1. Preparation and Planning
Preparing our media thriller took a lot more time than our preliminary task due to the fact that we had to come up with the idea, script, and different shots that we were going to do. It took a long time to prepare and agree on all of the ideas due to the fact that we couldn’t do all of them as we were only allowed two minutes worth of material and we didn’t have an exceptionally long time to film it. Our Preliminary task was much easier as we got told what shots to do; we got given the script so it was a lot more straight forward. Preparing for our thriller was difficult and time consuming, we had to take a lot of time sorting out our folder before the shoot day. It took us a few weeks to come up with our idea, we considered filming in the club; we considered her dropping her bag and Simon stealing her purse and many more ideas. We had to think about what shots we wanted to do and where we wanted to place them before we shot our thriller so that we had an idea of how we wanted it to look and so that we could structure our day well.
2. Development of your film-making skills preparation and Planning
For the preliminary task we got given everything that we needed, i.e. Script, shot list and we were told the amount of times we needed to take the shots so it was fairly straight forward for us. For a main sequence we had to all brain storm ideas for what we thought was a good thriller and what made us scared when watching a film. We then had to piece the ideas together to come up with something to work with. We first were planning on shooting Lottie mainly in the club and watching someone spike her drink, she was then going to get in a cab with them and that would be where it finished, but after lots of thinking and working on the sequence we realized it was too long and we had to cut it down. We chose to focus of the driving part as we thought it would cause more suspense and would be more natural and believable for a modern day audience of 16-24. Although the preparation was time consuming and hard on the days that we filmed we had everything with us such as props list and props, script, shot ideas and a list of effects that we wanted to create. I really enjoyed shooting our thriller because it was our own idea and we could pick the shots to create what we wanted.
3. Use of camera
When we first used the camera for our preliminary task, I felt fairly nervous to use it as I had never worked with a video camera before, but now after working with it on the shoot days I feel that I am much more comfortable with using a camera and how different shots work. I feel we all had an equal turn at working with the camera and set on the day to make it all work. When in the preliminary task I found it difficult to set up shots which showed that we were all a lot slower with the camera. However for the main task we were more familiar with different shots and were confident to suggest other shots. By using the camera in the preliminary task we broke the rules of the camera such as the 180 degree rule, this was beneficial as we then knew how not to do this when we came to our exam piece. I felt that by doing the preliminary task it made me aware if how to bubble the tripod and do the white balance so I was confident in doing it for the real thing.
4. How your use of sound has developed
In our preliminary task the sounds were all basic diegetic sounds, there were not added sounds to the piece we just worked with the voices of the actors. However when coming to the main task we used Sound Track Pro to create the sounds of cars on the road, rain and add music for suspense to create tension and mystery in the thriller. When doing the preliminary I wouldn’t have known how to work with the sound but after looking through the sounds and adding them to my final task I became more and more familiar with them and began to add them very easily. I found that I really developed in using sound as I had never really experienced using sound in this way before, I really enjoyed exploring it and learning new things.
5. Demonstrating your ability to master new technology
When beginning to edit our thriller we came back to using Final Cut Pro as we did in the preliminary task, I enjoyed using Final Cut Pro as even though we had used it for our preliminary we hadn’t explored it to its full use so every time we edited we were learning something new which I found really satisfying. I really enjoyed editing the main task and piecing it together, watching the story develop. I found that by having time on our own with Final Cut Pro and the thriller we got to put our own inputs in and learn even more about the program. By having more footage to edit together this made the editing of our main thriller a lot more time consuming so we had to put more effort in to get it done. I found editing the best part of this whole process ad I really enjoyed putting the final footage together and selecting the best shots for the final piece.
