Isobel Hall; Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

To produce a thriller opening that was perfect, was impossible. Not only in reality do we not have the budget of a mainstream production company we also don't have the expertise. We experienced many constraints, through from pre-production to production to post production, although were lucky to have equipment and experts who knew exactly what was expected from us.

Our use of camera

The clock - The shot that we used to cross-dissolve the stalkers face and the clock wasn't framed correctly. There was a lot of excess space around the clock, therefore creating the sense that we didn't set up the camera correctly. Also the camera was slightly slanted to the left, although this was disguised well through the use of editing - cross-dissolving the shots and using fast-paced editing.

The tracking shot - Using tracks was a new experience for all of us as we had never done it before, although the set-up wasn't overly complicated. The tracking shot took many shots, as we had to establish the correct time to move and realised moving in sync to the stalker produced the best results. We were very pleased with the shot when fitting it 

into our overall opening.

The hand-held camera shot - With the

 technological constraints, this shot came out suprisingly blurry and with very bad quality. It was a shame as originally it was a very defined shot, although by putting a black and white effect over the shot, it made the best of a bad situation. This became less recognizable.

Our use of mis-en-scene

Red lighting - We didn't plan on using red lighting and used it as an after thought as we were setting up. When seeing what it looked like after filming a few shots we were pleased with the results. It gave the scene a more sinister edge, than if filmed under conventional daylight as planned wouldn't of conjured the same feelings for the audience.

The lighting overall - We were lucky enough to not have many scenes outside and with no rain when we shot these scenes. Meaning when shooting we weren't held up by weather constraints. English weather may be more predictable than when we firstly anticipated.

Props; the gloves - Although the stalker was in the dark room the use of the gloves seems pointless. Although the camera shots are well done and there is an action match ensuring the putting on of them looks realistic. Although in retrospect when editing the piece I would cut this out entirely.

Our use of editing

The use of jump cuts - This took a lot of work and consideration. As we wanted to have both the memory segments and current day segments of the opening combined. This was hard to achieve as it didn't make sense, as our characters were in one place then in another. With the storyline not distinguishable. By using black and white effect over the memory shots this made what we wanted to portray more obvious for the audience, with the plot making sense.

Our use of sound

The soundtrack - I'm very unhappy with our soundtrack. As because of time constraints and a last minute decision to switch our shot order drastically, our soundtrack ended up not being continuous. This is a great shame as originally the soundtrack was perfectly in sync. If we had had more time this would of been perfected and the audience would of been unaware of our cutting and repeating of the soundtrack. Although we did choose an effective track to play.

The voice over - We originally were not going to have a voice over, although after much consideration from our group felt like it was the only way to communicate the narrative to the audience effectively. As our time constraint of 2 minutes was a hard obstacle to overcome. Although the quality of the voice over and the words being said worked extremely well in building a plot - future, past and present with anticipation surrounding the entire things.

In conclusion our task when beginning was to make a thriller opening. Whilst some of it may of looked unprofessional and undone, it was a daunting task.

Overall I am happy with our final thriller opening. It took a lot of work, but it's amazing to see how much our skills have developed and progressed while forming our opening production.