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

In our preliminary task there are many glitches such as; sounds in the background, actors smiling or talking when they shouldn't be, poor lighting, the verisimilitude of the costume, props. However in our final product we had to avoid these glitches being a part of it. 

In order to prevent sound problems we learnt how to use a boom mike which produced a higher quality of sound, although we also need to learn how to edit the sound one our footage was uploaded into iMovie. We learnt how to extract the audio and lip sync the footage, we also learnt how to add additional sound such as ambience, footsteps and music. Over all this meant that our product sounded much more profesional than our preliminary task.

The production of our own music, is again another aspect in which we developed our skills from preliminary task to final product. We used a programme on the macs 'Garageband' in order to produce our own music. This was a necessity as we aren't allowed to use other people's copyrighted products in our film without permission. When producing our preliminary task we didn't know this, although we didn't use any music anyway which hinders its quality and makes it sound amateur. The addition of music to our product helps us to create atmosphere as well as making it sound like a professional piece of work.

We learnt whilst editing that variety of shots and cut away shots were very important, compared to our prelim which uses only one or two shots within any one scene. However I think our product would be improved if a few more cut away shots were used. As well as this we also realised that in order to make our product more visually interesting we needed to shoot the same shots from different angles, which again is something we didn't do in our preliminary task and therefore the editing looks very basic.

With our real media product we were able to gain audience feedback, which helped us improve our film as they gave constructive critisism on which parts were less believable. Whereas with our preliminary task we produced it very quickly which meant that our first draft was the only one we submitted, the opportunity to draft and re-work our final product meant that scenes such as the killing scene were viewed by others and their feedback made it possible for us to improve them drastically.

For the preliminary task the group did not plan or organise the production of the film. When producing our final product we began by drawing up storyboards, and filled in production schedules. We also drafted and re-drafted our idea until it was as good as we could make it. This shows how we progressed from the preliminary task as we made the effort to organise what we were doing in order to produce a better product.

For the production of our final product we always planned in advance to ensure we had all the right props and our actors were in the same costume. For example, before shooting our killing scene we came prepared with the props which included fake blood and a large kitchen knife. As well as this we also stained the white top our actress was wearing with the blood and this meant we had to find another similar one for the next shooting. Though this does slightly damage the verisimilitude and if I were to re-do this in future I would remember that any drastic changes to costume should be the last scene to be filmed. However when producing our preliminary task we weren't as well organised and frequently made use of whatever props were available to us, therefore achieving verisimilitude wasn't possible.

We learnt the difficulties of shooting in the dark whilst producing our preliminary task, there are numerous shots where the lighting is so poor, it is hard to make out what is on screen. We had to learn from this whilst producing our final product however poor lighting was still a big issue with the final product production, because as a horror film the scenes would have looked better shot in the dark, but as we were unable to get hold of the right sort of lighting equipment, shooting in the woods in the dark was an impossible feat, so instead we shot in the daylight and edited the colour on the computers to make it look darker.