Preliminary Evaluation

My role during the preliminary task was to be a part of the narrative by acting in the short clip, as well as acting in the short clip I was still very much involved in shooting the scenes of the clip that I was not acting in such as the shot of her walking up to the front door. This also includes the shot of her walking up the path towards the house and the shot from the window looking out on her. I also had a big input in the narrative of the preliminary task as I came up with the basic idea then as a group we then elaborated on that together to come up with the storyline we have. I also had an input in the editing but this was an equal part as we together either had no experience or limited experience with final cut so though online tutorials we learned as group how to edit our first short piece.

What worked well with our group was our ability to work together; we had extremely well good contact in and out of sixth form via group text messages and through the use of social networking sites such as facebook and twitter. This enabled us to immediately update each other thought the process when one of us had an idea to do with the task. I also believe that our ability to commit to each other helped us as we look at all of our calendars in advance to make sure we can meet up on the same dates which enabled us all to be involved. We all worked together when working on the editing we done it as a group and watched each take turns to make sure we have the same final cut express ability. I also liked our ability to work with what tools with have i.e. a dysfunctional bad quality camera but we still made the best of it, i think our match on action shot of her walking in the house was very good and it is my favourite shot that we took during the preliminary task as we focused hard on making that shot look good and flow with smooth transitions between each shot.

What didn’t work so well was our tools and pre-shoot planning. We had some technical issues with the camera on the night with the quality of the camera being not so good, as in parts of the short clip the camera automatically auto focus’s making the image blur without our control over it.

We also had a broken tripod were we could not make the camera pan across steadily as the tripod has a part missing which wouldn’t let the camera move on top of the tripod, meaning we was limited on the shots we could experiment with and do so we had to change them slightly. Finally our planning should have been better as we should have checked all the equipment was fully functional before filming and also to improve the quality slightly we should have tested filming in a dark area before doing the actual filming as filming in the dark increased the poor quality.

For my main task I would do differently by having practice rehearsals of run through for example testing the equipment making sure it’s all fully functional. When looking at location and choosing our final location I will make sure i look at the lighting and test the camera out in the location to see if the light is ok, as we tried to brighten the preliminary video on final cut express but because the quality was so poor this only made it worse. By having more intense planning we would have avoided this situation and changed it to our advantage, this is why I will spend more time planning and organising our final shoot. Another reason why I will do this is because we started filming too late in the night and ended up film for hours into the night which affected our effiencey and concentration. I would need to make sure we look for obstacles that will affect our filming more as we shot across the road from my house and this road was a main road which was not only dangerous to my group but also it was very hard to catch a gap in cars where we could quickly film before another one came.

My use of mise-en-scene was well planned and thought out however there were some issues on set that we let slip. Firstly we wanted to set the location in a older looking house and night to create the typical horror scene following the codes and conventions, we chose that house as the street light outside of the house gave it a very spooky feeling glow. We chose to use a normal house on a normal street to symbolise that horror events can take place anywhere and make an audience feel unsafe in their own home. Before we began shooting I took all of the family photographs off of the wall to give the house disused and old feel following with codes and conventions of horrors.

As she then goes on through into the room with the table all the background furniture has white sheets over them to keep with the disused feel, it also makes the house feel old and adds that spooky atmosphere. However we did have slip ups with props as the knife is moved without anybody in the scene moving it as firstly its pointing to the male then when it cuts to the female during the shot reverse shot the knife has moved the other way around before he has even threatened her with it. We chose to have the male with a knife as it created a very threatening tense atmosphere for the audience as they feel worried for the actress as they do not know where he is going to attack her with it. The cross wrapped around the knife represents him as being possessed and psychotic as psychological horrors normally have some reference to religion.

Sound was important as we wanted to create a tense build up in atmosphere which I feel worked well as the sound was quite unnerving however some of the sounds were to unrealistic and the volume was too high. For example the sound of the door creaking was very unrealistic and was too loud which increased its unrealism. The owl also was very unrealistic as there was no background noise only the owl. We chose that knife as the sound it created was very realistic so we could use it as diegetic sound.

Editing was fairly simple as it was only a clip of the film, the hardest part was learning how to use Final Cut Express the transitions are short and simple cross fades. We used a fade in to begin the clip and a fade out to end it to signal that it is only part of film and needs to be continued. We tried to lighten the scenes outside using the program final cut but this only seemed to make it worse as the quality wasn’t good enough to make it clearer.

Camera work we had simple instructions to feature a Shot Reverse shot, Match on action shot and to use the 180 degree rule. I feel we used these shots very well with the narrative as a 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot fit in well with the conversation however we were not centred correctly and Kelsey is slightly off centre. The match on action shot was smooth and effective to show the whole hallway and her whole entry to the property however I feel that the long shot of the house could have been a pan shot which would look better but die to the broken tripod this wasn’t possible.