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

For this question I am going to be presenting a blog post about what I have learnt and about the information that I have gained throughout the process of making the final media product.

Below is our preliminary task, which is our first media product that we filmed and edited:

Below is the final media product. A title sequence of a horror film, aimed at people of the age of around 15-25:

Throughout making both of these media products, I have gained a lot of information about sound, editing, camera shots and angles, and the technology we have used to produce the products.

The first thing I am going to be talking about is the editing process.
Throughout the filming and editing process I have learnt a lot. One of the main things I have learnt is that you need to be precise with all the corrections and improvements you make to the media product.  From making the preliminary task we did not use a lot of different editing techniques, we cut and edited only a few clips together. As a whole this task was slightly easier than what we got for our main media task. One of the progressions I have made is knowing how and why you need to get the clips to look continuos throughout the whole product. This took a lot more time than expected.  We have also progressed a vast amount regarding the other editing categories, for example we needed to add titles into the final media product, this took time to understand and work out; however we are both pleased with how the titles came out. I feel as a whole we have both progressed massively regarding the beginning of making the preliminary task to now.

The second area I am going to be talking about is sound.
When first filming the preliminary task, we did not know how to add foley sound, or a backing track to the clips. This meant that the sound was very bleak, and it did not add character to the media product. Sound is really important when making a media product as it adds a lot of character and can give something away that the protagonist may not, for example a loud build up of music in a horror film will normally present that something bad is going to happen. In our final production, we used foley sounds, and a backing track. An example of foley sound is the leaves crunching, or a stick snapping. We used all three of these examples in our final media product to simply add effect to it. Not only did we use the sound library for some of the sounds we used, we created and recorded our own sounds. An example of this is when the venerable young girl is shouting "Monty" who is her dog. This adds effect to the production as it puts you slightly on edge, as you know she is worried that her dog is not with her anymore and that she is in the woods alone.

The final section I will be talking about is the camera.
From the preliminary task to now, I feel that I have learnt a vast amount of the camera angles and shots that there are. I have also felt as if I have gained a lot of information about the composition of a shot etc. The camera shots and angles are important as they suggest things to the audience that you would not know if the camera was not in a certain way etc. An example of this is in our final media product. We have used multiple camera angles to show that someone is watching the girl as she is walking through the woods looking for her dog. We have used this angle as it shows that she is venerable and that she is alone with 'supposedly' no one in the woods with her. Another example of a camera shot is a close up of the dog in the final production, This was to show that something was going to happen with the dog before any suggestions were made. We also used a medium close up of the protagonist to show that she is scared. In both our productions, we used many different camera angles and shots, we used them to simply portray the emotions and the suggestions that were being made throughout.

Overall I feel that I have progressed from the preliminary task to now. Regarding the sound, editing and the camera angles.