Maximilian Mayo-Dell reflects on improvements from a preliminary task to a full thriller film opening. Key areas of growth include skills with equipment, framing shots professionally, using lighting and white balance effectively, improved pre-production with storyboards and location selection, allowing enough time for proper production and multiple takes, incorporating useful props, coaching actors, and advanced editing with sound and titles. Overall, the thriller opening was much more polished and tense compared to the preliminary task due to these lessons learned.

1. Evaluation Question 7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do
you feel you have learnt in the progression from
it to the full product?
By: Maximilian Mayo-Dell

2. Looking back on our preliminary task and comparing it to
our finished thriller opening, I can clearly see how I have
improved individually and as a group because during
couple months I have learnt new skills using the
equipment and understanding how to shoot a
professional looking thriller opening. When watching our
preliminary, could already notice certain improvements
which I could have made to it which I did use for our
thriller opening.

3. One noticeable improvement was the way we used the camera to frame,
track and transpose certain angles so that we would be able to make the
film look professional and for our thriller film also to create tension
towards the audience.
In our preliminary as shown above, our panning was very shaky and wasn't
stable which makes it look very unprofessional since we were aiming for a
steady pan to the right and up but we were not able to achieve this. But in
our actually thriller opening, we decided to try keep the shaky camera to
convey a scary atmosphere and to make the audience feel that they were
the person following them so that the tension could be accomplished.

4. Another improvement that we encountered is the use of lighting since
we now were able to use LED lights with filters to create our own setting
and help with highlighting certain objects. Also we learnt about the
three point lighting and how to create a professional looking picture. In
addition to this, we leaned how to control the natural lighting with the
cameras so that no glare would be produced and everything would look
generic.
In the preliminary, because of our lack of knowledge on how to change
the white balance correctly, we had glare coming through the windows
behind and therefore couldn’t see the background which was very
unprofessional and looks very tacky. Yet in our thriller opening, we were
able to set the whit balance correctly to portray a stunning and almost
angelic image through the natural light.

5. Pre-Production:
In our preliminary task, we didn't’t have any time to plan our, location, the
shots that we were going to take, the dialogue nor the lighting since we only
had a couple lessons to go film and completely edit. But even with these draw
backs I believe that we still accomplished an amazing couple of minutes of film.
With our opening thriller we were able to create ourselves a storyboard to give
us the baseline on what we needed to shoot and what the film opening would
hopefully look like. This task then helped us produce our animatic to give us a
further idea on what our thriller opening would look like.

6. Since in our preliminary we had not found a location before to shoot our task
and we only just found one on the day, we all decided to pick a location that
was close to all of us, accessible at any time and not where there is loads of
public around which could intervene with our shooting. We then cam e to the
decision of shooting at my house since we would be inside in case it rained so
none of the equipment could have been damaged, and also we would have
been able to control the lighting and what we wanted in each of the scenes.

7. Production:
In our production for our
preliminary, we were on a
strict time limit since where
we were filming, the room
was to be needed for a
lesson so we had to make
do with what we had there
and we had to rush all the
camera shots. This is maybe
the reason why some of the
over the shoulder shots
look very unprofessional.
This was different for our opening thriller film
since we had enough time to get every camera
angle we needed to make it look professional
and to also create tension for the movie itself.
In addition to this we were able to take as
many shots as we needed which we then
recorded onto a sheet so we knew when
editing which raw footage we were going to
use.

8. In our preliminary, the use of
props was in my opinion
unsuccessful to portray and
interview since we just had
sheets of paper lying on a
table which honestly looked
very bad and unprofessional.
Whereas in our thriller film, we had time to produce and use
certain props that we thought would be useful to convey a scary
atmosphere, in this case the bag full of cleaning products, the
broken picture frame and the bloodied hammer.

9. Also, considering we had a whole day that we decided to use
makeup onto our main actor to make him look mentally insane
and it also looks like he has had a lack of sleep. This could have
been because of him killing his mother and for other things to
come.
Also to help with the acting,
we had Catherine teaching
Patrick how she wanted him
to act so that we could
portray our image onto the
screen. We weren't able to do
this during our preliminary
since we had no time to
convey what we wanted to
do.

10. Post-Production
I believe in our post
production, I improved a
great deal since the
preliminary task on the
editing since I made the
frames flow better and the
continuity was perfect when
switching from one scene to
another whereas in our
preliminary it was
sometimes jumpy.
In addition to this, I used negative frames to
convey the flashes happening but instead of it
being just a white frame, you would still be able to
see the image so it would subliminally noticed.

11. In our preliminary task, the editing was very straight forward as we just
wanted to put the raw footage together at the right time since we didn’t have
long to do it. But in our thriller we needed to first select what raw footage we
were going to use, then decide how much sound we wanted to be heard
since when we inserted the music we didn't’t want the sounds to clash. In
addition to this, we also had to add in our titles at certain times and onto the
screen in certain places so that it looked professional yet still building a
tension in the atmosphere. Sound effects were used as well when the door
slams to create a climax for the audience and to scare them.

12. In conclusion, I believe that our thriller film opening was very
successful since it created tension and a disturbing atmosphere to the
audience. I have definitely improved from the preliminary task with
my teamwork and individual skills and I believe I show this through
the finishing product and my blog posts.