Question 7

Technical skills:

In terms of the use and improvement of the technical skills within our preliminary to the full product, there is clear evidence of enhanced confidence in particular areas such as camerawork, sound and editing. To continue, the uses of camera work in our preliminary showed basic skill and lacked sophistication.  As shown in the first screenshot, which is out of focus, the phone is positioned awkwardly in the frame and there is a visible reflection in the phone. In comparison to the shot of the phone from our full product, which is positioned well in the frame, this makes the shot look thought out as well as the phone being easy to read and the simplicity of the shot, which adds to the eerie and suspicious tone of the film.

The sound is a major improvement within the full product in comparison to the preliminary. This is due to the fact we used appropriate sound equipment which included a 'dead cat' microphone instead of just using the mic on the DSLR camera which made the dialogue in the preliminary almost un-hearable. Even though we struggled with the clearness of the dialogue in the full product, because we filmed outside which meant the mic would pick up some of the background noise such as cars passing by and the wind. However, this barrier was soon solved through the use of editing, we decided to use the technique of ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement). We re-recorded the dialogue that was filmed outside to match the actors speaking in the film and edited into the film to match the movement of their mouths.  



Another noticeable improvement of the use of editing within our full product was the use of match-on-action which made the cuts a lot less jumpy in comparison to the preliminary task. An example from our full product is the particular scene where the character played by Arthur is stroking the dead girl (played by Annie) in the bath. As he pulls his hand away from her hair, when going from the close up back to the establishing shot you see his hand still moving away from her head. This is a clear example of the use of match-on-action which makes the editing a lot less jumpy and helps make the shots make sense. This compares to the preliminary task in which there is a lack of match-on-action. For example in this series of shots where the character played by Mattie is grabbing the bag to give to the character played by Gabe, the shot jumps from an eye-level, mid-shot to a low, close-up shot of the bag. Editing another shot into this scene could solve the jumpy cut, this would have been solved by the clearer understanding of match-on-action and by spending more time on the shots and making clear plans before the shooting process begins.

Key points that have been learned:

The major difficulties I found with the creating process of the final product were meeting the tight deadlines and the heavy workload that accompanied the deadlines. In comparison to the preliminary task which didn’t involve any research and only a limited amount of planning and evaluation. This made the quality of work for my preliminary less thorough because it seemed less important. The stress that was caused from the amount of work needed for the end product has made me realise the importance of planning ahead and keeping to the deadlines to avoid work building up and creating more work for yourself, leading to more stress. Because falling behind meant that some blog posts were rushed and had lacked in quality as well as quantity. Creating an engaging narrative was not an issue for both the preliminary and the full product, however the issue was successfully telling the story on camera. With the preliminary the story is very unclear, especially due to the unclear dialogue due to sound difficulties. The narrative is more understandable within the full product due to more planning and having more time on the product, however I still feel that successfully representing the narrative was a barrier for both products. When working to a specific brief with the full product it was obvious with what was needed/wanted but we still had the creativity and freedom within the thriller genre. In comparison to the preliminary which lacked in creativity and there was a slight restriction in what we could/wanted to create.