Evaluation of our preliminary task

Now we have finished our preliminary task I think that our group is overall happy with its outcome, we believe that most of the editing runs quite smoothly and that takes have been cut to the correct length, so that it does not appear boring or slow for the audience.

Something we believe we have done well is while filming we believe that we recorded our takes effectively making sure that we got successful takes of each piece of action and repeated takes until we believed they were effective, so that we had a wide range of shots to choose from when editing our film.This will be useful when we film our thriller as it is important to get a successful take as it can be hard to re-take action due to things like changes in the environment eg we may film on a cloudy day and  then re-take shots may be shot on a clearer day causing our film to look in-continuous.Futhermore finding out we don't have any successful takes at the editing stage will leave us with less time to retake and edit our thriller

But we do have elements of the video that we believe to be less successful, such as some of our shots are not framed correctly and one shot in particular raised concern among our group. When our female character was filmed opening the door it was framed incorrectly and all that was visible in shot was her mid drift. If we were to redo this take we would make the shot into a clear mid shot framing both the face and middle of the body.This was a mistake that made our preliminary task appear highly ineffective and would not be something we would repeat and hopefully when filming our thriller we will have more time to plan and shoot our action and avoid making mistakes such as this.

Also we were unhappy with the music used, unfortunately we were on a strict deadline to complete our video and were unable to search for suitable soundtrack for the video. However we were able to find a pre-loaded soundtrack that we put together that hopefully suited the action of the video and suited the theme of the video. Obviously when we complete our real 3 minute thriller we will have more time to find/compose music suitable for the theme and action of our thriller.

Year 13 talk

During class some year 13 who had completed the same project a year ago came in to discuss possible problems we may occur during our projects and things we should be doing during our projects and things to avoid during our project. During which they awared us on the importance of choosing a group to work with who we get on well with and are able to work effectively with, to minimise any arguments of disagreements that may occurs during planning and filming. They also suggested we should choose are locations very carefully and make shure they suit the storyline of our thriller eg not having a medical thriller in the woods.But to be realistic with our location choises making shure each group member is able to get there and that we get permission to film in that area. They also said we should choose actors for our thrillers wisely and not just choose our friends eg choosing a friend may not be suitible for a criminal role.They also gave us advice on our blogs and suggested that we get as many bloggs done as possible and blog as much as we can relevant to our thriller ed if we make any costumes we should film how we did this.Trying to include a wide range od different medias eg powerpoints, videos and pictures. They also warned us not to leave blogging to the last munuite and the same with filming, they advised us to start ASAP so we have more time to edit it and incase any mistakes are made during filming we still have enough time to re-shoot them and edit them into a sucessful final video.

preliminary task story boards

These our our initial story boards for the preliminary task It began with a front view close up of a females red high heeled shoes as she begins to walk foward then cuts to a side veiw of the same female continuing to walk down the stairs holding a briefcase and wearing the same red shoes this is our match on action shot. then we cut to a close up of the door handle turning and the door opening then the next frame is a long shot which features the female wearing smart buisness wear and holding a briefcase. There is then a shot of the shoes walking across the floor so you can hear footsteps also with the camera also at this level for a couple of seconds.Until it cuts to her sitting on a chair positioned next to a table where another character is allready sitting this is when we include our shot reverse shot as the red shoed female says 'i have your money' it then cuts to the other who says 'hand it over' and then a close up reveals the reaction of the other woman who says 'what have you done with her?

Preliminary task

For our Preliminary tast we were asked to film a small sequence that needed to include match on action- this is when the action of say somebody walking is filmed from maybe the side and then from infront and one shot follows another asif it is happening at the same time.It also had to include a shot revese shot which films a conversation  between 2 characters cutting from one to another either to see them talking or thier reaction.We were also taught to be aware of the 180 degree rule which states that when you film 2 characters in a two shot you must imagine an invisible line between them and you should never cross this line(apart from with good reason) because the positions of the characters will consequently chace and confuse the audience

Slides from our powerpoint presentation where we have discussed what we may expect to see in a traditional thriller and what we may expect from  various types of thrillers and examples of each.

Do's and Dont's given to us by year 13's

Dos
take videos and photos of everything going on around
do make more than one blog post a week
do plan ahead
do divide the work given fairly between group members
do extra blog posts
do film way before the deadline, just in case you have to re shoot specific scenes
do get ideas from other blogs
analyse other peoples thrillers
do stand out and try to be original
do start as soon as you can
do check that the cameras are charged before leaving to film
get story boards done as soon as possible
do think through your storyline
do film as much as can
tell people around you that your filming so that they have an idea of what you are doing

Don'ts
don't let the work get on top of you
don't assume the blogs finished
don't set the scene's in place's that are hard to get to
don't swear in the film
don't lose the film after you have shot your film
don't always use the first idea that you have


if you are in a group with friends be prepared to have arguments
people may let you down so be sure to have a back up plan
you can change the lighting when editing
make sure if there is a certain weather that you film the whole scene in the 'snow' and not on another day when there might not be any snow
choose the right actors to plan the parts of the characters
choose the right props and costumes