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Researching the Thriller genre
We were introduced to the genre of Thriller, and watched some films at home, and studied thriller opening title sequences in lesson. -
Forming groups and working collectively on the project
We were put into groups already, we didn't have a choice who was in our group. When we had to plan our film, it was actually pretty easy, because we already had a plot outline laid out for us, all we had to do was film it. However, we did need a shot list and a storyboard before we could film it. We all talked about the appropraite shots for each scene and came to an agreement on all of them. -
Filming the prelim
Filming the prelim was fun, we did have to learn a few things but they weren't hard to take in, and the actual exercise didn't feel pressured or anything, so it was kind of fun too. -
Lessons learnt from the prelim
Although filming it sounded quite simple, it wasn't as easy as I thought, there's a lot of technicalities to be taken into account whilst filming. Such as the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot. It wasn't a totally new experience for me, but I did learn more from it than I did in secondary school. -
Lessons learnt in editing the prelim
Whilst editing the prelim, we only had one problem, which was that one of the shots we took didn't transfer onto Premiere properly and cut out halfway through, which was annoying, luckily though, it was just a shot of her feet walking down the coridor. But we did like that shot, and that was the only shot if it we had, so we learned that it's important to take at least 2 shots of each individual scene. -
Delegating tasks
We all had experience with cameras, but I was the only one who had used one to film something with a plot, so we agreed that I would be doing most of the filming. Jess Did some as well though, Chloe didn't work on the camera, but she was in the film, and so was Jess. Working in a group was good because we had a varied skillset, which generally helped when there were any problems. However, one bad thing about working in a group is that group members do disagree on some things, -
Planning our Opening Title Sequence
When we had to start planning for our OTS, we already had the experience of planning and filming the prelim. So drawing up a storyboard and a shot list for it wasn't too difficult to do. We also knew to prepare for other things, such as the use of mise en scene, props and costume design to effectively convey the themes of our film. -
Filming the opening title sequence.
Our filming day actually went pretty well, we took at least 2 shots of everything to avoid any problems with that in the edit, and we were happy with the shots we took. But there were a few problems as well, for example, the hospital didn't let us film outside, and some of our shots were a little out of focus, which was only noticed later on when we put them on Premiere. And Jess had to do a few extra shots just to justify some other shots in our film. -
In our opening title sequence
There are some shots in our OTS that I really like, such as the washing up scene I think is done very well, and the class's feedback seemed to favor the close ups on the ring. They also praised teh scenes in the stairwell for the figure expression and acting talent. We did use match on action a few times in our film, my favorite example is the washing up scene. The 180 degree rule was also used for our filming, and there weren't any shots to break this rule either. -
What worked well, and what went wrong.
We had to take at least 2 shots of every different scene in the film, the first shot we had began out of focus and slowly came into focus, which was difficult to achieve at first, but only took a few attempts. There were other shots we did too, involving camera movement, which took at least 2 attempts because moving the camera down and retightening it smoothly isn't easy to do. The thing that went best though, was probably the match on action when she opens the door, needing no multiple shots. -
Editing the opening title sequence.
Editing the OTS was a lot harder than the prelim, for a variety of reasons. When editing our prelim, all we really had to do was tell John which shots to use and where, so he did most of the work, we had also filmed the scenes in the order that they chronologically appeared so that got rid of a lot of the work. -
Continuity editing
Continuity editing was a lot more difficult than any of us had anticipated, first we had to extract all the usable footage we needed from it. And since none of it was actually filmed in chronological order, it had to put in that order, and then cut down some more so it wasn't too long. -
Special effects editing.
We decided to use special effects in our film to make it look nicer, which worked, we used an effect on the flashback scenes called 'fast colour correction.' And another transition effect called 'dip to white' to introduce these flashback scenes. Dip to white is basically just a flash of white between shots. We also used 'cross dissolve' which is when one shot fades into another in the flashback scenes to make it seem more trippy and more like a flashback. -
Have I improved my knowledge of film making over this coursework period
My knowledge has definitely improved since finishing our film, there's a lot more technical stuff than just filming, there's white balance, focus, exposure and a lot of other things that need to be taken into account. And the fact that time must be used effectively, the biggest reason for this is time of day, some shots can only be filmed at a certain point in the day, so must be filmed when they can, and shots in close chronological continuity to each other also have to be filmed as such.