EVALUATION: Question 7

Comparison between our prelim and final thriller product


PRELIMINARY

The prelimiary excercise we did in lesson for our first production gave me a genuine insight into filming our actual thriller, It was beneficial to do the prelim to make mistakes so that we ignore any mistakes in our actual thriller. Firstly, it isn't as easy it sounds. A few things i have learned at listed below. 
- having a variety of shots helps spice things up, we only had two or three main shots from the sitting scene, furthermore we filmed the money exchanged badly, so we had to go and refilm the 'money exchange' scene becasue we had a normal shot instead of a close up which would of been much more effective. 
- If you are going for a specific genre you must ensue you film in a similar environment, we planned to film our hitman scene in the office but we used the canteen instead and it looked very unprofessional. You must try your best to get a similar setting so therefore i believe location is essential into making the perfect thriller.

This over the shoulder shot was not done perfectly. the angle has to be positioned more on the right so it cuts out excess parts of the character as is not needed.

 In this shot the camera wasn't positioned perfectly thus it looks slightly bent, although it may be hard to tell at first glance it does make a major difference to the general feel of the film

In this scene, we were acting as soon as we pressed film and forgot to state '3.2.1.action' to make it seem smooth

Misc en scene

What our characters were wearing did not go at all with the hitman vibe we were trying to deliver to our target audience, the hitman was supposed to be in a suit and the lady was supposed to be smartly dressed, this is a major reason to why i feel we could not target our audience properly as our characters look like students.

Secondly the lighting is very average, we wanted to deliver a dark office feel and could not provide this, this was a major downfall to our final product and made it look more like a casual catch up chat.

Furthermore no props were added and it would of been beneficial if we had a briefcase or something to add a hitman feel.

Sound

We didn't do any sound checks and this came back to haunt us, our dialogue was extremely low and i had to record my voice and overlap it to fix our dialogue issues. We had no soundtrack just dialogue, i think this was negative to our film as it wasn't able to deliver what a more intense atmosphere

Editing

Our editing was awful in comparison to our final product, the clips were just cut down and stuck together. No transitions or effects were added to any of our clips and it looked extremely basic, this made it look nothing like how a opening to a thriller should.

Storyboard

 The storyboard here is hand drawn and harder to follow because its not the actual shots. Whereas in our final product we used a digital storyboard (shown below)


Final thriller opening

In our thriller we improved all our skills.

We filmed many things twice and filmed many extras as 'fillers' just incase we had to use them to consume time or just to substitute a clip. We were never short of clips and this helped us save time on the filming process so that we can spend more time editing it to deliver the feel we want to.

Our storyboard above is digital in comparison to our prelim storyboard which was hand drawn, having a digital storyboard meant that it was portable and we had it on our phones. Furthermore it was easier to read and we was able to understand it as it was clearer.

 Misc en scene

we ensured our characters clothes matched our age group which was 18-35

We made sure we invested in props (above) to make it seem more professional by buying correct props to deliver the psychotic abusive thriller we wanted. The props helped us achieve this by fitting with the stereotypes we used (unstable,aggressive)

As we were filming outside we had to cover the camera as it was raining to safeguard the camera

We contrasted correctly between our two scenes, at the first scene it was light and all somewhat happy and then it suddenly contrasted to the dark scene, we made sure the lighting done this by having a light scene and then a dark. The soundtrack followed suit as it was somewhat happy and then turned all slow and dark.

Editing

We used all effects to our advantage such as sepia and black and white and fast/slow paced to contrast continuously in our film to deliver the high tense atmosphere.

Our match cuts were done more professionally as the cameras were stationed perfectly so the transitions between the shots looked flawless and smooth.

Soundtrack:

Our soundtrack were slow paced yet loud and had many effects such as echo, distortion and playing with the pitch. We did not have a soundtrack in our prelim

Conclusion

In conclusion i have learned that to film a really good thriller opening, you must be organised and invest in props so that you fit the stereotypes you are trying to represent. Camera wise i learned that you should film the same things several times so that you have different angles so you spice things up in the editing process, by doing this you do not bore your audience and they get a different perspective to your shots. In comparison to our prelim, we added a soundtrack and this contributed massively to our tense atmosphere