Evaluation - Preliminary Task

Evaluation

Overall, I found our Preliminary task went surprisingly well. At first we struggled to work out what our narrative was going to be, then we came up with the conclusion of a confrontation between a  killer, and a girl who's relative has been harmed by the killer. We were originally going to use a normal classroom in the English block for our location, however after we started recording, we found that this was not the correct location as it didn't particularly make sense for a killer to random be in a  classroom.  We came to the conclusion that a more home-like setting would make more sense, as generally films with this narrative are usually based in a home setting. We decided to use a food technology room to make it seem like we was in a kitchen. This all adds to verisimilitude.

We all participated in the filming. The filming went well however we had to re-record some parts due to the room change and rules of continuity. After watching the footage we took in the classroom, we realised that the filming looked unsteady and unprofessional, so we decided that when we was to re-record it, we would use a tripod. The tripod made the shots looks much more steady and to a much higher standard.  We had to record the speech scenes several times so we were able to hear the characters dialogue loud and clearly.

This part particularly stood out to me. We started off with an over the shoulder shot of the girl walking into to the room where the killer is. This shot is complimented by non-diegetic 'psychedelic' music, in order to build suspense. There is then a jump cut to a close up of the girls feet, slowly walking towards the killer, still with the music. I believe this part of our preliminary task went noticeably well as it was exactly how we planned it, the music fitted well, the editing was fairly accurate, and it is simple yet effective.

We all took it in turns to edit our final product. It was rather time consuming trimming each clip to make it accurate, however once we had it made our task look much better. We also struggled to adjust the volume of the sound, however we managed to work it out. We decided to add a title sequence as we thought the practise would be very beneficial when creating our thrillers. Our title sequence was particularly good as we added some scary non-diegetic music, and had the title come on and off the screen 5 times at a fast pace. I fount that this had a very strong effect as it was not just still on the screen. It was almost preparing the audience for something to pop up and frighten them. It created tension.

I feel our preliminary task went surprisingly well, better then I thought it would have been, the narrative fit well with our choice of shots and music, however  I feel it would have been better and the narrative would have been clearly if we thought about mise-en-scene more, for example if the killer wore a more distinctive costume that demonstrates their character. I think the editing went the best, in comparison to the filming.