Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Here is my Preliminary Task that I completed in a group at the start of the course, the simplicity of the video we made is of large contrast to the film opening we now have, and have worked hard to achieve. In the time of progression to reach a final product, I believe I have learnt a lot about the importance of preparation during the pre-production phase, and the organisation and patience within actual production. You simply cannot just pick up a camera and go...Research
Due to the simplicity of the Prelim Task, there was no need to complete any research, specifically research into genre conventions, which in contrast, I spent hours doing before starting the production of our film opening. My research within the pre-production phase consisted of looking at existing texts and familiarising myself with the psychological thriller genre, and how other production companies/directors have gone about creating a film that follows the conventions of the genre. This includes aspects such as character type, location and mis-en-scene. I carried out this research by watching film openings from our film genre, analysing and commenting on the aspects I named above. I also did specific research into what were the traditional conventions of a psychological thriller - so that we could reflect these conventions within our film opening. It was vital that this research was completed in order to produce a product that would be accepted into, and successful within the genre.
Here is a screenshot of the 5 blog posts that contain my Genre Research.
Planning and Time Management
For our Prelim task, all that was needed was a single sheet of planning, briefly noting the few shots that we needed to film, and who would be within them. However, for our film opening we knew that a lot more thought needed to go into producing pre-made Documents that would lead us through the production phase. This is due to the much larger amount of time we would be producing our film opening (over the course of around 3 weeks), as opposed to our Prelim that took the majority of 2 hours during lesson time.
After deciding from my Initial ideas what film opening I wanted to peruse, Harrison and I prepared and delivered a pitch of the idea. With a great response and a new member of the group, George, we created the following pre-production documents, to plan our film opening.
- Detailed Synopsis
- Storyboard
- Screenplay
- Shot list
I then decided to go a step further and create an Animatic, as the plot, timings and sound would be more or less reflected the final cut. The Animatic contained a voice over of me describing what would be happening and I think this really helped me to visualize what the final product would look like, and ultimately allowed me to come up with some creative shot ideas.
Casting
Unlike our Prelim task, where we simply used people amongst the group as our actors, a lot of thought went into who would star in our film opening. Our protagonist, Molly, was a no-brainer decision, with her being a close friend of mine, and living locally, we knew she would be readily available. We also wanted to ensure that our main character was of a good acting ability, and with Molly studying A-level Drama we were sure she would be up to standard! The role of Molly's Parents however was much more difficult to cast, we had to find two parents who would be willing to give up a couple of evenings to film - luckily Georgina and Nick volunteered. Before we filmed we made sure the actors were familiar with their lines, fortunately there wasn't too many to learn.Props, Costumes, General Mis-en-Scene.
For our Prelim, we only needed the following things - which were all found within school.
- A stairway
- A free room
- Table with 2 chairs
- A piece of paper to hold.
There was also no need to change from our school attire.
However, this is completely different to our film opening, which we had to gather the following props, and move from place to place.
- Quiet street;
- 2 Cars - to imitate the crash, and film within
- Molly's Bedroom;
- Small items for cut away shots
- A suitcase, and clothes to pack
- Molly's first costume - Pyjamas
- Inside the train;
- Molly's second costume - Casual clothes.
Our General Mis-en-scene, related to our audience, and genre research. The costumes and Molly's Bedroom contained signifiers that represented Molly as a typical teenage Girl, attracting a young female audience, and also building an emphasis on the mental deterioration of Molly that is to come later in the Film. The dark, quiet streets used for the car crash reflected our genre research, following the convention of low light, and creation of a tense atmosphere.
Location Scouting and Test shots.
We knew we must pick locations that was going to help reflect the correct atmosphere for the film opening, as well as being accessible. We chose the street of the car crash, due to its short distance from Ilkley town centre, so it was both easy to access but much quitter street. There was also limited lighting that we thought would emphasise a tense atmosphere. Molly's bedroom was obviously the easiest to access, with no worry of disturbance during shoots - as it was in our main actresses' own Home. The Train station, and Train were the hardest locations to organise due to picking convenient train times, and then picking a station for Molly to exit the train that wasn't too far away, but also looked remote (lots of trees, less houses).
During our location vlog, we also did some test shots of the first scene using my car, that was not going to be used in the actual footage.
Rough Cuts and Audience Feedback
When creating our Prelim we simply has to shoot, and edit the clips together, and the feedback was commenting on if it had been correctly filmed and edited together - which we successfully achieved. However, for our film opening multiple Rough cuts were needed alongside both self/group analysis and audience feedback to successfully reach a Final Cut that both ourselves and our audience were happy with.
It was after our first Rough Cut that we made a Vlogs as part of our 'Production Updates' In it we were commenting on our production so far, what we needed to improve, and what were the next steps... This allowed us to use self-evaluation for improvement.
I also gathered audience feedback by sharing the link with my friends and family on social media. Here is an example of me sending the link to my blog post Audience Feedback Survey that included our Final Cut and a survey I created using 'SurveyMonkey'
We also filmed feedback from audience at two stages of production, after our Rough Cut 3, and after producing our Final Cut.
Roles and working within a group
With everybody offering their help wherever possible within the production group of the prelim - In a smaller group of 3 creating our film opening we decided that roles should be assigned. We knew from the start that George would be the film editor, due to his expertise in this area, however from the initial roles that we decided, Harrison and I swapped (making me in charge of Cinematography and Harrison the director). This is due to the confidence that I developed for camera work as production progressed. As a Group we had to collaborate our ideas, compromising to keep everyone in the group happy with the developing product. On a whole I think that we worked well as a group, with some moments being frustrating, we pulled through to create a film opening that we are proud of, and hopefully others enjoy watching. On the contrary, I am looking forwards to working individually next year as I think I will challenge myself, and doing so develop the skills further that I started the AS course with, and advanced throughout the year.
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