Evaluation Question 8 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned inthe progression from it to the full production?





No props were used.




Use of pops to create backround story.

Expectedly, there was an obvious difference between our prelim film (The Confrontation), and our final production (One Way 61363). One of the main reason for this difference I personally feel is to do with the planning. After all the planning is the bases of all filming productions, and with ‘The Confrontation’, we didn’t really get to plan it much, therefore when going in to shoot, we didn’t know what location would fit in best not only with the storyline, but also with relating to its audience, as well as other factors which I will get into later. Because of that, in our final thriller, we did a detailed story board and research before hand on our target audience, therefore we know exactly what location, props, music etc. would appeal best o them as well as relate to the thriller as a whole.



The location was in a classroom.

The location was a bedroom, it related to the
actual plot.

For example, in our prelim, the mise en scene was not planned out very well. The location was just a class room which meant it didn’t reveal a lot about the characters in the film, meaning the audience were not able to build this bond with them, also there were no prop used again revealing nothing about the background story. For one thing, it made it dull and boring, and also did not create suspense which is a key thing for any thriller. We took this away with us, and for our final production we had this in mind, and chose our location to fit perfectly with the plot (the bedroom, which not only related to the relationship the two characters have, but also reached out to the audience because everyone can relate to this location),  as well as focused on the props we used, for instance the frame with the picture of the two actors in it, which from the audience’s response I knew had a great reaction, meaning the film was interesting and achieved its aim.

 

The title of the film appeared in a plain way in
the middle of the screen.

The title appeared in an interesting way

and was left on a plain background for a few

second to really stand out.

Similarly, during the editing process, with ‘The Confrontation’, the actual titles were not planned our before hand, and were also done on Final Cut Pro, which is fine, however doing them on LiveType made a huge difference, as it added that extra detail through the animation we chose and made it more interesting, rather than having a plain, boring title come up in the middle of the screen, which is what happened with our prelim.  With our final thriller, the editing over all was much better because we were more familiar with final cut pro, and knew other effects such as transitions, or over lapping of scenes that we could use, which we didn't in our prelim, mainly because we were not so familiar with the program.  Also we had more time to work on our final thriller, which meant we could focus on another programs such as soundtrack pro, and choose the correct music as we actually had time to work on it, by blending different sounds together  etc. , because the music in our prelim was  really basic. Due to the lack of planning, the timing of the titles wasn’t that great and even their position, however for our final thriller, we carefully planned out the way we would interpret them within the thriller, in order to make them easy to read, not take up too much space on the screen, but still catch the audience’s attention mainly because of the way they appeared and disappeared.

Another key thing which helped us the second time, was the way our team worked with one another. For our prelim we were still new with each other, therefore were not as comfortable at sharing our ideas or even criticizing them if we thought they were not as good as they could be. This was not the case the second time around however, because everyone was comfortable enough with each other and shared opinions as well as helped out another our, for instance if running late on the day of the shooting we would try and get any shots which did not involve the person being late in them, that way leaving only their scene when they come back, which helped save time and calm the person that was late down so they do a great job on set.

Something I feel the prelim has over our final thriller if the fact that we were allowed to include speech in it, by doing this it made the plot more interesting even thought not a lot was happening. In our final thriller, because we were not allowed to include any speech, it felt as though not a lot was actually taking place, therefore we had to rely more on our titles, the editing of the shots and music to make it more interesting as a whole.

As you can see our camera skills were not so great back when we filmed the prelim. A lot of the time the shots went out of focus, or were really shaky.  This was because we didn't use the tripod as much as we should have, and also didn't focus each shot if it was on manual setting. These mistakes however allowed us to see what we needed more work on, and helped us practice for the final thing.

In ‘One Way 61363, those things did not occur, we had smooth tracking shots and pans., all done while the camera was on the tripod. We had to always take our time with filming each scene, because the worst thing would be to have a scene that’s all shaky, out of focus, or when using the zoom while filming . if we wanted to use the zoom we would have to zoom in or out depending, before starting the actual shooting of the scene. If our scenes were our of focus, it may make the film seem unprofessional, as well as it could make the audience feel confused and question weather the out of focus bit actually belongs in the film or not, and if it even relates to the storyline.