Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In the making of our preliminary, we produced it in school. This meant that there were a lot of interferences and distractions due to other students and teachers walking around. This caused issues and meant that we had to focus on filming at the right times in order to avoid interferences and problems because of distractions.

In the making of our preliminary production, continuity was less of a problem seeing as the setting of our preliminary was the school. This meant that we could go out and take more shots if there were any continuity errors, poor quality shots or any shots missing that we would need in order to produce a successful preliminary task.

This was not the case in our main thriller opening as the locations that we chose were hard to access as they involved large amounts of travelling and lots of organisation if we wanted to return to these places just to get a couple more shots. Although we did realise this in planning, when we were filming, we decided that we had enough shots way too early and therefore we stopped. We then realised that we did not have the necessary shots and we could not go back to shoot them as it was too late by this point.

We were better at using I-Movie when editing our main production. We had a greater length of time to spend on making our production just right and in editing any errors out of it. This meant that, although there were most likely some continuity errors in both productions, it was much easier to edit them out in our main production as we had more time to edit and we had to focus much harder on making sure our thriller opening came together effectively. This shows that I improved in my knowledge of editing as shown by the amount of time we spent on editing our main production compared to the preliminary. This improvement is also shown by the fact that, in our preliminary, continuity errors were noticeable whereas in the main production, we used experienced editing and clever methods in order to hide any continuity errors.

 

I have also learnt about specific rules that are involved in the creation of a successful movie. One of these important rules is the 180 degree rule. This means that throughout the film, all the shots must be taken on the same side of a metaphorical 180 degree line. This allows the audience to feel like they are watching the movie from a specific direction at all times, making it less chaotic and all over the place. During the preliminary, we did not consider this 180 degree rule whereas in the main production, although it caused lighting issues because of the sun, we made sure we stuck to the rule throughout the film, showing a clear improvement in my knowledge of hot to manoeuvre around the 180 degree line as well as how to use it to my advantage in film-making.

 

Another useful thing I have learnt in the progression from my preliminary to my main production is the ‘over-the-shoulder’ shot. For example, during a conversation between two people, if a person is saying something, the camera may be placed just above the shoulder of the person speaking in order for the audience to see the reaction of the other participant in the conversation. This may happen numerous times in order to give the audience a clearer understanding of what is going on and the reaction of each character because of what is being said. We improved on  the use of this shot during our main production as, instead of using it to show people talking, we used it to show the emotion on each person’s face at the realisation of what is happening and to show the recognition between the characters, meaning that speech was unnecessary in our main production as the audience could read how each character is feeling because of the use of this particular shot.

One more useful type of shot that I have discovered is the ‘match on action’ shown by the shot where Connor approaches the gravestone and places the flowers on the floor. A match-on-action shot is where the shot that shows what is happening is then followed by a close-up shot that gives a closer view of what is going on. We used this shot in both our preliminary production and our main production, although in our preliminary we just showed a ‘match-on-action’ shot of a hand opening a door whereas in the main production we used it in the placement of the flowers as well as to highlight the rock that was being used to knock the victim out, showing that we developed this skill and used it more effectively to give a clearer insight into the emotion and drama behind each action.

 

A significant difference between our preliminary production and our main thriller opening was that, as shown by this image, we were able to do extensive research into the location of our main production whereas we had no chance to look into the location of our preliminary as it was required that we did it in school.

Our preliminary was set in an everyday location which is fairly unexciting in comparison with our main production that was set in an abandoned train station, which is a much more thrilling and unpredictable setting. This meant that there were a lot of variables that had to be considered and caused problems in the filming of our preliminary task. One of these that we had to consider was other students. Students walking around school caused an issue as they sometimes made a lot of noise or got in the way during our filming, meaning that we had to re-do some shots.