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

Back when I started the Preliminary Task I was unaware and uneducated in filming aspects and techniques. For example, mise en scene, importance of lighting, camera angles, pacing. All I knew was how to point a camera at things and (roughly) edit them.




A piece of mise-en-scene in "SHOT".

I have learnt how mise en scene can be used to foreshadow and communicate things to the audience about characters and places. In "SHOT" I used multiple cases of mise-en-scene, for example, the chess pieces were representitive of one character, Eilif, killing another character, Nicholas.

Using back-lighting, I've created a silhouette
to give Eilif some mystery.
The lower camera angle also makes him
appear bigger and powerful.

The lighting in a scene is important. It can be used to indicate time of day and even to create mysterious silhouettes and shapes to tell the audience things about a character.




Focus/ defocus in use.

Camera angles can make a character seem bigger or smaller, kinder or intimidating.Not to mention techniques like focus/ defocus, which I used at least twice in my opening. A bridging shot is something I also learnt about and used in my opening.

Although match-on-action is something that had to be used in the preliminary task, it is not something I did well. The actions sometimes didn't quite match up in the shots. However, since then, I learnt to make sure the shots matched up well before bringing them to editing. In my project, there are parts where I've used match-on-action well, such as when Nicholas outs a phone up to his head.



The muzzle flash in the dream sequence.

Though the pacing of the preliminary wasn't bad, I didn't do it intentionally. The pacing can be used to give the audience a sense of calmness or panic, depending on the speed of the cuts.

I didn't use any kind of special FX in the preliminary. For "SHOT", I used colour correction, slow motion, muzzle flashes and motion tracking & stabilisation.

The first page of my
drafted script.

There was very little planning for the preliminary task, which lead to a lot of messing around and stopping to think of a shot. For the film opening, I did a LOT of planning, which meant I knew exactly what to do when it came to the production of the project, which meant that I was able to shoot and record scenes quick and effectively.

No non-diagetic sound was used in the prelim, in the final product I used is pretty much all the way through. It was used as background music and sound effects (like the gun).