Obviously the preliminary task was a much simpler task than designing, planning, filming and editing our own opening title sequences, as it was done at such an early stage in the year.
Of course the designing of our task was very different as all of our ideas were original and scripted by ourselves, whereas for the preliminary task, we used a simple script which the teachers had given to us. The location of the task was also an important factor which needed to be considered. For the prelim task we were given a location on the school grounds, however for our real thrillers, we were able to shoot off-campus. We chose to use Courtney's (a girl in our class' house) however we lacked organisation here as we were not sure what to expect and had only pictures to rely on.
There is a noticeable development from our prelim task to our final project. We used the prelim task as a practice to use the equipment, see how we worked as a team and to test our basic skills. From this we managed to use our practice with the equipment to make sure that that every shot was perfect when shooting the actual sequence . We also used our increased knowledge in camera work to try out new ways of filming different shots. The best example of this is the tracking shot which was a completely new experience to the group.
There is also a noticeable development in the variation and complexity of camera shots we chose to use in the real task. Here we experimented with slow motion, underwater and the tracking shot, whereas before, most of our shots were filmed as a wide or medium shot with not many close ups or movement of camera. Our development in camera skills definitely helped us to create a more interesting piece the second time round which can be seen when the two videos are shown in succession.
Although our camera skills noticeably developed, some aspects which worked well from our prelim task we chose to use again in the real task. This can be seen from the two pictures above which both use ECUs to bring the audience's attention to certain aspects of each film.
The preliminary task included some very simple dialogue which, for our thriller, we chose not to include as it can interrupt the suspense in certain moments and we found it hard with the echo of the pool room to get good quality sound. However improvements in the sound used can be seen as we used Soundtrack Pro to include soundtracks and sound effects into our work.
The editing involved in the real opening sequence was also much complex. This was due to the much larger sequence which needed to be edited and also due to the importance of this task over the prelim task, so a lot more time was spent on the accuracy of each edit. The preliminary task was very useful at this stage as it gave us a basic understanding of Final Cut Pro (the editing software) which therefore allowed us to work quicker with what we were doing.
Overall, the preliminary task proved to be very useful in preparing us for the camerawork, sound and editing involved in the real task. However it is definitely evident to see that a lot more care and consideration was put into the real task than the preliminary task.
