Evaluation (Preliminary)

Overall, we worked successfully as a group and managed to complete our planning, setting up, filming and editing all within the set deadline. Throughout completing the preliminary task I discovered some strengths, weaknesses and gained a sufficient amount of knowledge along the way.

I feel like a particular strength was how effectively we planned and thought about everything in advance before the official day of filming, for example, how we looked for a location in advance and set it up in order to see if it would fit in with our preliminary idea, instead of wasting time on the filming day searching for a location. This improved our planning skills and enabled us to see how significant planning in advance is, in case something goes wrong as we will have a limited amount of time to prepare our thriller sequence. Another strength throughout the preliminary task was our team work skills as well as the filming process. We worked very well in our group and took turns to film as well as incorporating the required shots (180 degree rule, match on action and shot revere shot) without difficulty – we worked effectively and successfully managed to disregard any unwanted items (such as lighting equipment or props) within our frame whilst shooting.

 
A large weakness of our preliminary task was the dialogue once we had added in the non-diegetic music. We found that the character’s dialogue was unable to be heard as the non-diegetic music was overpowering the character’s dialogue. After a brief discussing within our group we overcame the problem, which meant if we ever stumbled across this difficulty during the production of our own thriller we would know how to fix this problem which would also decrease the amount of time wasted trying to resolved the problem, as we would already know how.

This preliminary task helped me gain an insight of many problems that may occur in the future as well as knowing how to resolve them. I learned how to film from certain angles and how to alter a shot if it didn’t work the way I wanted it to as well as learning how to do many things on Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, for example, slowing down the speed of a scene (incorporating slow motion) as well as increasing the volume of a character’s dialogue or using a boom mic if it is unable to be heard. I also learned how to use my time effectively as well as learning how to choose (copyright free) sound which we incorporated into our preliminary sequence in order to add to the verisimilitude.

In conclusion, I feel very confident using the camera and lighting equipment that is already provided as well as feeling prepared to shoot my own thriller due to learning new filming techniques because of this preliminary task. I felt that editing was a little more challenging than filming, however, overcoming the sound difficulties we found with the aid of each other and the teacher’s help, I feel more confident with using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 for my own thriller. I also feel that our preliminary task was a success and once we had incorporated all the different aspects (such as filming, lighting, editing etc.) of creating the short sequence, our aim of creating a dark, suspenseful atmosphere was proven to be successful.