Looking back at my preliminary task

In our Preliminary task we didn't require much planning, we were given a story board to work from, and we were given shots to do, therefore not a lot of pre production work was required. However in our thriller, we had a lot of work to do before we got round to actually filming it, we planned props, costumes, location and story line. We drew our story board from start to finish. In our story board we aimed to have a detailed plan of what our finished piece was going to look like, we rewrote it with pictures to give us a better idea, as the drawings didn’t seem to help, we were required to research other thrillers and relate them back to our choices to make sure we had all the right elements to live up to the conventions of a thriller. We also had to then ask permission to film in the location we wanted and buy any props, we had to write a script which unlike the prelim was not given to us, we had to find actors that fit our type cast and give them the script to learn therefore planning for our main project was much harder than our preliminary it required much more planning and organisation before we even got around to filming.
In our preliminary we were given the shots that we needed to do, we were told how to do a shot reverse shot, and we planned to do a high and low angle, the story was very basic therefore the shots were limited we focused more on the dialogue than telling the story through shots. In our thriller, we used the shots visually such as panning with the hand to show that the main male character wasn't a policeman we relied on the shots to tell the audience he wasn't who he said he was because the dialogue doesn't give this clue, we showed this visually rather than verbally. When planning the shots we thought about how each shot showed different things to the audience such as high angle giving status and low angle giving less status. We took pictures of the set from the angle of each shot and referred to it whilst filming so we had a visual plan, in our preliminary we didn't use such planning because it wasn't as important, we wanted to be organised and not rely on the dialogue to tell our story. To set up our mise en scene in our prelim we didn’t need many props we just used the space we had, however in our thriller we set it up in a specific way placing toys around and having home drawings on the fridge, to make it look more realistic. We had to make sure our actors were in the right place for each shot to gain what we wanted, and we had to redo shots if there were problems such as continuity errors like the clock or if our crew could be seen in any of the footage.
In our preliminary task, we focused on shot reverse shot and sticking to the 180 degree rule, we weren’t as aware as close ups and panning shots and therefore our camera shots were not as sophisticated, we used a close-up on some of the props and faces however during our thriller, we made sure to use much more sophisticated camera work. We needed to make sure we used techniques such as eye line match, and panning shots, the camera work was much more difficult as we had obstacles such as a mirror, where we had to film without being seen in the reflection, this shot was important to us, as we needed to be able to show the policeman in the mirror so the audience could see how the mother would see him, without turning round. the camera shots were much harder to obtain, and we found ourselves stuck in small corners trying to get different angles, however we see how using more sophisticated camera work it made our thriller look more professional and create suspense and tension.
In our preliminary task we used limited sound and stuck to the sound of the surroundings and the voices of the actors, meaning we couldn’t signify anything through sound. In our thriller we used sounds constantly we added in low sounds and high pitch sounds and had them playing throughout to create suspense, as well as spending a lot of time making sure the dialogue sounded right and doing numerous retakes to make sure it lived up to our expectations we added in sound in post production to create atmosphere and tension, for example we had sounds to signify the change in character of the policeman and to show something wasn't quite right, we chose the sound and repeated it at significant moments such as him stealing the phone or locking a door. This is typical of a thriller as it builds tension for the audience and shows that something is about to happen, we had to balance out the sound of the dialogue to make sure it was the right volume and it all sounded the same to prevent any errors in the video and to make it flow better we also cut silence from footage to make sure we still got the ambience of the surroundings in times of silence in our thriller, the sound was important in creating tension and it was much more sophisticated in comparison to our preliminary, to make the sound for our thriller we had to overlap certain tracks a with the dialogue to make sure both could be heard, and we added the sound layer by layer, making sure it was balanced to the dialogue.
In our preliminary task, we had a limited amount of time to get the shots therefore we didn't have a huge range, this made picking and choosing our shots a lot easier, we were not expected to know how to cross fade, or cut things smoothly, but knew the basic tools of final cut pro and used them effectively however it wasn't as sophisticated as our thriller. In our thriller we took a long period of time on editing, we had to match up the sound perfectly to shots, and learn how to cut on the movement to prevent any jump cuts which would have made it look messy and unprofessional, we over lapped shots and used many tools, and we also used sound effects from the computer and put them in. Our editing process for our Thriller took a long time and I found it much harder, there was a lot of little details which needed to be fixed such as dodgy cuts, or continuity errors with lighting, also we used dialogue from different footage and added it to our favorite footage so we had to make sure it matched up with the what the actor was mouthing and this took a lot of time, we had to closely refine each cut to make it look like we hadn't cut it, we also needed to add credits to our opening sequence this meant making the font look exactly the same for each title and choosing names for our director, sound makeup and costume etc. we also had to make sure we placed them in the right place at the right time, and none of this was required for our preliminary. Therefore making our thriller an example of how much we had improved our film making and editing skills, in order to make our final project as professional as we possibly could and to stick with our idea as a group.