Question Seven

Question seven – looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the process from it to the full production?

Before the preliminary task I knew the basics for example shot types and that when the tension builds, so does the editing speed and tempo of the music (If there is any). But as I progressed through the first half of this course I feel my knowledge has grown a great deal as well as my understanding of what it takes to create a two minute thriller opening.

When looking back at the preliminary task, I can see that there were weaknesses to it but on the other hand it was effective in parts. A good example of one of its strengths would be the creativity of the shot when Andy Cartwright, the male character is going up in the lift. We knew as a group that we would have to show Andy going up in the lift so the audience knew where he is in comparison to the other character played by Charley Evans. So we came up with the idea of placing the camera in the left hand corner of the lift. As we were editing we put an effect on the clip using IMovie and the date and time in the corner of the screen to make it as realistic as possible. But there were complications with this shot. The main complication being that the tripod was not long enough so we couldn’t get the right angle or height that we needed. This meant that I needed to stand in the lift with Andy and hold up the camera and tripod. This seemed effective at the time but when we watched the footage back on IMovie, we felt that the image was too shaky and didn’t seem realistic. But we then overcame this problem by using the stabilisation tool on IMovie which sorted our complication out and overall make the preliminary task that little bit better. When we were planning the prelim, we all felt that there were two important things we needed to achieve. One of these things was not breaking the 180⁰ rule. We were asked to include a conversation in our preliminary task so we felt that not breaking the 180⁰ rule was important because if we did break it, we would end up confusing the audience.

 After editing we found that we didn’t break the 180⁰ rule which we were pleased about because it was something we set out to do. The second important thing that we felt we needed to include was a various amount of shot type, for example long shots, pan shots, match on action and shot reverse shot. We felt that we needed a variety of shot types in order to intrigue the audience and keep them suspended/ interested and also feel that we have achieved this and done it well. An example of when we used an interesting shot was when Andy was walking into the lift. We used match on action for when he walked in to the lift and had to press a button in order to get the lift to set off. Although a simple task, there were complications with it. One of these being matching the floor number with the number on the screen that we later filmed. The filming team couldn’t do anything about it except remind Andy what button to press. After the first time filming him pressing the wrong button, the second attempt went well and we were then able to film it successfully.

My thriller opening on the other hand I feel when well overall but there were still aspects that I would change if I had the chance to do it again. My thriller opening went well because I feel that I have created tension and also established the characters roles in the first two minutes.

This is something that I intend to do when planning and therefore have done well to achieve.  But, there were faults with my opening. One of these being that I feel I didn’t plan enough and that although I had my storyboard and shot list on me when I was filming, I needed a lot more to achieve a better product overall.