Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the product? (Evalutation question 7)

What we have learned since the preliminary.

Firstly, i have learned about a new range of technology, that i did not know how to use before we started our Thriller coursework. For example, using technology such as the Sony camera, Sony vegas, or garage band. It was completely new to me, and we had to teach ourselves, and achieve a greater understanding of the technology, to achieve a good peice of coursework.

I have also learned how to gain a deeper understanding, and a more suitable outline of audiences. Whether that be for our Thriller opening, or just films in general. I have learned ways to achieve the appropriate content that we need within our thriller. For example, we used things such as surveymonkey.com and focus groups, that helped us to achieve the thriller that we have now. These things become useful with most types of films, and are used frequently in the media industry, and therefore were very useful to us.

I have learned how to use a range of technology to present my work, instead of typing everything out, with pictures. Before i started my thriller blog, this would of been the method i would of chosen, whereas now, i have been given the oppertunity to learn and use technology such as slideshare and prezi.

Even though it was just our preliminary task, we still had to plan out our storyboards, to give us a rough guideline/story to follow. However, due to the fact that we had only just started the course, aswell as the fact that it was only our preliminary task, they were very simple, and minimal. Throughout the whole thriller course, we slowly learned how to create a more detailed, enhanced storyboard, including more analysis, and the minute details that are easily forgotten about, for example, how long a shot lasts, the background music/sound/noise behind that shot etc.

 I have also learned the importance of mise-en-scene within a film, and gained tips of how to use it succesfully and how not to. I did this by looking at ther examples of students work, as well as watching many thriller films, and by researching the subject. For example, our villain in our thriller opening wears a black mask, and black clothing. This is the typical mise-en-scene for a thriller film, and through this, we noticed that this choice of clothing has a massive effect on our thriller opening, due to the fact that wthout it, our storyline, or the basic plot, would not make sense, and would be much less effective.

Along with this, i have learned how to deeply analyse short clips of film, from other thrillers and genres, and have learned how to pick out what makes them effective and what does not. When starting our thriller, we had to watch past students work, along with films such as zodiac and the second coming. Instead of just focusing on the plot of the film (which without doubt is equally as important as the rest of the film), we had to analyse the lighting, sound, camera angles and shots and mise-en-scene and explaining how it relates to tis audience, and the type of genre it is aiming to me. This is something that i find myself regularly doing now when watching all different kinds of films.

Due to the fact that me and the team that i worked in, worked together near enough every day, for a very long time, to perfect (in our opinion), our thriller, it has given me the oppertunity to learn how to become part of a strong, close-knitted team. I learned how to exchange and or excel ideas with other people as well as learning that reliability is an important factor in groupwork such as this.