Evaluation Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
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Reasearching into Thriller films and its genre:
Straight away after enrolling onto the course, we immediately started to reasearch into the Thriller genre. Looking at its mise-en-scene, it's conventions, structure, and anything that stereotypically makes a Thriller film. -
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Evaulation Q7: Looking back at you preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
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Forming our prelim groups, and working collectively on the project.
After looking thouroughly into Thriller we got put into our groups in which we would be filming our preliminary task. We were given our task description of filming a continuity piece of someone walking along opening a door, then sitting down to exchange dialogue with another. Straight away our group took to working together and we did not have many problems at all. We were shown the location which we would be filming in, and got together to discuss camera positions and ideas successfully. -
Sorting out our group positions.
With Planning we all took to inserting ideas, and listening to each other well so we did not have much issue. We also were shown the basis of working the camera, filming rules, and getting onto our blogs and other neccessary procedures which we were all happy to go through. -
Preliminary Exercise: Roles.
Beth wanted to work the camera, meaning me and Chris were going to be filming. As I also took performing arts we agreed I should just play the character walking along and opening the door. -
The Preliminary Exercise: a filming and edititing continuit exercise.
The main principle for this excerise was to let us get the hang and feel of the camera and filming/editing process as well as introduce us to continuity filming and editing.
We had to make sure we joined shots together making them flow with coninuity. We also had to show match on action, and shot reverse shot of dialogue between 2 people. AS well as this we had to make sure we followed the 180 degree through all our filming. -
Preliminary Exercise.
Having done a small bit of filming before at GCSE level it was not all totally new to me and some of the group, but really working through it thouroughly and seeing the filming results showed us how much team work is involved and how so much can wrong. -
Preliminary Exercise: How it went.
Immediately we had an issue with filming location, and had to film elsewhere. This meant that our storyboard no longer fitted into the location properly, so we had to improvise around them issues. We also then had a camera/tape malfunction leading to losing time and the loss of some footage. This really put into perspective on how much can go when filming. Other than these hiccups and the bussiness of the corridors, our filmed shots turned out nicely and was easy to sequence in the edit. -
Editing Prelim.
Editing was much mroe about learning how to use the editting software, as our film was filmed well making it quite easy to piece together, although the loss of some footage at the start gave us a less variety of shots to use. -
Group and planning for Thriller Opening Title Sequence.
Our groups were the same for the preliminary task but with an added member. Most likely because we were able to work so well in the prelim task. -
Thriller OTS Ideas.
Our group all got together to discuss ideas we had thought of for our film. Just like the prelim we all put in ideas and pcked off and around them to get something we all felt we were okay with. -
Planning for OTS
Now that we had the foundation of our idea we started developing a starting opening sequence for our film, jotting our ideas down, writing up specifics like locations, props and characters and then over the next few week built up a storyboard showing roughly our sequence. -
OTS Further Planning.
As the planning went on we went more and more thouroughly into detail. We had produced a storyboard, costume/prop list, produced a full shot list, filming day plan, visited the shooting location, done a risk assessment and so on. So we were well planned and this helped us increbily as we were totally organised and focused on the shooting when it came around. -
Filming Day for our OTS.
Straight away things werent going to plan on the day. It was bitterly cold and lightly snowing which could affect continuity. Also as we had just settled down at our shooting location and started to get the first few scenes underway our battery on our camera died instantly, even though it was fully charged when we first left college. -
Filming Day...
Once we got back to college we had already swallowed up 2 hours of our shooting day and only done a few shots. After a recharging ordeal and waiting for some time, we decided to film parts at the college because of our lack of time. Here we were able to get some really good shots almost exactly the same as we had planned.Other brilliant shots include shots of the trees we took on our improvised 2nd day. Close ups of leaves and branches really really looked good as a theme. -
Filming OTS... 2nd day.
We returned to the wood to re-shot and capture some vital flashback scenes. Luckily the weather wasnt a greeat deal different. We planned to use close up on body parts and shots we had used in the college setting for match on action use, these shots ended up looking good. -
Editing Experience.
Compared to the preliminary exercise it was a lot harder, especially linking together shots maintaining continuity. Adding in sound hard also as if not in the right place could look funny. Selecting the right clips and cutting them down and slotting them into place was the longest part of the editing by far. -
Editing with Effects.
Other than changing the shot colours, (marking them darker/putting flashbacks in black and white) we used effects such as cross disolves, and dips to white. Mainly to link together shots creating an intense flashing motion to build suspense, or using the cross disolve to show mirrored match on action. We really had a mess around with these effects making them look as effective as possible. -
OUR FINAL PRODUCT
Our final cut turned out looking okay. Everything tied in together in the end. It seemed to look okay to others as well, and it fitted into the Thriller genre well which is what the original aim was. -
Do anything different next time?
It would have been better to get more well trained actors and then put many close ups and intense shots. I would also focus a lot more on having a variety of shots. A definite would be to record diegetic sound of every scene so sound could be put with actions easier. -
My improved Knowledge of Filming.
Overall after this module I have learnt a lot more about the filming process and all the planning and work involved and all the obstacles that can knock you off task. It really is important to keep on top of the planning in order to be ready for the filming.
