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

Camera: in terms of camera work I’ve learnt how important it is for the person who is holding the camera to pay a very close attention to the framing and shot types, and how camera movements favours the scene and the character. I’ve learnt to make decisions in what type of shot to use according to the emotion that scene represents, enabling myself to explore and understand how media uses successfully such techniques to attract targeted audience; also by knowing these techniques I’ve learnt to select which one would best fit conventions and representations when completing my own sequence.

Mise-en-scene: since my preliminary exercise I became much more aware of the importance of Mise-en-scene. Simple things such as small detail on the costume can make the whole of the imagery less appealing to viewer. Unfortunately I’ve learnt this in the worst way possible as I did not fully paid attention to costumes on my own sequence and therefore many people responded with less interest than they would have if all was completed according the conventions.

Props are also very important to a sequence; in ours for example we’ve decided to have a fake gun, to represent power and respect on the hands of our lead character Rebecca. Knowing your props and being able to collect and use them efficiently within the sequence can make a very big difference to the overall look of the sequence

Editing: As for editing, I’ve learnt a lot from it. I’ve learnt how important it is to have seamless cuts and the smoother the cuts are the better the sequence looks. I’ve learnt that our eyes and brains are so powerful that the slightest jump in the image can make the viewer question what happened there and why did that jump occurred, therefore I’ve watched for jumps very carefully and only allowed one to come up when it would make sense with what was going on at the time.

Sound: sound was one of the biggest challenges for me as I never really pay attention the soundtrack in the movie but more to the image, however to prove myself that the sound was just as important I played a couple of movie trailers in silence and realised that sound play a very good part into the sequence, therefore I put some of my music understanding into the sequence and tried to create a proficient soundtrack for this sequence, compared to the preliminary task where we had a song playing in the background to represent the music that the character was listening at the time, the soundtrack applied to the opening sequence was much come complex as it was composed of music and Foley sounds which were there to enhance and sharpen the sounds we wouldn’t normally hear in a plain footage.

Narrative: in terms of narrative I’ve realised that sometimes complex narratives aren’t the way to a good sequence, compare to the preliminary, the sequence is slightly more complex however not enough to confuse the audience. A clear narrative was shown in both preliminary and the opening making it easy for audiences to understand

Others: I believe that I’ve learnt a lot since the preliminary exercise, and something worth mentioning is lighting. In the preliminary we shoot it in plain daylight but no sun, therefore the abundance of light was great making the image sharper. In the opening sequence however we’ve

unfortunately ran over the time schedule which caused us the finish filming at night time. This cause our images to become less illuminated and less sharp which could be a potential risk for us when editing, however it wasn’t much of a concern when I began editing it and the overall look on the sequence was quite successful. However I would still like to have improved in this part because it is much better to shoot in a well-lit space and then darken the image according to the needs then to shoot in a darker ambient and later wrestle with image transforming programs for a clearer look.

In terms of technologies I’ve developed skill in Apple Mac computers, and as for software I’ve learnt to efficiently use Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects.