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

In our preliminary task we were just getting used to all the equipment and tried to make it as entertaining as possible, we planned a lot more for this filming then we did for  the prelim as we had scripts and story boards for our thriller yet none for our prelim. I have learnt much more from the editing of it too with our music in the prelim not fitting exact and in the thriller actually composing the music piece ourselves, we also didn’t use transitions and effects to their full potential on our prelim with tacky editing when Alice licks her lips and we have slowed it down on the macs by converting it to a file which you can edit the speed of on iMovie, which is what we did in this instance. The concept of the whole piece was a good, different piece and we tried to do the same when doing our thriller. Skills which have developed are the 180 degree rule as when shooting the prelim we did not stick to it, and match on action wasn't perfect, like when Alice and Robbie go through the door and when the coffee is being made, with the sound also being off. I think we used continuity and shot reverse shot well as well with sections where they're having the stare off being successful in both of these areas. When we did the prelim we didn’t do much planning for it yet for our thriller we used story boards and scripts so we knew what was happening on the day we were filming, meaning that we were much more organized and knew what was happening and what shots would need to be filmed for it to make sense instead of just filming anything and then putting it all together and breaking all the rules.
 We tried to draw the 180 degree rule line in our story boards so we knew where we could film without breaking the rules. In our thriller I think the theme is original so it makes it stand out more. I also think that the match on action for most of the shots is near enough perfect. The problem was getting close ups of candles and dice as we didn’t use the tripod so some shots are very shaky even with stabilization.
When we tried rolling numbers we realised that we couldn’t roll two exact numbers on both dice at the same time, so that was a problem for when it came to the last scene which was snake eyes on the dice. To create tension we used a lot of close ups so that it showed hardly any background so it makes the audience focus on what is in view, which might also make them feel uncomfortable as there’s nothing apart from that on the screen we also used close ups to  give a sense of mystery. We used fade to black as a common transition as it makes the scenes look slicker with a transition as the shots are quite dark anyway so it doesn't make it look tacky either. It also fits in with our snake shots as we lengthened the length of the transitions so it gives a good base for the snake shots.

I think looking back at our preliminary task we have improved a lot in the variety of shots we have used to the editing we have chosen to do. We also used the equipment better with actually making our own music. Another thing that was done better the second time was that we knew we had to plan to get it right, and in the end the thriller came out better than the preliminary task whilst still keeping that originality we had in our prelim.