Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
preliminary task:
preliminary task:
Personally, the main thing I gained through filming my Preliminary task was confidence in the filmmaking basics, most importantly in use of the equipment; setting up the camera and tripod and then using Final Cut during the editing
stage. The task allowed me to practise these basic techniques in a less stressful environment, as the finished product wasn't to be marked, but was a helpful introduction into the film making world. The
briefing for the Prelim Task was simple, we only had to include the basic shots like shot reverse shots and match on action, whilst sticking to the
180 degree rule, and were allowed to
experiment with close ups and mid shots. The task allowed me to become familiar
with the basics of Final Cut, in how to make sure a scene has continuity by cutting the shots correctly, and thus helped with our 'final piece' too as we knew how
to cut together different shots in a fluid motion.
PLANNING: For the prelim above, in terms of planning there was virtually none done. I thought up the weird and random narrative on the spot and filmed the shots quickly, trying to tick all the boxes we had been allocated - match on action, shot reverse etc. This obviously is completely opposite to the amount of time I spent thinking up the plot to the opening of our thriller film. For the final piece, I devised a comprehensive narrative, and had clear ideas of where I wanted the opening to be shot (e.g. I knew I wanted a beach scene) and of the opening's style and tone in dirty, grimy London. In terms of progression within planning, obviously for our final piece there has been much more, but I think I could have done to a more comprehensive extent still. For example, the dance scene was excruciatingly hard to plan in advance, for so many different factors:
- we had no idea who would actually turn up, actors kept dropping out or had other commitments.
- the shots we wanted for the dance scene were going to be so quickly cut that it was almost impossible to fathom what each individual shot would entail e.g. the impossible nature of predicting 0.4second cuts of closeups of strobe lights and lasers dancing on a wall.
- we weren't even sure where we were filming the party until around a week before, because every place we were looking into was booked by other school groups.
- therefore, we couldn't really produce storyboards as what we were organising was completely unplanned and spur-of-the-moment, which is no doubt a completely idiotic way to work.
SOUND: For the preliminary task above I didn't use any external recording for sound, and just used the inbuilt microphone on the camera, which gave good enough quality for the purpose of what was simply a practice task. However, in watching the scene back there is quite a lot of background noise - e.g. some sort of whirring when Emma enters the large room - which could have been easily eliminated by highlighting different sounds that were essential, recording them separately and combining them on final cut. I took this on board when it came to recording our coursework:
- the beach scene: we recorded sound using a digital audio recorder at the location, with varying proximity to the sloshing waves. In final cut, I added some sample wave noises at a slightly higher volume just because they were crisper than the ones we had recorded, which also had quite a lot of background noise.
- the club scene: we actually did record some 'background' sounds of people laughing and talking in the moments between shooting, or when people went out for air (it got really hot in the room we were filming!). However, when it came to editing the recordings somehow didn't sound genuine and didn't fit with the loud dance music we had decided to put behind the scene. Therefore, for this scene we had no recordings taken at the location. I do think this makes the situation more immersive however, as the viewer can focus on the dancing and the loud house track, instead of snippets of conversations which would be disjointed as the shots are so quick.
- the walking home sequence: we had an absolute nightmare in recording sound for this portion of the opening, and it is one of the main things I regret/wish we could have re filmed. For some reason, and to no one's knowledge, the camera we had decided to use (and had been using all along - Canon 7D) had its sound recording turned off. Therefore, no sound was recorded at the location by the camera itself. Luckily, Blake had been using the external audio recorder to capture most of the sound, but some of it was missing - for example in one of the final shots we used him as our actor to walk ominously down the alleyway (leaving no one recording the sound). As we began to edit the shots to our horror we realised that about half of the dialogue we wanted had been recorded. It took a lot of hard work from us to match up the audio we had with the shots, there were only fleeting moments where the two coincided. Therefore, to my dismay the ending of our opening looks reasonably disjointed and slightly ridiculous. This, I would see as a failure, because I should have checked prior to the day we were filming whether the camera was actually recording. If the deadline for filming was further away I would have loved to re-film it but we had no time left and it was extremely difficult getting all our actors from across London in the same place, wearing the correct outfits, at the right time in the first place.
CAMERAWORK: I think I have really improved in my camerawork from my preliminary task compared to our coursework. This is mainly due to the wide variety of shots I was able to employ in the opening, varying to the few shots I actually took in the prelim. I think I have really 'mastered' certain types of shots. For example, my task opens with a weird shaky zoom depicting Emma walking towards the camera. I was able to build on my camera holding skills and employed a pan in our actual coursework, which ended up to be the opening shot of our opening 2mins because we all thought it was just really nice. When I was filming the actual shot at the beach I tried to do it with extreme care, hoping not to shake or jar the camera even slightly - and I think the end result is quite professional (!) I also executed a reasonably steady pan for the dance scene, which reveals different characters within a group of people dancing at a party. In the club scene we also incorporated lots of point of view shots which we hoped would heighten the verisimilitude for the viewer.
MISE EN SCENE: In my preliminary task I didn't experiment with pretty much anything within the realm of mise en scene, apart from the fact that I made the room in which Emma enters quite dark, just as something to play with at the time and to make it slightly more interesting. I had no control however over what Emma wore, of the setting, and didn't really give any direction on facial expressions etc. Nor did I experiment with altering the colours in post production on Final Cut. However, in the coursework I feel like I embraced the components of mine en scene, especially within the opening beach scene and the club scene. Although the opening shots at the Southbank were golden and shimmery at the time because it was around 4pm and the sun was coming down, I further enhanced them by playing with the colour palette in final cut; increasing the saturation and warmth. I did this to achieve an almost dreamlike sense, as the main protagonist gazes across the water reminiscing the night before and the tragedy that occurred. I directed our actress in this scene to look 'upset' and tortured due to her friend's untimely fate, which I think is construed in her pained facial expressions, and leads the viewer to beg the question - what has happened? For the dance scene and walking home sequence, we wanted the colours to be darker and grimier as the opening becomes more horrific. We had lots of ideas for the lighting in the club scene and arranged for friends to bring in laser/strobe lights to help us achieve the late-night clubbing feel we were going for.
EDITING: There is a stark contrast between the amount of editing done in my preliminary task compared to our coursework. With the prelim hardly any post production editing was done other than simply splicing the various shots together, whereas with 'STROBE' we incorporated graphics, idents, slow motion, fade ins and outs, a swipe transition as well as generally taking much more care in how each shot interacted with those around it. I found the titles and text really interesting to create whilst making sure they kept in line with the tone of the opening. For example, the letters of names of our actresses appear on screen in an almost twinkling effect, which mirrors the tone of the beach scene; the shimmering reflection of the setting sun on the water and the lapping of the waves on the shore. Therefore the transient nature of the titles is parallel to the transience of the situation; sunset, waves. For the prelim I made no attempt at ident because it wasn't required, but for the actual coursework I had lots of fun in attempting to make a clean, simplistic and minimal ident incorporating our production name in a cyclical effect found on Motion. For the dance scene, I think my skills in editing greatly improved due to the many different things we wanted to depict:
- because we wanted to create a chaotic environment, the shots had to be cut together in an extremely quick manner. This in itself was quite a challenge, collating all the material we had recorded on the day of filming into chunks of video no more than a second long proved to be quite difficult.
- because the scene is actually a flashback, we wanted to portray a dream like quality. I think we achieved this by incorporating most importantly slow motion. Not only do I think this achieves the dream like/music video esque quality we were aiming for but also creates moments of clarity for the viewer, hidden amongst chaotic cuts of less than a second long.
- to make the scene seem even more chaotic I interspersed shots of people dancing/drinking etc with random offcuts of shots, e.g. I cropped and zoomed in on a shot of a strobe flashing and cut it down to about 0.2 seconds, before placing it at almost random intervals throughout the scene.
To conclude, I have learnt lots from producing both the preliminary task and our coursework. I think I have learnt valuable lessons from both e.g. check whether the camera records sound (!) and they will help hold me in good stead for whatever I create next.
