Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
To look back at our Prelimary Task and to compare to how far we have come, especially in filming and editing, I think myself and Imogen have done a good job and think that despite the difficulties and problems we had, we managed to pull through and meet every deadline.
Mise en Scene
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| Prelim VS. Final |
In terms of Mise en Scene, I feel as if we have massively improved when comparing our prelim to our final. With our prelim, we had a lot of problems with finding an actor in a short amount of notice that would be free at the same time as Imogen and I. Obviously, our first actor was going to be Chelsea, yet when we filmed, we forgot to set the white balance and when we re-filmed, we found Katie.
I feel as in especially the make up side of characters, we have greatly improved as we now know how to create scars, burn marks, blood stains and pale faces. Here is a photo comparing the different in make up in our Prelim to our Final.
As you can see, Katie in our prelim has no make up on, or very minimal that doesn't look particualrly visible when you focus the lighting on here. In comparison to Tom and Aaron, we used very minimal make up on Tom, only powder and foundation so that the lighting would almost work as a highlight on his face, as well as avoiding shininess as Tom has quite oily skin. Aaron we used a tutorial that we researched on youtube to find the best yet cheapest and less time consuming scar that was practical to our thriller opening. Click here to watch the original youtube video, and click here to see Imogen's practise of the scar.
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| LED Lighting- we did not use filters |
Between the preliminary task and the final piece, our use of lighting has changed dramatically. This was mainly because we shot our final in a dark outside environment, if we didn't use the lighting, the filming would be almost pointless as you wouldn't be able to see anything. What we would do without the LED light, I do not know.
In our final, as we wanted to place text over one of our shots, we needed to use the darkness to use as a background, and it needed to be the blackest of blacks that we could create, which I can successfully say that we did. This created enigma and had a huge impact on what the audience thought would fit in a typical thriller- click here to see our audience feedback and questions. We took their feedback on 'you should film at the grave yard at night as it is creepy' on board and did so, and because of that. It made our Final a lot better.
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| Before and after colour correction edited shots |
In terms of white balance, I think we have exceptionally improved as throughout the Prelim, we did have to colour balance a lot of the shots to make them white.
In comparison to our final that we almost got them 100% right every time. However, we did have to tweak some of the shots and colour correct them so there was no sudden change of lighting between shots.
We have written a blog post all about it, click here to view that blogpost.
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| Prelim (known as first shot) |
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| Final (known as second shot) |
Out of the two pieces, I feel that camera positioning was used less in the Prelim, but was done a lot more effectively and dramatically in the final piece. Especially as our Prelim was very rushed and not very well planned out, the difference in types of shots and positioning of characters used is expanded hugely throughout the final.
For example; here is two shots. Very similar, very uninteresting, of a character walking to a certain destination is two completely different locations.
As you can see, the white balance and lighting is automatically so much better in the second shot, and the positioning of the camera is based on the ground rather than up higher on a tripod.
I think this shot is more effective by just changing the positioning of the camera, the way you are focused on the small details on the ground contrasting with the darkness and almost spotlight on the characters feet, shows the difference of a thriller film to a somewhat comedy-kick off horror.
Although there is not a huge difference in what they are doing, the use of foleys and non-diegetic sound makes the second shot a lot better. This is one aspect in mise en scene that you can argue, we did exceptionally well on. The white balance is also used for a different effect in the final to the prelim.
Body Language/Facial Expressions
I personally feel that within the Preliminary task, we didn't really focus on the actors body language or facial expressions very well. Which me and Imogen are to blame for entirely, we didn't realise the importance of both aspects when filming, but luckily learnt a lot about how it can make the audience feel and connect with a character.
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| Tom- being shocked (final) |
For example; this shot is focused around the same emotion. Being scared or suddenly very shocked.
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| Katie- being shocked (prelim) |
In the prelim, we asked Katie to turn around whilst walking to her destination and show an emotion that somebody was following her, which than led to her running away being frightened. Whilst we asked Tom to look very worried as we used a cliffhanger at the end of our Final to show that he somehow has blood on his hands, straight after coming out of the dream he had about his mother and somebody following him (with evidentially has a scar on his face- all explained in our synopsis).
Here you can genuinely see the difference in acting too (we definitely fit the right characters to the final). Tom uses his facial expression to show he's worried and concerned, if you look at his forehead, it is wrinkled and his eyes go quite wide when he realises what is on his hands. Whilst Katie doesn't look very scared considering somebody is after her- which again, is no fault but our own. But you can see the impact it has on the audience
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| Antagonist- Prelim (Dark figure) |
Here is another example of where body language and genuinely the whole use of mine en scene has improved when comparing our final to our prelim.
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| Antagonist- Final (Aaron) |
In our prelim, we asked the antagonist and/or dark figure to walk along a corridor so that the audience would see that Katie is being followed. Despite it is very hard to mess this character up. I personally think the way we introduced the antagonist in the final was so much better. We used Aaron to keep ahold of his identity as much as we could without using a mask as obviously we needed to see the scar.
The body language of the dark figure was very quick and relaxed (you could say very out of character), hence why we needed to use a slow motion transition within the editing process. Whilst we asked aaron to have somewhat of a limp and walk fairly slowly. Which he did exceptionally well and created a lot of enigma as you cannot see his face for another 3 of the shots till he magically disappears.
Costume
In terms of costume change, this makes me personally laugh to the change in our Prelim to our Final. Firstly, our prelim was supposed to be based as a thriller, rather than a comedy-thriller type of genre. Whilst our final was definitely a thriller and can fit in almost all aspects of a typical thriller genre.
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| Prelim- Katie |
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| Final- Tom |
Here is both protagonists, in our prelim and final (Katie and Tom).
Katie was dressed within a christmas jumper that day. Again, no fault but our own as we struggled to find an actor. But the jumper definitely didn't fit a thriller genre at all, unless it was a comedy sketch of one. As little as a jumper in a film can change the genre and the overall audience viewing of that specific character. Red and white also I feel did not fit the colours of the prelim, as it was very vibrant and made the audience focus on the jumper rather than the body language or facial expression of the character.
Whilst Tom, had a very low key costume. We simply asked him to wear something with a dark color, preferably a jumper or coat and nothing that would take the audiences attention of, of his face. Which I personally think we did well on. Navy was a very good color choice as although it is dark, you are able to still see it through the contrast of black.
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| un-named//final |
When looking at the costume of both antagonists in both our thrillers, there is a slight similarity of colour, which both do successfully fit a stereotype of what you would see in a thriller, however the way we have put them together was done a lot more differently.
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| black shadow//prelim |
Firstly, our prelim, we asked the actor to literally just throw on a black cloak so we was not able to see any of their identity or body shape or anything about them. Despite the fact it worked well and did create enigma for the audience as questions would have been asked on who this character is and why he/she was under a cloak. Looking at the practically of the character, it could be a huge health and safety risk as the actor literally couldn't see where they was going and we asked them to walk down the stairs.
In comparison to our final, we asked Aaron to try and hide his identity as much as he could, allowing him to wear whatever he wanted but had to be black. I think this worked well with the setting as it almost looks like the hoodie is camouflaged in the background. With just his nose, right eye and scar showing.
Props
I think if me and Imogen were to refilm again, both Prelim and Final. We could use props a lot more than we did. Except from costume, we did not use any props in the prelim, which could have actually created a lot more enigma- e.g. if the antagonist was carrying a note or some sort of weapon.
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Cigarette- prop 1
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We used a few props in our final. One being a cigarette, we wanted to use this as it has a slight connotation of age on the character. As well as using smoking as a way of dealing with his mother dying. I think this had a really positive effect on the audience, especially the lighting, the shot and the foley used on the breathing out of smoke.
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Paper and Pen- prop 2
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The next prop we used was pens and paper to make it look like the antagonist had just fell asleep in the class room. And he wakes up beside his two mates (Ross and Jack), which are doing work and concentrating. Although this detail is very minuet, it helped create a sense of being at school or college, within a classroom environment.
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| fake blood- prop 3 |
And the last prop was fake blood. You cannot have a thriller without blood! This prop had a huge effect on the way we wanted to end our opening, as a huge cliffhanger. The use of the props makes the audience question why he has blood on his hands, what did he do and was that even a dream. Again, creating suspense and enigma.
Setting/Décor
Last but deficiently not last, setting and decor. This has to be one of the most vital aspects of mise en scene if you want to create a thriller film and most importantly, make somebody believe they are watching it. In our prelim, we used one distinct location, which was college but a lot of different areas within the college. Rather than our final, we used 4 different main locations- a motorway, a graveyard, a college and a bathroom.
The stairway throughout our sequence is one location that we switch too throughout, since we have based our location fully within a 'work place' set, we thought the use of a stairway was vital, especially if the Protagonist is running away, the use of close ups, mid shots and long shots on a stairway will attract the audience a lot more. Again, as the flight of stairs has many levels, we thought that we can film from higher angles in order to have connotations of 'The Black Shadow' having higher status. We thought that within the lighting of this specific sequence, the red walls within it symbolizes death and evil which is the type of theme we are aiming our Prelim off.
Cross Reference- To see storyboard in depth (visual and written) - click here
Also, another location that we have chosen is a variety of different hall ways, this is so that we can use high and low angles, as well as using close ups to show the pace that the Protagonist is running at. The hall way adds to the gist of the Thriller Prelim as it is plain. Through the use of mise-en-scene (lighting espeically), we are going to try and make the location a lot more 'scary' as it is. Also, as we have been doing our research on certian thriller scenes (click here for an extra research blogpost), there are a variety of sequences that has the victim running through hallways, therefore this is the main idea that we have based our Prelim off of.
Final
Worth walk over
This is near Amy's house. As this is a cycle and dog walking path that conveniently is above the M25, this is one of the main locations we want to put in our thriller opening to go alongside with our plot that you will see more in-depth in our planning, click
here to see that specific blog post. And again, as this is public land, we don't need permission
St. Nicholas Church
As obviously a church is a private, and rather spiritual area, we did need permisson in order to film here as obviously it'll affect the families of all those that have died here.
However, as one of my family memories (Amy's) has been buried here, we are going to use some shots of a tomb stone in order to create the atmosphere that we aim to get across to the audience. However, as again, it is private land, we needed permission in order to film here and inside of the St. Nicolas Church. Click
here to see the permission blog post. This had a huge impact on our Final as it worked so well, and especially at night. It made our thriller very suspenseful and scary.
Camerawork
Camera shots
For the two films, we used a wide range of shots. Click here to see why we used specific shots and our explanation of using them. We used a lot of mid shots and long shots within our prelim, for example here is some screen grabs below:
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| Mid Shot |
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| Long Shot |
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| Mid Shot |
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| Long Shot |
Whilst our final used a variety of shots. We tried to at least use a type of shot in each category so we wouldn't have a repeat of what happened in our prelim. Here is some analysis of the majority of shots we used:
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| close up |
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| mid shot |
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| long shot |
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| close up/mid shot |
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| long shot- could get away with ELS |
As shown above, we were able to use different shots to illerstate different types of actions or movement going on within the scene. E.g. The protagonist smoking a cigarette was very effective as you were able to see the smoke which proves he was actually smoking and it wasn't fake. Also, the long shots worked really well when he was running as we positioned the lighting just the side on him which made it look like he had some sort of spotlight.
I feel the difference in camera shots when comparing the prelim to the final was all down to learning more in-depth about camera shots and why/how they can be used for affect. Also, the analysis that I did on thriller openings (click here to read the blog) helped as it gave myself and Imogen ideas that we could almost duplicate in our final.
Angles
There was very few examples, in both the prelim and the final piece, of variation of angles. This is something I would improve upon if I was to redo this whole experience as I know from GCSE Media, how important camera angles can be when comparing an antagonist to a protagonist.
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| High Angle // Final |
Here we tried to use a high angled shot- which actually did turn out to be a rather low-mid angle shot to show the grave being higher than the protagonist. To connote that the mother will always have higher status within society as the mum. This wasn't genuinely used for effect, it was to literally show the grave having high density and the amount of power the mum still had even though she was dead.
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| Low Angle // Prelim |
Here we used a low angle shot of the Antagonist on top of the stairs to suggest power and the position this person/character has over the protagonist that is running away from it. This angle was used to show movement rather than just the status difference than the protagonist.
Movement
Both the final and the prelim had many examples of movement throughout, however I think that the final was done for effect rather than the prelim was done so we was able to show that we could film certain types of movement and use editing techniques to match them.
For example; here is two similar shots of both characters walking somewhere. As you can see in the gif of our prelim, Katie is simply walking down the stairs, this is genuinely a boring shot but needs to be shown so there isn't a random jump cut that makes it not make any sense. The walking is shown though a match on action, but when you compare it to our final, I feel as if the movement is a lot more smoother and well edited and filmed, creating the movement that we initially wanted.
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| Prelim |
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| Final |
And here is another difference in the movement on the antagonists, as you can see the final is a lot more well acted and slower. Which has an effect of enigma but contracts with the normality of the final antagonist rather than the prelim one.
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| Final//Antagonist walking |
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| Prelim// Antagonist |
Sound
Backing-track
For our backing track, we did a lot of research on which one would fit our genre without making it completely dramatic and over exaggerating. In our prelim task we could use any sound we wanted, therefore we thought we would use the American Horror Story soundtrack to make the whole thing to sound creepy and dramatic. Click here to hear it. We used this because it was already an extremely well known series and song so we thought it would fit best for our prelim as the idea was based upon that type of thriller show.
However, for our final we changed our idea completely and decided to do a lot of research on what sound track would fit our thriller opening best- click here to see that blog post. For our thriller opening we wanted non diegetic background music to play throughout the opening, our ideal music would build up enigma and show decreshendo to add tenison. In order to discover some ideas and inspiration we typed in on youtube 'graveyard scenes' to get inspiration from other famous films music in various graveyard scenes. I found most inspiration from 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire-Voldermolt returns part 3' as it created tension and was a good background noise and it didn't take the attention of the actors as that's what we want to show. From this, we decided to go with this sound track.
Dialogue
In terms of dialogue in our prelim, we didn't really have much dialogue due to the fact that it builds more tention as well as giving the audience suspense. In terms of post production, we was going to add music ontop of the filming, this will be along the terms of music like this aswell as deep breathing (foleys) that we initially was going to record separately using the Zoom Microphone.
However, we decided against this and just used non-diegetic music. In comparison to our final, which we used a script and a Zoom Microphone to place a voice over within the editing process. We do not have any evidence of us when filming our voice over which is very annoying however we managed to follow the script, just change it over so slightly to fit a male role rather than a daughter.
Foleys
One of the most important area of sound within our final was foleys. Again, as we didn't add any within our prelim, there is nothing to compare however I think we used and researched foleys really well throughout our final piece. Here are some screenshots of us through the editing of sound process to fit in our foleys at the right shot:
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| Here is a screengrab of our final edit. Here we used garageband to create the foleys |
Editing
Continuity Editing
From the prelim task I have learned and improved on continuity editing. This is shown in the prelim task where we did not film using the 180 degree rule which was a criteria to perform so we had to re film a separate piece of work to fill the criteria.
In comparison to our final task, we went through every single shot, through editing and filming to make sure that we did not break the 180 degree rule throughout as we didn't want to go through the pain of re-editing all over again.
Click here to see the blog post on the 180 degree rule.
Here is the sequence of how we used the 180 degree rule in our improved prelim. By using the 180 degree rule it improved our sequence as it covered all the angles of the conversation giving the audience a better understanding of the relationship between the two people. The main aspect of the rule is to not break it. The only defence for breaking the rule is if it is used for effect. Otherwise, breaking the rule will only confuse the audience, especially if it is scenes within a chase, conversation or sport.
The camera must always be on one side of the line.
The results of breaking the rule:
- Confusion
- Audience lose focus
- Become disorientated
- Miss vital parts of the film
Here is our Prelim retake of us not breaking the rule:
Match on action
We tended to use a match on action throughout the thriller final, as well as the prelim. Again, here is the two characters in the two different opening films, both walking. The editing is continuous and adds up nicely. As you can see in the gif of our prelim, Katie is simply walking down the stairs, this is genuinely a boring shot but needs to be shown so there isn't a random jump cut that makes it not make any sense. The walking is shown though a match on action, but when you compare it to our final, I feel as if the movement is a lot more smoother and well edited and filmed, creating the movement that we initially wanted.
Graphic Match
Although we didn't use a lit of graphic match, we had a go in our final. The image below shows where we used in in our final. We wanted the protagonist to turn around and the antagonist be gone. This was really hard and very time consuming to edit perfectly, despite the fact we haven't got it 100% right, I think alongside the music, it gives a sense of enigma and mystery to our thriller opening.
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| Antagonist there VS Antagonist gone |
Transitions
I personally feel that there was little transitions between shots in the final and the prelim. For example, we decided to use a lot of fade through blacks in the prelim but only used 2 in the final editing. I think this is because we thought that the use of fade through blacks have to be precise to what you are thinking of doing otherwise it looks really bad.
ADD GIF
Titling
As we did not put any titling whatsoever in the prelim. We didn't learn too much about titling except from basing ours of 'lovely bones' which is where our whole final planning and ideas came from. In the screen grabs below you are able to see how similar both are however to avoid copyright, we changed ours ever so slightly
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| Left- Lonely Bones | Right- Ours |
As for the final titling, this took a long time to perfect. We wanted a font that would go well with the whole opening as well as symbolise the title, click here to see our blog post on titling. We came up with multiple options on how we wanted the title to look like, an idea we got from the 'se7en' film poster, click here to see blog post on the titling for 'se7en' was replacing a letter with a question mark to emphasise the need for answers. We took feedback from Andrew and Sophie to choose which one would look best as the question mark in the middle on the title did change the look of the word therefore we chose UNANSWERED?. Below is the final title and the soft name that we used.
Conclusion
Over the course of this portfolio, I feel that we have massively improved in comparison to the prelim, all of which I have highlighted above. I feel that my skills have developed ridiculously and myself and Imogen should be proud of what we have achieved considering there was only two of us in the group.
Overall, I feel that we have successfully created a sequence that would well as a thriller as a result of what we've learnt from the prelim and for that, it reflects throughout our final piece.
