Looking back at the many attempts it took us to complete our prelim task I feel my knowledge and understanding in the skills and techniques has progressed throughout the course, enabling my group and I to feel confident in making our final product.
When watching our first prelim tasks we can point out obvious areas of improvement such as the 180 degree rule and the location of our films. However, although making these mistakes we were able to point them out and attempted the preliminary task a various of times until we were happy with the final product. Whilst putting together each preliminary task I have definitely progressed in accuracy and speed in my ability to editing the clips together on imovie and I now find it an enjoyable and fun progress rather than a struggle. At the start of the course I was unsure about how I would cope with learning about a new software that I had never used before, but after doing mini projects, practising and using the different areas and resources on imovie I now feel confident with editing the pieces of work we create. Also, when filming our preliminary tasks we never once planned the dialogue, the camera angles or the plot, we just assumed each time the idea would come to us, along the process i have realised how important planning is and how much your plans and intentions can change. In our first preliminary task we used muffled sound effects and music, this was my first approach to using a different part of imovie rather than just trimming and cutting scenes, it was useful to see how all the different tools work and gave us ideas for what other effects we could possibly use. Whilst editing clips on the macs i feel i have definitely progressed in using imovie, as it is a very complex programme there are still areas on it that i haven't used but i think we have used it wisely and used the correct areas for making our final product as good as it possibly can be. I have learnt through using imovie that you can never film too much and it is always better to film more than you think you need, this is because you can cut parts that you don't like and add something else that you filmed. When filming our preliminary tasks this is another mistake we made we didn't always have enough to work with eg- if their was bad continuity between two clips and we hadn't filmed enough to use a different clip we would have to film the whole scene from the start. When filming our final piece we filmed lots of the same thing and different clips of the blood in the bath, this made it easier for us as if we spotted an error after putting it together on imovie we could easily replace the clip with one similar.
Due to the research at the start of the course on camera movements and camera angles we were able to use them confidently in our preliminary tasks, looking back at the premlims the techniques we used look very basic and a little unnatural especially when using shot reverse shot as the conversation is a bit hesitant. In one of the prelim tasks we had to film again as we made a major error in being very close to breaking the 180 degree rule, this made it really confusing for our audience and looked really unprofessional, this is something i feel confident in using when filming now without having to think about whether or not I'm breaking it as it comes across naturally. At the start i didn't like to film without using a tripod i think we all felt nervous about the accuracy of the clip without using it, however, gaining more experience with the camera and filming i understand that it isn't essential to use and a clip can come out just as good without it, we didn't use a tripod when filming our final piece, i think i have grown in confidence when being in charge of filming or coming up with ideas that we could use in a shot. We looked at typical conventions for thrillers so we could add them into our own: close up shots, isolated location?, dark colours and suspense music. One mistake we made when filming is that we didn't film during the day when a lot of light when shining through, we were scared this would ruin the effect completely as we planned on it being at night, however, we used our editing skills on the tools that imovie provides us, to edit the colour on all the clips to a greyish blueish colour, i am really happy with the way it came out as the colour change is really effective and gives the impression we filmed at night. This also relates to my understanding of the genre 'thriller', i researched the typical conventions that are used in thriller films and wanted to apply as many of them as possible to our film, we used dark colours, close up shots, smears of blood, music and we used a piece of plastic which gave a blury effect (this definitely helps build up a character and relates to the film title) which all make it obvious to the audience what type of film 'delusion' is.
We are still not 100% sure we have finished our final product as we are debating whether or not to add a narrative 'voiceover', this is something i haven't used on macs but will be interesting to find out how it works. Looking back at our preliminary tasks and how simple and quick it was to film them and making obvious and careless errors, to looking at the techniques and time spent on planning our final piece i think i have progressed greatly in my understanding and use of the camera, camera equipment and using imovie.
We are still not 100% sure we have finished our final product as we are debating whether or not to add a narrative 'voiceover', this is something i haven't used on macs but will be interesting to find out how it works. Looking back at our preliminary tasks and how simple and quick it was to film them and making obvious and careless errors, to looking at the techniques and time spent on planning our final piece i think i have progressed greatly in my understanding and use of the camera, camera equipment and using imovie.
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