Overall, since the production of the preliminary
task all the way up to now with the completion of our final production I
believe that I have developed a great deal as a film maker. I have developed
mostly in my editing skills, efficiency of camerawork, my leadership skills and
knowledge of sound. In our preliminary task my job role was an actor, therefore
I played no real part in the editing process, this time around I was mainly in
charge of editing the result of this was a great improvement in editing
variety. This time around I was also assigned the executive producer role
therefore I had to maintain the rest of the group in their individual jobs and
I had to maintain their efficiency in getting their jobs done and making sure
they were completed to a good standard. As a film maker, I have also developed
in the sense that I have the learnt a great amount of leadership skills and I
have also learnt that more often than not the team must work together and
communicate well even though everyone has specific roles.
Our preliminary production did have strengths yet it
did have many shortcomings, however, we did build on these shortcomings and
improve as film makers. Our strengths included creating a strong narrative with
good plot sequencing. Also we didn’t break the 180 degree rule and our
camerawork and shot types were varied and used efficiently. Our downfalls
included bad acting, no real theme noticeable, no titles or soundtrack and not
very advanced editing. We addressed these shortcomings by talking about them in
the evaluations we did. We clearly built on these shortcomings with the
evidence of our final production task as clearly every shortcoming in our
preliminary task was practically non-existent in our final production task. Originally,
in our preliminary task we were relatively unaware of the importance of
following the 180 degree rule until however we did in fact break it in the
preliminary and it was an obvious error, with this in mind we were extra
careful in the filming in the sense that we had to always consider our position
so that there was as little a chance of breaking the 180 degree rule as
possible. Even with the great consideration we took in the filming process in
trying to avoid breaking the 180 degree rule we did actually double check the
footage after the filming process and we carefully analysed each shot making
sure the rule was not broken.
We developed as film makers in various specific
skills from our preliminary task. One of these skills was camerawork; we learnt
a great deal about camerawork from the process of filming our preliminary and
in the filming process of our final production. The amount of knowledge we
gained from the preliminary and the final production did in fact vary. In the
preliminary task, it was near enough our first time majorly filming; we had
knowledge on how proper video camera operate as none of us had handled one
before and on top of this we used the Iphone 5C camera. Our first downfall was
in fact towards the beginning of filming our preliminary, this was a silly
error to make as well, this error was filming with the camera portrait instead
of landscape therefore black outer bars are visible in the shots when viewed,
obviously, after noticing this error which was after we had filmed the complete
first half of the preliminary we had to go back and restart filming from the
beginning. I think that the main reason we made this filming error was because
of the fact that we filmed on a phone instead of a proper video camera, this is
because generally, a video camera would already by default be positioned in
landscape, the majority of cameras do not have a default camera mode that is in
portrait. This error was very difficult to be made again in the final
production due to the fact that we did in fact use a proper full HD camcorder
that’s default positioning was landscape and obviously thanks to previous
experience we knew that filming anything, especially something professional
should not be filmed in portrait due to the fact that all filming should always
be done landscape.
Overall our camerawork skills have a developed a
great deal mainly thanks to using more advanced technology and equipment than
in the preliminary, the technology and equipment allowed us to explore
different aspects of filming and different possibilities. An example of this is
the use of a tripod, we developed our camerawork skills with the use of a
professional photography spider tripod, this tripod allowed us to film from
different heights including near on ground level. Our camerawork skills were
developed as we were able to discover what shots were more achievable and in
turn were more effective.
From our preliminary we learnt that taking various
copies of one shot was a good method to take because if the first shot was
blurred we had copies so we implemented this technique into the process of
filming for our final production. Also editing skills developed greatly as we
learnt how to use different transitions and effects, those features in which we
did not use in the preliminary. We developed due to the fact that we used a
different editing programme. In the preliminary we used IMovie which did supply
most things needed to create a good production however we wanted to be able to
do as much with editing as possible and Pinnacle 19 studios had a more vast
selection of tools and possibilitie in terms of the editing. In filming our
production we were very specific and careful in regards to continuity. We
always made sure actors were careful in their timing, positioning and their
appearance.
In our final production we did a great deal more
planning than what we did in the preliminary. In the preliminary all we did was
a storyboard, however in the final production we created a storyboard and a
shot list. Also we used a more advanced editing software in our final
production too.
Overall our opening is a successful one, it
successful meets the goals that we set. Areas of improvement could definitely
be better make-up in the mise-pen-scene department, am example of this is the
blood on the victims face and on his shirt and the table cloth. It does not
look the most realistic in our opening therefore if we were to do It again we
would acquire better fake blood. An overall strength of our thriller could be
how tension and an atmosphere is created.
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