Our preliminary task group was made up of Alice, Ali(both on screen as actors)me and Katie(behind the camera). All of our filming was done using my Canon 600D DSLR camera, and used mostly hand held shots due to the fact we could not get hold of a tripod.
Our film didn't necessarily focus on a particular social group, or represent any fully, although the characters we created could be seen as representative of a group as a whole. Our film featured a possible drug deal, although this was not entirely clear, the assumption could be clearly made. Due to the age of our actors, Ali and Alice, it could be seen that our film was to represent the younger teenage generation, if so, they would be presented in a negative light and reinforce stereotypes of teenagers due to the content of the film being drug related. This negative light was reflective in the juxtaposition of the dark colours worn by the actors and the warm, almost candle-lit diegetic lighting appearance of the Cathedral. This juxtaposition puts our characters in a position where they clearly stand out, allowing for the pure and beautiful nature of the Cathedral to represent society, and the dark nature of our characters to reflect those who may be frowned upon in society.
Our piece created a slightly unusual thriller(we knew because we are going to make a thriller we would make the prelim task also a thriller), due to our location. The Cathedral featured warm, comforting tones and allowed for us to make a seemingly comfortable environment tense. The unusual, but appealing shots allowed for our film to appeal to those who may be more interested in the cinematography of the film; although i do feel the story helped add an uneasy feeling to the film, a feature we found slightly difficult to obtain due to the slight lack of thriller films we knew and enjoyed.
The technology throughout the film was relatively easy to use, due to the fact that the camera was easy to use and produced a great quality of film. Although there were a few issues. Firstly, the unavailability of a tripod caused major issue. Many of our shots were far too shaky to use in the final edit, and due to the camera being able to pick up delicate changes in lighting, we couldn't film at a different point. The issue of the tripod was overcome in certain shots such as this one(seen below) as improvising we found a chair to rest it on, as the clip reveals however the shot was still not fully still, and this left us with an unprofessional look to the final edit. The second problem with the technology was that, because we couldn't find any sound equipment, the camera sometimes focussed too heavily on the background noise, such as the rain, rather than the actors voices, leaving the conversation fairly quiet and the audience's focus on the ambient noise.
A few errors also occurred during editing, our film clips could often have to be re-uploaded due to the program not recognising the clips, this often led to us losing editing time. The film was also supposed to be accompanied by non-diegetic sound of Cathedral/ Church music, such as the sound of a choir, although after attempting to place the sound over the film several times, eventually we had to give up as our computer would again not recognise the sound clips on many of the pieces of film. The diegetic sound also had the same problem, the editing program seemed to cut much of the sound throughout creating a jumpy, rough effect that again made our film look extremely unprofessional. This problem with sound will have to be fixed, although we are unsure how to currently.
I feel there are a few strengths of our film that we can be proud of; the filming was a long process that was often frustrating and caused us to disagree quite a bit, although i feel overall each shot was carefully planned and took into considerations things which may not have been thought about before we began, such as the public walking into shots or the problem that some shots didn't look as we wanted them to. Throughout filming we all contributed to framing each shot to ensure we all felt it looked aesthetically pleasing and that it fitted to the scene that was to be filmed. A few shots that I feel proud of include the shot of the chairs near the end (see below), I felt the lighting looked almost perfect during this shot and the slight blur allowed for the whole shot to seem much softer than the rest of the film. The shots I feel may have needed to be cut or re-shot were firstly, the beginning of the film, although we had planned to take a few establishing shots, all together they appear to make the film seem to move fairly slowly - and with this being an opening to a thriller, this only served to relax the audience rather than keep them tense and intrigued. Secondly the conversation, we realised it would not look professional as neither Ali or Alice are professional actors; and I feel this paired with the camera not picking up the sound, and the amount of times we had to shoot the clip due to other members of the public walking into the frame, made the sequence feel slightly un-organised and messy. The most upsetting feature of our film was the sound and I feel this made the overall piece much worse than hoped.
Next time, we may have to plan for others to be around, and take into consideration that it will take a few tries to get it perfect- and not to get frustrated when the take isn't as we imagined. This all ties in with the initial planning of our film, our mind-map of ideas and list of shots could have been more detailed as many of our shots we knew what we wanted them to look like, but were not sure how to achieve this immediately. Hopefully this won't be a problem during our next planning as we will have much longer and know how to plan in detail. I feel with sufficient planning, research and knowledge of various shot types and how to use them, we could improve the overall quality of our work.
There were however a few areas of planning that greatly helped our piece. On decided the location almost immediately, it left us time to plan other aspects of the film such as the story, costumes and lighting etc.
Our planning included mainly thinking about how each shot could reflect something about both characters. We used various shots throughout the film some planned and some improvised to match our location. Firstly we knew we had to include establishing shots to allow the audience to familiarise themselves with the location. The first establishing shots were of the statues, using pulled focus, we felt in using these statues as a primary focus we could immediately establish this as a place of high importance in society.
The next establishing shot was a high to low angle shot of the main area of the Cathedral to present the vastness of the location and to allow for the film to include the beautiful architecture of the building.
The next shots included the stain glass windows to fully display the location was a religious environment, which we could then juxtapose with the daring nature of our film.The next shots were to establish our characters and build up the tension of the film, we used a mid, fairly central shot and had our characters walk either side of the camera. This allowed for the audience to feel immersed in the film and kept each character on opposite sides to the other, allowing for a clear opposition between them both. SHOT This central framing continued as Ali walked down the pews towards Alice, the framing of this shot not only allowed for the continuance of the opposition of characters but also the frame matched the one before, giving a natural feeling shift into the next scene.
The conversation was the next sequence and used shot-reverse-shot to present each speaker, and allowed for our piece to remain continuity. Throughout the filming we were fairly conscious of continuity, both with the position of characters and other aspects such as the lighting this helped our film overall to keep the same warm colours and the fluidity during the conversation.
The final few shots of Ali leaving again reflect the emptiness of the Cathedral and give a slightly more relaxed shot of the two characters after the issue had been resolved. The shot of the candle followed by the evening sunlight on the chairs and stairs, gives a calming effect and allows for the audience to relax slightly after the threatening nature of Alice's character and the situation Ali was put into.
We stuck to the 180 degree rule throughout the film, to make sure the continuity of the film was not disrupted. The camera must stay on a 180 degree line around the characters to keep the position of them the same throughout the piece. Some films break this rule to create a confusing, unusual effect to the film although this is difficult to achieve perfectly, and so we stuck to the rule.
(picturetaken from http://titles12group1.blogspot.co.uk/)
In the beginning the editing proved fairly difficult as we had either not edited before or had used a different program. The program we used was 'premier pro', and although it was difficult to use, after we had learnt the basics (from Alice who had used it before) it was a little easier to edit. The main problems occurred, as mentioned, with importing clips and keeping them on the program without them going 'offline'- the program being unable to locate them. Throughout the process I have learnt how to condense clips and place them onto longer clips to create the effect of the perspective changing and giving a more sophisticated feel to the sequence. My editing skills have vastly improved as before i had only edited a few small pieces using 'movie maker', for our thriller opening I think this will help hugely, as we will be able to edit much faster and hopefully develop some more skills to give our film more depth.
The editing process did come with a few issues although now i feel that after having resolved most of them, I can ensure they do not occur again.
To conclude, the filming proved, although difficult, extremely enjoyable and allowed for us to explore to possible shot for our future projects. The editing also allowed me to learn how to edit efficiently and hopefully will help when it comes to editing our final piece
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