Question 7.
Looking back at our premlinary task, what do I feel I have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
The brief for the preliminary task was to produce a film of approximately 2 minutes long inside school, consisting of; varying camera techniques (i.e. panning, close ups, etc.), continuity editing, using the 180 degree rule, different cutting rates and cutting techniques (i.e. shot reverse shot), the opening of a door, two lines of dialogue and considering other types of sound such as diegetic sound. This enabled us to gain some experience and knowledge in using camera and editing which we would contribute to our final production.
The brief for the film opening was to create a 2- 3 minute film opening including titles, as well as good quality mise en scene (i.e. costumes, props), camera angles (i.e. tracking shot), sound (i.e. soundtrack, dietetic sound and editing techniques (i.e. transitions, different cutting rates). The genre had to be a teen; horror or thriller.
Genre Conventions
We decided that the genre of the preliminary task would be a
drama and would mainly feature a chase scene as a stock situation. The costume
was difficult because we were in school uniform however we added other props in
such as a wooden stick, mask, a hat and sunglasses to try and provide
creativity. We also created a script and a 6 frame story board so we knew the
plot, camera angles and sound in detail before we began.
We decided to make our film opening a thriller with a slow cutting rate to add suspense, similar to the opening of the film ‘seven’. We managed to get a lot of props and good costumes as well as an ideal location which we thought was the type of location we were looking for as it was a normal looking house however it had something mysterious about it.
We decided to make our film opening a thriller with a slow cutting rate to add suspense, similar to the opening of the film ‘seven’. We managed to get a lot of props and good costumes as well as an ideal location which we thought was the type of location we were looking for as it was a normal looking house however it had something mysterious about it.
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Filming
When filming the preliminary task we had many restrictions, such as only having two hours to film and only two hours to edit, having to film inside school and being dressed in school uniform as well as a lack of experience in filming and editing.
We did not have as many restrictions when doing our film opening; we had a wide choice of location, costume and props, and could use a lot more things in the production. This allowed us to show more creativity and create an opening which was more typical of thriller films compared to the restrictions of filming the preliminary task. The locations we chose were a deserted house and an empty field this made our final production more realistic that the preliminary task because we used multiple locations and were not restricted to school. The costume of the antagonist was a leather jacket and glasses, the protagonists were dressed in casual suits and the victim was dressed in casual clothes. The props involved old mysterious items such as pills, an old clock and a saw. We also added a soundtrack consisting of two tracks from YouTube, these were used to improve continuity and add suspense to our production.
PlanningFilming
When filming the preliminary task we had many restrictions, such as only having two hours to film and only two hours to edit, having to film inside school and being dressed in school uniform as well as a lack of experience in filming and editing.
We did not have as many restrictions when doing our film opening; we had a wide choice of location, costume and props, and could use a lot more things in the production. This allowed us to show more creativity and create an opening which was more typical of thriller films compared to the restrictions of filming the preliminary task. The locations we chose were a deserted house and an empty field this made our final production more realistic that the preliminary task because we used multiple locations and were not restricted to school. The costume of the antagonist was a leather jacket and glasses, the protagonists were dressed in casual suits and the victim was dressed in casual clothes. The props involved old mysterious items such as pills, an old clock and a saw. We also added a soundtrack consisting of two tracks from YouTube, these were used to improve continuity and add suspense to our production.
After discussing what we were going to do in the
preliminary task (i.e. plot, location), we set out by first planning a script
of the dialogue, we then went onto discuss costumes, props and camera
techniques that we would use. We also gained some experience in filming before
the preliminary task as we practiced filming in class.
The narrative was; a member of a gang going out to return someone in debt to his boss. The opening shots involved the leader of the gang sending his man out to retrieve the person in debt. The next shots involved a chase scene which involved a lot of different camera techniques (i.e. handicam, panning shots). The final shots were of the person in debt being returned to the gang leader. To improve continuity we added a soundtrack, and used editing transitions such as fade to black in the production. We edited our production using ‘Adobe Premiere 9’ where we learnt how to use the time line to put our shots in order, transitions to add continuity and sound to input sound and alter the sound levels.
We did a lot more planning for our film opening, including location reccie’s, a trip to wilderness woods when we once again practised skills that we would use in our final production with a wider choice of location, we produced storyboards and scripts as well as various props to use in our production.
The original narrative was to have a serial killer and a group of police officers involved in tracking him down and ending in him running away. However we soon realised that we didn’t have enough time to fit it all in so therefore cut it down to introducing a psychotic murderer and the main detectives to the audience, including shots which would create an eerie mood leading into more action in the movie, we included a wide variety of camera shots and used more than one location.
We did a lot more planning for our film opening, including location reccie’s, a trip to wilderness woods when we once again practised skills that we would use in our final production with a wider choice of location, we produced storyboards and scripts as well as various props to use in our production.
The original narrative was to have a serial killer and a group of police officers involved in tracking him down and ending in him running away. However we soon realised that we didn’t have enough time to fit it all in so therefore cut it down to introducing a psychotic murderer and the main detectives to the audience, including shots which would create an eerie mood leading into more action in the movie, we included a wide variety of camera shots and used more than one location.
Difficulties
We found it difficult to film our preliminary task in the allocated amount
of time; we also found that some of the shots were difficult without much
filming experience. We overcame these difficulties by shortening our original
idea a little bit and using different more easy shots. For example one of our
original ideas was to have a handicam shot following the person in debt up the
stairs; however we found that the camera moved too much and therefore decided
to set up the camera on a tripod at the bottom and then top of the stairs.
We came up against a number of difficulties whilst filming our film opening such as our footage being lost and weather restrictions. We filmed the lost footage again trying to improve on the footage which we had lost; we had to re-arrange filming days due to the weather.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strengths of the final cut of the preliminary task were that the soundtrack was good (embedded below) and fitted the production well; the camera techniques and basic skills were all executed well. The weaknesses were that there were some aspects of the editing such as sound and cutting were not as higher standard.
From our audience feedback we gained knowledge of what the audience thought of our film opening, through questionnaires from our final screening and feedback from our rough cut. The strengths were that our narrative was generally easy to understand, the Props used suited the genre of the production and the sound was also good. The weaknesses were that the production was slow and the audience would like to have seen more action and faster cuts as they wrote this in the open questions in our questionnaires.
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