Evaluation Question 7

(VLOG Script)

When reviewing back at our preliminary task it is such a good feeling realising how far we have come in such a short time between the production of our preliminary task and our final film opening. Before we was using basic, standard shots and editing skills and in our final film opening we have produced a high-quality film opening that conforms to our thriller genre codes and conventions.

As a group our mise-en-scene skills have improved tremendously. In our preliminary task we didn’t really focus on mise-en-scene, all we focused on was getting different angled shots and putting them together. However, in our final task we used all elements on mise-en-scene including costumes, props, settings etc. We was able to improve from the large amount of research we took out on the thriller genre and film openings. Much analysis from different films gave us lots of ideas and inspiration to perform in our film. In our preliminary task we stuck to quite basic angled shots, we used 360 degrees rule, worms eye view, reverse shot and close up shot. We failed to use match-on-action shots and shot reverse shot. We noticed this though, so when filming our final film opening we used a wider range of different shots we found out about during our research. This includes shots such as: extreme close up, wide shot, over the shoulder shot, point of view shot, extreme close up shot and many more. Our preliminary task was a great starter for us as it gave us the opportunity to increase our skills later on in our final film opening.

In our preliminary task we used my macbook and used the editing software ‘IMovie’. This uses extremely basic transitions which when editing our preliminary task we believed was very advanced and effective, so when we upgraded to Final Cut Pro X this was actually much more advanced as well as much easier to use as well as allowed us to layer the film, music and voice-over easily as the overlay effects where much easier than IMovie. 



We didn’t use any soundtracks in our preliminary task apart from the diegetic sound in the surroundings of our shots. We didn’t focus at all on sound in our preliminary task as we was so focused on the different shots we needed to use so we didn’t research any soundtracks or dialogue. This again highlights our improvements from our preliminary task to our final film opening as in our final film opening as in our final film opening we was able to add two voice-overs and add effects on them, add a soundtrack and add the bleeping sound at the end of the opening.

In our preliminary task, there was a small amount of dialogue which we used to tell a short story, however the dialogue used hermeneutics code as it created slight mystery for the audience as they didn’t know what the characters meant by this dialogue showing it had a background story. However, it was still very basic and uninteresting for the audience. Furthermore, in our final film we researched into different dialogues and decided to spend a lot of time of the creation of it using mise-en-scene, sound and editing skills. 

Ultimately, in our preliminary task we only used one location which was our school hallway and a small office off of the hallway. This was again because we failed to take much research into different locations. Nether the less, in our final film we was able to experiment with many different locations in order to find the best one for our final film opening which we then went onto using a car and a forest for. This demonstrated our understanding of different locations and how to shoot in different locations focusing on different terms on lighting and camerawork. 

To conclude, I think it is clearly identifiable how much progress our group has made in the relatively short space between our preliminary task and our final film opening. There is even a huge contrast between our first draft film opening and our last one. I think it was the basicness of our preliminary task when we realised we was missing so many different codes and conventions of a thriller that motivated us to take the time to carry out research and produce a much higher standard product. We worked immensely well together as a group, we all had our designated roles which allowed up to produce a really good final product.