Task 7: Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task What Do You Fell You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To Full Product?

The Prelim

to...

The Main Task - Our Thriller: 'Firewall'

Sophistication of Planning

When we were planning to shoot the Prelim at the very beginning of the academic year we had done very little preparation beforehand. We were just given a camera, told the basic functions and sent to the room next door to shoot a short 30 second sequence. We took a maximum of 5 different shot types, set the white balance, put the camera on a tripod and that was that. We hadn't needed to order any props or organize any additional actors, or tell our teachers about why we were going to be gone for the whole day. 

However, with the Main Task our thriller, things were very different. The preparation for our shoot day had started in early december, about a month before the day. My fellow group members and I had a lot of organizing to do to get in all the props on time, organize locations and see which members of staff were available and what times during the day if they were interested in being in our thriller. We had to make sure that we could organize our day around their day so the shoot flowed smoothly with very little complications. 

Development of Film-making Skills

With the prelim task the short story was told merely through the use of dialogue and very little else. The mis-en-scene, editing and camerawork did very little to tell the story. 

Over the course of the year we had learnt a lot about the camera and editing software and we were able to apply this to the final product.  I feel as though my group and I managed to pull off a medium-close to sophisticated sequence that included diegetic and non-diegetic music, camerawork, editing and mis-en-scene that which told a visual story. Before the shoot day we as a group were asked to develop storyboards so that we could gain an idea of what our thriller would look like visually. I found that creating these storyboards did in fact provide me with a much greater idea of what the thriller looked like and should have looked like. Along with the storyboards we also created an animatic using snapshots from the storyboard to give the group an even better understand of what the thriller would turn out to be like. None of this kind of preparation was done for the Prelim at the beginning of the year, which goes to show the huge amount we have advanced during the course of the year with our film-making skills. 

Use of Camera - What Developments Can You See In The Work Produced?

With our preliminary task all the camerawork that we did was very basic and did nothing to portray the message of the story. All the shots were done on a tripod and all from the same height. With this video we followed most of the basic rules of using the camera which were to make sure it was bubbled on the tripod, had the correct white balance, as few zebras as possible and was in focus. 

With our main task we applied all of these rules and developed them with things we had learnt over the course of the year. What we had learnt helped us to know how to tell the story of our thriller through the use of shot types and how different ones can portray different meanings. For example, a low angle shot of someone can make them seem tall and powerful. One particular shot we did for our thriller was the tracking shot of Roy and Alison walking down the basement corridor. To shoot this we placed the camera on the tracks that we had set up in the hall and moved it along to gain a smooth tracking shot of the scene. We had taken a lot more responsibility in the thriller for what each individual shot should look like, and how we framed the shot etc. We also obeyed existing, must conform to rules such as the 180 degree rule, checking the white balance and focusing the camera. 

From the screenshot you can see on the left, we had chosen to frame the shot so that nothing outside the blue curtain set can be seen. To focus the camera we zoomed into the face of our actor and manually focused the camera ring till we got the sharpest image possible. We have also placed the camera at the same height as the actor so that the audience gains a feel of the story being told from his perspective. In the picture at the top right you can see the tracks on the floor which the camera was moved along for the bottom corridor scene. 

How Your Use Of Sound Has Developed

In the preliminary task we didn't use a boom when recording the sound. This meant that we didn't gain a great quality of diegetic sound which took away from the quality of the prelim overall. 

However, for our final project we used a boom which connected to the camera by a wire and recorded all the sound clearly. To get the best quality sound we pointed the boom at the direction of the actors so that the majority of the sound came from that direction. This allowed us to gain a much clearer sound and helped us to produce a better thriller. 

Also in the main task, we used sound effects and created our own soundtrack in SoundTrack Pro whilst editing the thriller. In the soundtrack, we added drum kit tunes along with electronic beats and synthesizers to make the opening sequence more thrilling. We worked hard a long on the dialogue for our thriller, because we didn't want to live much away but we wanted to make sure that the audience knew (sort of) what was going on. We also selected the actors depending on whether they could pull off a believable American accent. 

In comparison you can see there has been a huge development in the use and quality of sound from the beginning of the year where we shot the prelim to the end of the year where we put into production our final piece.

Demonstrating your ability to master new technology in the use of Final Cut and After Effects showing a more sophisticated use of media product than was expected in your Prelim Task

Above are two pictures of the Final Cut Pro software on the Apple Mac computers in the studio in Hurtwood where we editing our thriller. As the development of the editing continued, I learnt about different editing techniques to allow the flow of the sequence to become smoother. One example of this is layering the sound of one clip over the start/end of another. I also learnt how to layer text on top of clips in Final Cut Pro and how to cross fade shots together to create the effect of 'passing time'. When we were shooting our Prelim Task, we had drawn titles on a white board and just filmed them off there. Therefore, an obvious development has taken place in my ability to master technology. 

For the first time when editing my thriller I used a software called Soundtrack Pro. Previously when editing films I had only used the soundtrack or music from other artists. Getting to grips with how to make the music for my thriller sequence at first was very difficult as I didn't understand the layout that appeared on the screen. However, after having tested it for about 30 minutes I got the hang of the product and started to create the music.