EVALUATION ACTIVITY 7

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

I feel that I have progressed a great deal since when our group filmed the preliminary task. This is because it enabled us to learn how to use the editing software and the video camera. It also meant that we could learn from the mistakes that we made when filming the preliminary task that we knew not to make in our final film. Some of these mistakes were to make sure the lighting was at the right brightness each time a new scene was filmed so the continuity of the shot remained the same, to make sure the editing was correct so that there are no pause where it is obvious that one of our characters is waiting for an instruction and also make sure that no background noise can be heard in the footage for example traffic or people talking. When making our film we made sure that we concentrated on our previous mistakes so they would not happen again and the continuity would flow.

In these screenshots below it shows both our preliminary task (right) and our final film (left)

 

In these two scenes we have used shot reverse shot which is when the first character is shown looking at a second character and then the shot changes to show the second character looking back at the first character. This makes the audience believe that these two characters are looking at each other whilst having a conversation as they are looking in opposite directions. We chose to use shot reverse shot in our preliminary task as it demonstrates the emotions that Amy is feeling and how Lauren is reacting to them. It also shows the audience the environment they are in as they can see behind both of them. We then chose to use this technique in our final film as the ‘over the shoulder shot’ looked different and unusual. We also liked this shot because it meant that the audience could see both characters facial expressions and characteristics at the beginning of the film which meant they got to know them as characters. The ‘over the shoulder shot’ also meant that the audience was put in the perspective of both characters which then causes them to feel the same emotions as the characters all through the film.

 

Match on Action is when something happens in a scene but the perspective of the camera changes, still showing the same action. This is used when the persepective of the camera changes but the scene still flows without any disturbances. We have used Match on Action in both our prelimenary task and our short film as we felt that it worked well and looked very effective when using different camera angles. The first screenshot, from our prelimentary task, shows Lauren opening the door to go outside. We chose to use Match on Action here as it means that the continuity of the scene remains the same and the audience can see that she is going to a different location. The second screenshot, from our short film, shows Amy knocking on the door. We decided to use this technique again as it deomstrates the action that Amy has made which causes a domino effect as our second character, Tara, opens the door. It also looks quite effective as the door knocker is quite sisnister and grey, which adds to our eerie atmosphere which we tried to create.

 

This shot was used both in our preliminary task and final film as we felt that it was a good connecting shot which showed the audience where the characters had gone and their movement. In our final film we felt that it was effective because it made the audience see the characters disappear off the screen which prepared them for the events that were yet to come.

 

In our final film we used both ‘fade in’ and ‘fade out’ which is shown in the above screenshots. We chose to use the ‘fade in’ effect when the scene changes from the hand going down the window to the villain walking away into the darkness as we wanted these two scenes to be significant in our final film as we felt that they were two very important ideas and created effective imagery. We also thought that cutting these two scenes together would not work as well as it would look unprofessional.

We then used the effect called ‘fade to black.’ This was used twice in our film: firstly when the newspapers fade out of the scene and when the villain has walked away. It was used at the beginning as we wanted the transition between the newspapers and the first scene to flow as well as possible. This is because the two scenes are quite contrasting so the bridge between them needed to be fluent to link the scenes together. It was used at the end as we felt that as the villain as walking into the darkness it could be portrayed to the audience that he was disappearing into the unknown and the audience would not know where he had gone.

In our final film we decided to use the 180 degree rule as we felt it was not needed as the 180 degree rule enables the audience to see the relationship between unseen movements which is happening around the characters. We also felt that there was not an occasion in our film where the audience would become confused as the line was not needed.