in our thriller are pretty much perfect compared to the preliminary task. Below the three hot spots are the back of her head, the corner of the room and we are attracted to the light on the table. In the left screen shot the first hot spot is our male protagonist Adam, the second is the action of the metal bat hitting her knee and the second protagonist and the third is our torture victim Pip. The screen grab looks darker than it is but you can see from the picture above there is a huge improvement from the preliminary task. On the right you can see how dark the room was and that the natural light had a bad effect unlike for our thriller where we used the lack of natural light to our advantage and you can’t tell that we even used it.

4. The screen grab above which is from our preliminary was a very static shot, the gun was just slid across the table but in the screen grabs to the right which are from our thriller you can tell there is a lot more action going on, which is an example that our creative skills have dramatically improved. The lighting is pretty similar but there is a 100% improvement in the filming.