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

Preliminary Task:




Full opening sequence:




from the progression from preliminary task to fully edited opening sequence I and my team learnt many things, here are some of the things I myself learnt along the way.

Preparation is important. we had to think about how the props would look on camera, how our characters makeup would look on camera, how our location would look on camera etc... this meant that before we began filming for our opening sequence we had to look at our preliminary task and see where we went wrong. we did not think preparation for shooting was important in doing the preliminary task, this was due to much less of a scenario and mood needing to be created, however with our full opening sequence due to the extreme mise-en-scene used like makeup and props we needed to spend much more time creating them and designing them than we did in the preliminary task, thus we did all of the posted planning and inputting.

I learnt that utilising a sound track on the displayed video created an immersible effect compared to a clip without a soundtrack(preliminary task). By  including a soundtrack on our final opening sequence we created a larger effect of the specific genre, we created an atmosphere, which by looking at the preliminary task and seeing how bland and boring it looks compared to our opening sequence shows how important a good, appropriate and well throughout soundtrack is necessary for creating the perfect atmosphere on the video, providing its the right soundtrack of course.

Furthermore, I learnt that having Voice within a clip isn't 100% necessary, providing a good soundtrack is used which is explained in the above paragraph. in our preliminary task we had plenty of voice from our characters but no soundtrack, and in our opening sequence we had the complete opposite, which i feel works much better as a better and more appropriate atmosphere is present and is more effective within our genre of sequence than plain voice would be.

Within our preliminary task we had to use match on action to get some good experience with planning the clips out in an organised manner for professionalism and quality, however we only used simple shots that were easy to take to form the match on action sequences for continuity. On the other hand, within our edited full opening sequence we learnt that POV shots can be used for match on action continuity editing, not only can they be used, but they look remarkably realistic and give the sequence an authentic and realistic look. Our preliminary task showed us that match on action is IMPORTANT within a film sequence but it didn't show us which clips look appropriate and cool in regards to our given scenario and genre of horror, which took a bit of guess work but we feel was worth it in the final product.

Not every action shot needs emphasis placed upon it, which we experimented with in our preliminary task. An example of us putting emphasis on an action movement in our preliminary task is when the characters exchange memory sticks, in this close up shot here:

we did not feel the need to emphasis any action movements in our opening sequence as will still wanted to leave the audience with a small amount of ambiguity left within their brains, to keep them guessing and wanting to see more.

Transitions are important in creating the correct atmosphere and mood for the audience. Within our preliminary task the transitions were simple straight cuts from clip to clip, as no horror mood or atmosphere was needed and a more basic everyday life scenario was in place and so needed no emphasis on transitions, however when moving to our opening sequence we new that straight cuts weren't going to cut it in regards to creating the appropriate atmosphere and suspense that our genre required of it, so we used fade in and fade out transitions for some clips like the opening and end titles, and fade across transitions between the middle credits, actual moving clips and clips of props, to create suspense and the atmosphere of things drifting in and out of each other, which is symbolic of how the antagonist is acting/feeling in our clip, shes drifted out of sanity and our transitions needed to symbolize this.