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

Our preliminary task, although we were pleased with it, was very basic. The main task on the other hand was much more difficult and complicated. We had to use the skills we learned in our preliminary and apply them to our main product in order to achieve a successful video.

Setting

One of the things we realised during the preliminary was the importance of location, after looking back on our preliminary we realised that one of the worst things about it was the setting, the college. Due to the nature of our film this was especially important, as we should have surroundings which provoked fear or strangeness to hint at our genre. We therefore decided on three separate locations – an alleyway, a wooded park, and a water-edge scene. We decided we would use the flashback idea which was central to our film to link these scenes together, in an example of elliptical editing. We first attempted to film the scene in the dark in the hope that it would add to the suspense and sense of fear.

However, as is evident in the picture above, the poor lighting made the picture quality bad and in some cases unclear. We hoped that we would be able to modify it during editing, but this proved unachievable. Therefore we had to re-think our plan, and decided instead to film during daytime, this di

d however waste a lot of time, as we had already got a lot of footage, but it was necessary.

Camerawork

Our camerawork improved a lot from the preliminary to the main task, we became much more adept at getting a wide variety of shots. One shot that proved difficult was the CCTV footage shot

We had to do a high-angle shot for this, as if from a camera’s point of view, and it was difficult to get the camera high enough, as the stand would not extend far. We therefore improvised, and placed the camera atop a windowsill, having got permission to do so.

Editing

The editing of the sequence was also much more difficult than in the preliminary, one annoyance was in the amount of footage we had shot. We had to rifle through a much larger amount of footage than in the preliminary, picking out those shots we were to use. As we realised we may change our minds later on, we kept all the files we were not using in a separate folder, rather than deleting them.

During the editing process we fit the editing sofrware Final Cut Pro to our preference, we used apple mac computers, with dual-monitors, which allowed us to be able to sufficiently view both the clips we were editing and the full sequence.

The editing was much more complex than in the preliminary, as we had to do a much larger sequence and incorporate titles. We had to put special effects on some of our clips to show flashbacks also.

Sound

This was the first time we had the challenge of putting sound in our video, as this was not done in the preliminary. We had to find incidental music that helped create the atmosphere we wanted our movie to have, therefore, we decided to look on youtube, as this was where we could find free, uncopyrighted music. We selected a clip and used a youtube converter to change it into a file we could use, we then imported this into our clip, tested the effects and were pleased.

We also needed some non-diegetic sound, such as when the gate creaks open, we therefore found a free sound effect site and downloaded the appropriate sounds from there.

Performance

We realised the importance of acting during the main film, the character had to seem depressed and disturbed, and this was difficult to act. We tried different things and looked back to see whether they worked or not, for example, at first we decided the character should be drunk, however we soon realised that it was too difficult to act that, and decided against it.

180 degree rule

The 180-degree rule was massively important, sometimes we filmed a shot from different angles for a different variety, when we began to edit, we looked over all of our shots and chose the clips that were able to fit in with the 180 degree rule. Without looking at this we would not be able to make our film flow and it would look wrong. With this, in our main task we decided to only film from angles that would follow the 180 degree rule, therefore we had better chance of our film flowing and it would save a lot of time too.

To conclude, the experience tought us a lot of things, about what to do and not what to do in the planning, making and editing of the main task. We learnt how to use a variety of camera shots and how to manage and control time and problems we faced.