Evaluation Question 7

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

At the start of our preliminary task, we began with discussing initial ideas from our group about the basic storyline plot, genre and actors involved. Since this was our first planning session, we found that our ideas were very basic and not original, we based our ideas on what we’ve already seen and experienced watching thrillers in the cinema. For example, our first idea was to create an action thriller (the first thriller we thought of is The Expendables), in which involved mis en scene such as guns but later on we found out that in order to make a action/thriller realistic, we would need a higher budget and more experience in film making. In the end, our genre was a comedy/thriller in which the setting was in the small kitchen of our college. As you can see the ideas are very basic.

Comparing the planning stage of the preliminary task to my final project, in our final project we generated more realistic, complex and original ideas even though we used some intertexuality, we added our own thoughts to it such as using the setting in the “Under croft” so we could get access with the dangerous weapons (Hammers, blades, saws and wooden bats) we needed. We got our intertexuality from doing massive research which benefitted us. In the Prelim we used intertexuality from the top of our heads as we tried to remember thrillers we have watched in the past. We did little research than we did in our final project and this is why the complexity of our final project is greater. I have learnt that doing research which is relevant to your product has a massive effect in your final idea, in that case, the more research you do, the better the ideas on planning and the final product itself. 

Planning is very important as we can see this, we made a production schedule for our final product. We did not plan a production schedule for our prelim. 

Prelim genre: Thriller/Comedy. During our making of the sub genre of comedy, we found it very difficult therefore we changed the genre. We found out that the certain genres are more difficult to create than others (E.g. a comedy needs good acting).

Final product genre: Thriller/horror. Relying on the experience of creating the prelim, we found out that our acting skills is one of our weaknesses, so we chose a genre that will rely mostly on cinematography to create tension rather than facial expressions. Therefore we chose a Thriller/Horror; also I have had experience with making a horror title sequence in secondary school in which I used some of my knowledge there also. 

Here is the comparison between our preliminary storyboard to our final product storyboard:

As you can see, the final product of our storyboard contains more detail than the preliminary storyboard. The cinematography we discussed in our planning of our final product, we used our knowledge from our prelim and we built on that, we added extra cinematography shots such as panning shots and tilt shots to show movement of an individual. It also looks more professional than a medium shot alone.

Here is the similarity shots between our Prelim and our Final Title Sequence:

During our prelim, we struggled with using the cameras as this is the first time we properly used it. We took time to auto focus the shots and to keep the camera steady in our hands. Over the course, we managed to use the cameras safely and properly using all its components (auto-focus, setting up with tripod and zoom in/out).

Here is the comparison between a non-autofocus shot from our prelim and our auto focused shot from our final product:

We did not any lighting equipment for our prelim, and we found out that some of our shots were dark and we couldn’t see it properly, it made our production look unprofessional. We took this in to notice for our final product and we used lighting equipment.

Here is the comparison between our non used light shot in our prelim and our used light equipment shot in our final product:

The 180 degree rule, we applied it both successfully in our prelim and our final product. We were shown how important this was by our teachers.The 180 degree rule claims that when filming, the camera should stay on one side of an imagery line.

Using sound is an important component in keeping the thrill moving throughout the title sequence, as in our prelim, we uploaded our title sequence to our blog (without sound), and got comments from our peers saying that it would be improved if we added non-diegetic sounds. We then added sound and got better comments. We took the comments into account and we applied it to our final title sequence. Using non-diegetic sounds is used in every single title sequence we have researched on YouTube. Soundtrack Pro made this possible for us to create our sounds. The type of sound used in our prelim is an excitement type, using fast paced drum kit, bass and electric guitar sounds to create that excitement thrill as the genre was a Comedy/thriller. However, we interpreted this as an opposite in which our genre was a thriller/horror, we had to use tension type of thrill rather than excitement so we used dark sounds such as violins and orchestra sounds. From this experience of using sound, we found out that choosing the right non diegetic sounds that suits the genre is what makes the film successful.

During our course of the project, we reminded ourselves that we were making a film opening title sequence, so the titles are very important. We didn’t follow proper conventions in our prelim, in which we made up the production ident, distribution ident and companies. However in our final product, we researched real production/distribution companies in which we researched the ones that will fit our style of making e.g. our project was low budget therefore it would be meaningful that we were distributed by an independent company (which supports real low budget films) and would be unrealistic if we were distributed by a conglomerate like Disney. We superimposed our titles for production/distribution ident but in our real title sequence we used a programme called Motion which gave our production ident a movement image in which it looks professional rather than a normal text ident. The skills I have learnt is to use different types of programmes.

My editing skills improved upon from editing the prelim to my final title sequence. From the prelim I learnt how to put basic titles on the screen, also how to superimpose it on top of a playing clip. However in my final title sequence edit, I used the same skills but also learnt how to change the font of the text, and how to make sure that each title remained in the wireframe zone so it does not look out of position.

Here are some of our title sequences in for our prelim compared to our final product title sequence:

Overall, from across the two productions, I have learnt major skills in film making which consist of using expensive media equipment safely, editing, filming, and how to improve upon skills using knowledge and experience from past work (prelim to final product).