Evaluation Q7 - Overall feelings

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

Planning & Storyboards

During the pre-production of both our prelim and our short film, as none of us really had much experience in filming anything before, we were both over-prepared in some areas and under-prepared in others. For instance, the day before filming, we had not yet settled on a location that would be able to offer what we needed, making it all very last minute. However, what we had learnt from making the prelim was that, as a group, we worked better being more free and flexible. When we tried to plan every inch of our film, shot for shot, it was less successful than when we had creative freedom and were able to just experiment with what looked more effective. Also, we learnt that if we are are to use a storyboard, that when we plan the shots we intend of creating, that we should be realistic and take into consideration our surroundings. This, we learnt from the fact that the small interview room that we shot in limited how much we could move the camera.

Camera

The main thing that I learnt about camera techniques was that the more simple shots often looked better. When we tried to do more complicated shots such as panning by hand or zooming in, it usually just looked immature and we would end up not using the shots. The more effective shots were the simple ones of the extreme close ups. Another thing that I learnt about camera from the prelim that we then incorperated into our opening was the importance of good framing. In our prelim, we wanted to mask Emily's identity by only shooting her from the neck down or her feet. However, because we didn't exaggerate it enough and revealed to much of the rest of her identity, it didn't have the desired effect. When it came to filming the thriller, we knew that in order to keep the audience intrigued by the mystery, we would have to exaggerate it much more. This we did through only revealing certain parts of Billie's identity; her eyes, her hands, her tapping feet etc. 

Mise En Scene

Through filming, one of the most important things I learnt about mis en scene was the difference that having good props made. Much of our opening was based around props - the glass chess board and the old book - and so the believability of the props defined our whole opening. What I also learnt, however, was the impact that costume can have on camera. Although the actual clothes itself wasn’t an important aspect in our opening, because much of the characters was left unseen, I think that if we would have gone a little further to make the contrast between the murderer and the victim clearer to the audience, then it could have been a lot more effective.

Lighting

I learnt a lot about lighting whilst we created our thriller opening, because much of our use of shadowing and darkness was what formed the creepy atmosphere. I learnt the effect that simply changing from low-key lighting to high-key had on the whole mood of the film but I also learnt that if lighting can be done badly then it can be distracting from the rest of the action. In our opening, we used lightening to differentiate between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters; this was a small thing I learnt that helps when telling the story without having to literally spell it out to the viewer.

Editing
Experimenting when editing the prelim definitely helped when it came to editing our final opening, as we had an idea of what did and didn't work. For example, we learnt not to cut between shots too quickly before the audience has a chance to register it visually, but we also learnt not to drag out one shot too long in case it got boring. We played around with the effects on final cut pro which, I learnt, could make a big difference on the final product. When we added effects on to the shot of the nails against the table, it immediately looked much more creepy. Subsequently, I learnt that colour is an important aspect to keep in mind when shooting, because when we looked back at the shots, some of them varied in brightness and colour so we were forced to put it all in black and white so that it would look consistent.

Sound
From creating the prelim, I learnt the effect that music can have on the ambience of the film. Before we added the music, it wasn't necessarily very atmospheric, whereas after we added the eerie sounds over it, it immediately heightened the mise en scene. We considered this when making our film opening but we also liked the idea of really exaggerated foley sounds for the clips of the hand tapping against the table or the moving chess pieces. Because of this, we chose music that wouldn't overwhelm the sounds because they were the stronger aspects of it.

Titles
The titles, we learnt from making the prelim, looked more effective if they were left simple. Making the prelim gave us the chance to experiment with different font styles so by the time we came to creating our actual opening, we already knew which did and didn't work. During the creation of the prelim we found the typewriter font and we decided, for our opening, that it would suit the titles on that too. That, matched with the foley sounds of the typewriter, ended up looking very effective.