My Q 7

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


My prelim task and my thriller are very different. The thriller Snatched was a lot more complex and time taking than the prelim.


In my pre-lim we filmed it in 1 lesson and edited our footage so it was only a 20 second sequence.It is set in our school, where a male character and femail are discussing why the male was so late in bringing her a coffee and there is an odd relationship between the characters. In contrast our thriller Snatched is almost 3 mins long and it seems a lot more like a thriller.


I have learnt a lot in the progression from my pre-lim to my Thriller. We filmed my pre-lim in january and Snatched in March. We had a lot of time to plan ideas for snatched and think through what believed would work/not work.


When we originally planned this we had a vey different script in mind which we had already started planning. This sequence focused on the discovery of the kidnap,where we would film a woman(the nanny) doing her daily routine and at the end of the sequence to look at the bed where the little girl should be using a eyelinematch and then look at her clock and give a delayed reaction and suddenly dropping a glass and calling security as Sophia was missing,i thought this would add mystery as it could make the nanny look bad or good. This involved many different shot types and i had many ideas for this.I quite liked how there was not much dialoge as it was only an opening sequence i felt it was not nessasary to give away too much information. It would also be easy to make it look like a thriller by the use of soundtrack and varied shot types to make it look scary. 2 of our members decided they didnt want to do this idea anymore and wrote an actual script which was based on the storyline and plot which i came up with. I was more than happy to listen to their ideas because it is important that we work as a group and that everyone is happy with what we are doing. After discussing and debating what would be best to do we went with the rest of the groups idea on changing what we film to have more dialogue and film something entirely different based on the same storyline.


I am happy that we went with this new idea although i think the other one is good i think it would have been too short.



Snatched was much more interesting and enjoyable to shoot although it was very hard work it eventually paid off.our planning for the day of the shoot was organised and we had scripts for our actors,it was a lot more planned out and we had a shot list but we didnt really stick to our storyboards as in Snatched we found it so much easier to just plan it on the day because we were in the setting and it was a lot easier to get creative rather than sitting at a desk at school trying to imagine what shots to use.

Sound

The sound in the prelim was very easy and simple to shoot unlike our final product. There was only a little bit of  simple dialogue and not as many mistakes and footage that we had to go through at the end,so it didnt take too long. We didnt add in a sountrack or any sound effects, it was extremely basic. 

To contrast in Snatched , I spent a long time editing and doing the sound. The only sound effect we used was the sound of the phone ringing and it was diagetic because it was implied to be there and seem if it was. I also used adobe audition to warp the sound of the Kidnapper on the phone adding tension , from our audience feedback people seemed to love this effect. I also enhanced some of the actual and ambient sounds by increasing/decreasing certain sounds e.g. the car and the door slamming shut. 

For snatched we really had to think about why were adding in sounds etc and they all had a purpose and a job to try make our thriller seem more thillerish and wanted it to have certain affects on the audience 

I also added in non diagetic sound copyright free which i found on the internet and downloaded for a small fee so this wasnt an issue. The  music created tension and informed the audience when they should start to worry.Audience feedback tells us they loved this effect and that it worked well. 

Editing  and camera

Editing the prelim was very easy now looking back at it. It only took around 1 lesson to put all  the shots together as there wasn’t a lot of footage. It was only a case of putting the right shots together at the correct time and it was useful to practise editing and learn about it as i hadnt done anything like it before.

Editing Snatched was not so easy, we all did a bit of editing however some did slightly more editing than other,some did more sound than others  (i did the most editing sound) etc and it all worked out so we contributed overall quite equally. It was important and interesting in trying out diffrernt roles e.g. to try out filming. 

We edited this on a  system called  Adobe ProCC, this is a very easy and great system to use with a linear timeline into which shots can be placed in any type of order and an audio track underneath into which sound effects can be placed to match the footage to the correct time.

It was very interesting to learn how to make a prelim with a little bit of help from our teacher on how to edit. I made notes and tried to remember everything ready to edit  our thriller.
Editing the pre lim was easy.We had only a few different shots
which we needed to produce:

1.Close-up
2. -medium shot /long shot
3. medium shot
4. Over the shoulder- shot
5. Low angle-shot
6. High angle-shot 

E.g. high angle 

The problem with the pre-lim was that we didnt think to say the exact same dialogue every time we shot it so there was a slight problem when editing but it wasnt too noticible and we now know for next time to stick to the script and to make sure our actors do and say similar things every time we shoot.

Our final thriller was a lot more complex with many more different types of shots.

Mise en scene

On the day of filiming our real thriller it was very exciting.For our pre-lim the mise-en-scene was not good at all because it just looked like a classroom. For our thriller snatched we planned the location to be at Essams house because it suited our characters as the mise -en-scene had to portray wealth and luckily his house does especially after we re-decorated the living room so it was exactly how we imagined and so it suited the Russins wealthy charatcer. E.g.

Here we placed the desk in the centre and moved away the sofa which was originally there and carpet and tv. We placed the mirror so it was in view of the camera and the bar in the background which emphasiesed Brodski`s wealth.

Whereas in the pre-lim we just shot it in a classroom,the only problem with this is that we got a few interuptions from other pupils when filming like people coming in and out of classrooms. We didnt think about a script or the mise-en-scene really at all.

You can clearly see that this is a classroom and it seems a bit fake.

However in our final thriller , Snatched the mise-en-scene in every shot was appropriate and suited the wealthy middle/class social group which we aimed to represent.

E.G.

Here is a photo which i took on the day of shooting ,that was the camera which we used:

The actors in our pre-lim were me and Ed from my group, im not an actress and not very good at it and Ed rarely acts:

To contrast in Snatched,our final thriller we were lucky enough to use our friends at LAMDA,one of the top Drama schools in the Uk based in London. Our 3 friends bought along their teacher/friend from LAMDA and he played the older character because we wanted an older character to give us more credibility and make it more realistic. They were also all keen for experience , so they were perfect to use! We also chose the actors according to who suited our characters the most.

Dimitri and Ilya Brodski`s Russian accents considering they are quite unexperienced were very realistic. 

Overall i think I have learnt a lot, especially from doing the thriller ,Snatched. It was very hard work but extremely rewarding and I preffered it to the pre-lim because i liked shooting on a set,with proper cast,scripts and everyone who knew their roles well. We worked well as a team and I am looking forward to hopefully doing A2 next year and using my knowledge and skills which i have learnt next year. 


I learned a lot from the prelim ready to for the thriller because I learned how i would  use and set up a camera on set. Where would be the correct  places to put the camera for certain shots and angles, this was to get the best footage and I definitely couldnt with no experience (it was a very  challenging task but rewarding). The prelim set up and filming really made me think about how much time and effort I would have to put in for the thriller. It got me prepared for the thriller Snatched and was yet to come. I really enjoyed it and it was very useful. 

During shooting the pre-lim we all tried a bit of everything so when it came to shooting snatched we all stuck with mainly one role so it was faster to shoot as the actors didnt have all day. On the actual day of shooting Snatched i did the sound and had to place and work with the camera girl, Nathalie in order to know where i could place the profesional microphone sound recorder pro. I wanted to do more filming but we had to work as a group and try get it done without taking too long so i understood it would be best if Nathalie shot most of it.

We used natural daylight and  we were fortunate to not have to bring in artificial studio lights. So the quality of the footage was good in terms of lighting although there was actually one piece of footage, where the camera focus`s over Brodski`s shoulder at him opening the letter and the audience reading what it said but it was out of focus so could not be used, it was our mistake to not take advantage at this point of the digital camera and play back the footage and notice  but overall we were lucky with the quality of our footage and sound.