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

Looking back at the preliminary task I know that i have improved a considerable amount and gained vital knowledge of different programmes a media conventions and forms and techniques.

The Preliminary task was very basic. The script was already done and we just had to plan out how we wanted the lines delivered by the actors and what extra camera angles we were going to use and how to use final cut pro. cut our footage up.
It was all very basic compared to what i have done for my final product 'ANGELDUST'.



First there was a lot more planning for the final product.
We had to be much more indepth. We had to come up with the film idea then draw a storyboard for it and then decide on what actors we needed what they might wear, how we wanted the actors to deliver the lines, if there were any props needed, transport if we had to go to a location, shooting script so everyone on set knew what they were doing, location itself, script for the actors, making up a production company, set design, lighting design, and finally learn how to use Final Cut Pro in more depth and After Effects and Soundtrack.
Whereas for the prelim. task we had to know how we wanted the actors to deliver the lines, what they would wear and any extra shots we wanted to add to the list of shots we already had given to us.
Because we had planned exactly what we were going to shot and the nature of what we were shooting (MTV blog style) there was only one angle to shoot of our character Angel3323 so there was no need to shoot wide-medium-close which we had to do for the prelim task. However, we did do a range of shots of Lester727 but because we wanted to keep him a mystery we shot him all up in close up.



These are screen grab of the prelim task, showing a close up, medium and wide shot.







The prelim was completely different to my final product so they are quite hard to compare, for example the style of editing. For the prelim it all had to flow whereas for 'Angeldust' we decided to do straight cuts making it quite jagged and disjointed because we were cutting it in an MTV blog style. However, we did have to make the transitions from each clip flow, which is where After Effects (AFX) came in handy because we were able to animate parts using pages we had made on photoshop which, made the story clearer and flow from one clip to the next.

For the prelim we only used the audio that we had got on the day but in the final product we used artificial sounds form Soundtrack and one member of our group, Josh, made the soundtrack which we cut to fit our product. Soundtrack is where we got the artifical typing sound. The sound was difficult because unlike the prelim we had music and soundeffects so that meant we had to change the sound levels throughout the opening sequence and we had to cut it to fit the footage.

The biggest hurdle we had to jump over was learning how to use AFX. Most of our product is made up of AFX. We used it to make 'Angeldust' unique and visually exciting and dynamic. But i found it quite complicted at the start so it was very trial and error whether any of the footage we edited in AFX was going to work. Using AFX made our product more sophisticated and complicant than the prelim and improved our editing skills and ideas now that we know how to use AFX.



Our product turned out really well i think because we knew the basics from doing the prelim so we were able to build on top of that experience and experiment with new technology and ideas.