I found that planning our final product was one of the most challenging parts of this course work. The reason for this was that my group was made up of three other very imaginative individuals who all had very good storyline ideas. We decided after much discussion to make the film about a laptop containing sensitive information. Our primary aim was to create a thriller based around this enigma of the files contained in the laptop and how it fell into the hands of an innocent person.
With the preliminary task we were instructed to include certain shots which were a close up, a medium/long shot, a over the shoulder shot, low angle shot, high angle shot, and we also had to conform to the 180 degree rule.
This is one of the over the shoulder shots we used in our preliminary. This was used in a dialogue scene to construct a shot reverse shot.
This was the close up which we used, It demonstrates the shot size effectively however i think that the shot is lit badly, this is where the preliminary task helped us as it showed us what we missed when filming it so we knew what mistakes to correct.
This is the medium/long shot we used, i felt that this was one of the more positive parts of the preliminary as it is a good establishing shot for the scene which is about to take placed.
From doing this preliminary task it allowed us to take techniques which we learnt into our final production. We then learnt more complexed techniques which could be used to increase the continuity of our editing.
When it came to the shooting of enigma i found that it was very interesting to take part in. Having photography as one of my other subjects benefited me a lot as it meant that i had been on shoots before so i kind of knew how they worked, from this i was expecting to find it a breeze but this was the opposite of what actually happened. It was much more different to what i had expected. As i studied photography as well i had been given the role of the directing of the opening sequence, this meant that i already had an understanding of different compositions and also the use of filters on the film after shooting which i feel helped me slightly when producing the opening sequence.
When shooting our preliminary task we very limited in what we could use from the mise en scene perspective. This caused the preliminary task to look quite plain and unimaginative however this was not the same case for the final product as we had planned the costumes and props beforehand of what we were going to use. This lack of planning is reflected in the quality of our preliminary task in comparison to our final product. I believe that the final product definitely shows more quality.
I am now going to talk about editing. Beginning the preliminary task i had no clue what i was doing, i had no idea what software i was going to be using or how i was going to use the features of that software as such cutting up and rearranging the order of clips. Now that i have finished the full task i know that i have gained a huge amount knowledge about how to edit films. By using filters and looking at the conventions of films i meant that i had to learn about desaturation of the film as this was a common convention of thriller films. Also from doing preliminary task it gave me a basic knowledge of certain cuts and shots that could be used when making a film however from doing certain tasks throughout the year this broadened my perspective about the film and the techniques which i could use to create it. Because i was directing our production it felt from my point of view that we could use a wide range of techniques and shots within our film to make it as good as it could possibly be. One of the techniques which i learned was a focus rack, this can help to alter the audiences attention which i feel is a very good effect and creates an interesting effect.
If you look at this still from the preliminary task:
Then compare it to this till from our final product you can see how the skills we have learnt in the editing process have affected the look of the film:
Another thing which we looked at was sound. By using non-diegetic sound it can help to create suspense in relation to the pace and style of the sound, it can also change the mood of a scene and also make connections between two characters. I used this in a part of the scene two gain two effects, firstly the slow music which feels quite lonely connotes the loneliness of the character and it secondly is used to show that two characters in different scenes are connected. In relation to diegetic sound i learnt about recording devices, due to the equipment we were using the microphone wasn't to good so we recorded the sound on a external device. This meant the audio quality would be clearer and it shows that more attention to detail when looking at the production of our film.
Overall i would have to say that i am happy at how the full product has turned out. Upon comparing the two you can see a vast difference between our preliminary and our final product. I feel that one of the reasons for this is the different camera movements we used in our full product and also the editing side of it. With the desaturation of the film which we used to conform to the conventions of a thriller. From doing this i have learnt how much attention to detail is required when producing a film as even the slightest mistake can ruin a film. We did have one such mistake in our full product which is when you can see the reflection of the camera one a wall behind the character. This does not effect the production that much and also given that big budget professional productions have done this before i turned a blind eye to this mistake.
