Preliminary Task Vs The Stolen

 
Looking back at my preliminary task I think I have improved immensely. In my preliminary task my clothes and hair was not consistent which affected the whole task itself. The speech could hardly be heard as it was taken from a long distance, however the match on action was pretty good as we took very long in trying to succeed with that.  I realised that in the middle of the conversation I looked into the camera accidently which isn't realistic as that is not what we expect to see in a sequence. One thing that did go well were the shots we used, for example the high angle shot, the two shot and also the over the shoulder shot. We also finished with a match on action shot as well.During the making of the preliminary task, we learned the importance of staying within the 180 degree rule as this effects the realism of the film and sometime confuses the audience too. Kayleigh and I successfully stuck to the 180 degree rule during the conversation, however we almost broke it when I was walking into the canteen.
Comparing our preliminary task to our final product; 'The Stolen', we have improved a lot in terms of editing, acting and concept wise as well. Considering we only took about an hour to shoot all the footage for our main product we done a good job of it despite the fact it was taken during lunchtime where there were many distractions from students and public.
The acting was also much better and the camera angles matched with the genre. For example the P.O.V shot and High Angle shots works perfectly in the thriller genre. We also added text for the credits in our opening sequence and animated them in and out which we couldn't do in our preliminary task as we didn't have the time.
We used our time wisely during the making of our product and stayed after school in order to get all the editing done. Although we didn't use the big high quality cameras to shoot, we still managed to make our video look professional and viewable using  a smaller Sony HD camera.
The music also helped build tension and made the film look more sophisticated. The background score synchronised with the visuals. We also considered the conventions of the thriller genre and so made the sequence in black and white and also added the iconic scream towards the ending.
The use of colour for the last scene contrasted well with the rest of the clip and the increasing heartbeat also contrasted the suspense music all throughout the sequence.
In comparison to our preliminary task, we have learnt a lot more about After Effects and Final Cut during the process of making, which helped us in making our actual final product more clean and original. Also looking at previous AS media projects inspired us to make our opening just as good. We were able to shoot outside of school for our main product and so that made  a difference as we were able to choose our locations that fitted with our storyline instead of sticking to school, which is what we had to so for the preliminary task. This task was much open and we had much longer to finish it.