Question 7 Looking back at your preliminary task,

What do you feel you have learnt inthe progression from it to the full product?

Negotiating skills in team workSince doing my preliminary I had learned the importance of many factors and skills that go into making a short film, that I previously had little knowledge of. One of these is that working together as a team is the best approach because everyone in my group had valid and creative contributions to our final production. This meant we could all put our best individual ideas into a single one, that involved aspects in it that without each other wouldn’t have been in there. Like Isaac had the idea for the underwater shot as he had the technology, and without this it wouldn’t have even occurred to me that this is a possibility; or Harry my editing partner came up with the idea of quickly cutting to several shots of looking down the barrel of a gun to make it intense. one of the reasons I think teamwork is best is because we’ve all seen different thriller films so we all have different knowledge of inter-textual references so can contribute this variety. Also my group involved both males and females which was part of our target audience therefore we could reflect the knowledge of how to appeal to them into our thriller. Our preliminary task introduced us to these important points as we worked in the same group so already had good group dynamics.

Initial ideas we all worked together to come up with.

Polishing camera skills Doing the preliminary task familiarised myself with camera skills for example camera angles, it made me realise the importance that I needed to involve a variety of different angles to make it more interesting and visually stimulating for the viewer. Furthermore, when doing the evaluation on my preliminary task and case studies I improved my knowledge on implications and inferences of these angles like an over the shoulder shot (a) depending on if it’s a high or low angle, usually always positions us in the point of view of the character usually so we are on “their side” and empathize with them. Also close ups and extreme close ups so we can see a character’s emotions or to see something of importance, this was especially important as it was a convention of thrillers Additionally, the preliminary task developed my knowledge and skills of camera movements, such as tracking and panning shots, usually used so we could see all the composition of the shot or to follow/go to something of importance. We attempted to do a tracking shot (b) in our preliminary however it didn’t go very well because it wasn’t very smooth and level, and harder than we initially thought. But when it came to shooting our thriller and we did a tracking shot and it went a lot better because it was smoother and didn’t tremor, this was because we discovered it was easier using a tripod for it and you needed to be gentle when recording it, we also needed to get our actor to time his run/movements better with the camera.

a

b

Generic ConventionsDoing case studies and watching thriller films helped me establish and develop my knowledge of the genre. For example, before doing case studies I had no idea what chiaroscuro lighting was and how it was commonly found within the genre, but when investigating films such as Essex Boys (c) and Se7en (d). I found that it was very common and is one of the biggest signifiers to the genre. Moreover cliff hangers were often used at the end of openings specifically to create uncertainty and keep the audience on the edge of their seats because this adds to conventions of the genre. For example in Heavenly Creatures or The Third Man. In our preliminary task we didn’t have to involve conventions of thrillers so it was something we really had to extensively research in class and in case studies so we could convey these and show our knowledge within our final production. Creating conventional tension and anxiety is something we really struggled with when first starting our thriller as we didn’t have to do this much in our preliminary. With our first rough cut we decided we needed more footage so had to do this twice in order to progress to the end product we desired that did construct tension and anxiety, once again on the forest and in a house, the teacher feedback really helped us achieve this. The lack of contrasting locations didn't allow for authenticity. Thus we decided to add extra footage of the runner in a recognisable situation doing the washing up in a kitchen with flash backs or a premonition to being hunted in the woods..This is what I learned from this first edit, that thrillers work best when they represent ordinary people doing recognisable chores with cuts to a desolate trackless forest where the boy doing the washing up is represented as prey. This use of opposing locations adds suspense and realism and visual appeal. Within our production we had to be careful because I discovered through case studies, thrillers must be realistic, otherwise they turn more into horror or fantasy films. Overall conducting research into other thriller films gave us inspiration to make our opening as creative and exciting as possible through inter textual references and storyline ideas.

c

d

Techniques 180 Degree Rule (e): This is when the camera MUST stay on one side, and that there is an

invisible axis that it cannot cross, but in some cases it can be crossed if the transition is shown on screen. The preliminary task introduced me to the importance of this rule because if you ignore this rule you break continuity and disrupt the viewer. And establishing how to use it easily use and apply it within planning and shooting.

Continuity while shooting: This is a rule we soon learnt the use of when filming our preliminary task, as we discovered it was more efficient to film all the shots we desired in one location all at the same time. Knowledge of this learnt from the preliminary task came in helpful when doing our thriller. This is because we have a lot of shots in a forest, and going from the house to the forest back and forth would have been a waste of time and energy.

Match on action (f): Is an editing technique of when you cut to what the focus of something is then cut back. We chose to do this within our final production because it showed the new skills we had learned and gained knowledge of when researching case studies. As it adds variety to our shots and makes it more visually stimulating for the viewer.

e

f

Techniques Elliptical editing (g): this is when we used techniques within editing that omit part of an event,

causing ellipsis in the plot and story. We used this when Billy is thinking about Holly, by superimposing the clip of Holly pointing the gun over the top of a close up of Billy’s face. Which is something we learned how to do in the editing process of our preliminary task, and then went further to do this in our thriller as we felt more confident in doing it from our preliminary. And this made our thriller more appealing to the viewer because it makes it more visually attention-grabbing for the audience to look at.

Shot reverse shot (h) : Is where the camera slightly copies a characters eye sight, say for example their was a conversation the camera would go from one character to another and then return to the first character all on the same sort of angle as the character. We found this harder to do than we initially thought in our preliminary, so we kept it as simple as possible placing the camera generally in the exact position of each character using a simple mid shot. However when it came to the thriller opening we had gained these skills and could use them in a more complex way, so we opted to over the shoulder shots, and varying our angles in our shot reverse shot, to make it more visually stimulating for the audience.

g

h

Importance of cliff hanger When watching thriller films and researching case studies the cliff hanger at the end of the opening, was essentially important in grabbing the audiences attention and make them engage into the film by making them want to find out more. For our preliminary we took a more comedic approach to it so we didn’t feel a cliff hanger was very important at the time. But when watching thriller films I found that I judged the film and made a preconception on it from the quality of the opening and its cliff hanger, if it was gripping, exciting and thrilling then I did want to watch more, like out of LA Confidential. For our cliff hanger the audience want to find out if Billy's murdered and which scene is reality and which is the vision/nightmare. In our final 10 seconds the camera is moving a lot and we edit a lot of cuts, but then we finish in slow motion with high diegetic sound of unsettling breathing and then finally fade to black. This fast past editing and camera movements and editing disorientates and obscures the viewer (i), but then when it goes to slow motion of a close up on Billy’s face (j); they get to take in what just happened; see Billy’s scared emotions, and are left waiting and anticipating to find out happens next, but instead of finding out it dips to black.

Quickly cuts from each of these two match cuts back to each other

i

j

Importance of research and case studiesLooking into other thriller films really helped establish and apply generic conventions of thrillers into my production. For example thrillers such as The Third man was very inspirational because its an iconic and well known thriller that have many signifiers to its genre like using black and white (k) or chiaroscuro lighting. Therefore we chose to reference this because it would be easily recognisable due to its popularity therefore reinforce the thriller genre conventions into our production. Furthermore another thriller that we found inspiring was Kill Bill 1 (l), this was because it was a more contemporary thriller, and represented gender and ethnicity in a better and more diverse way. We wanted to also do this within our thriller as our target audience would have preferred this view, they are more likely to have seen and liked other films like this also, and would have recognised the inter textual references in our production more likely- making them feel clever. Overall researching the genre not only broadened my knowledge of camera and editing techniques, and ones specific for the genre, it established and developed my knowledge of conventions that we had to apply into our production in order for it to be recognisable as a thriller.

l

k

Importance of the soundtrackMost of the soundtracks within in thriller films are for creating a certain mood or feeling, often anxiety and tension, commonly using percussion instruments, which I found out through research, like the one out of Psychos iconic shower scene. Additionally soundtracks are suited to the narrative and are frequently serve the purpose of constructing power for certain characters by it being synchronised with them. Trying to find the right soundtrack was a difficult process looking at free music websites simply wasn’t enough. I discovered through our preliminary that you can do customized searches on these websites. Typing in key words, such as ‘tension’ which narrowed the search so we could find the right soundtrack for our narrative.

Importance of feedbackThrough our blogs our tutor could comment on our posts and tell us what to improve upon. This was very helpful because it could help us improve on the piece of work the comment was on (m), and give us knowledge of the standard for next time to achieve this grade. For example when we first started doing case studies I focused more on the general analysis of the clip and its effects. But through comments I understood that I needed to do this and link it to the conventions of the genre and how it does this. I realise now that this was very helpful so I have the knowledge of the genre and could apply this in our production. Also giving questionnaires to our target audience helped with what to improve (n) and how to focus these improvements to our target audience. I discovered that this was very useful as they noticed things I didn’t, because when editing I am watching it so many times I often became desensitised to it and miss aspects that they wouldn’t have, the viewer often notice micro details I missed.

m

n