Evaluation Question 7
- 1. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
- 2. Preliminary We wanted our Preliminary task to be of a thriller genre. Our male protagonist, Elliott, was to be an inspector, researching a death, but as his identity is unknown until the end, the audience think he is the killer. We didn’t do too much planning for our preliminary, we mainly bullet pointed each step, and wrote down our storyline. This helped our OTS, as we knew we shouldn’t change our storyline, as it helps our understanding and doesn’t waste time. The main problem we had was our location, we filmed in school in a hall way, to avoid people using the hallway we had to film during lessons. Cal was the editor for our continuity task as well as our OTS, but he hadn’t done Media at GCSE level and so struggled using iMovie. Elliott and I helped him, but Cal edited it and it worked great, and so in our OTS we designated him the editor. Our preliminary task taught me that the location is crucial, we needed a place with no interruptions that wasn’t in school, and so chose Cal’s home. Also, the continuity must flow, if not it will look unprofessional. Finally, it taught me that feedback is needed, as we got no feedback on this film. When Elliott’s face is finally shown, he is in the shadow, representing him as mysterious, secretive and a could be murderer.
- 3. Timeline - Storyboards We got our ideas through watching similar films, not those just of the Film Noir genre. In the beginning, we based our film on Casino Royale. To begin planning, we created storyboards. To create our storyboard we used sticky labels, which was a good idea as we could easily re-arrange and change our ideas without creating a whole new one. We stuck with our overall storyline, there were some minor things altered, but like our preliminary we thought it was a good idea to just stick with our original ideas to save time and keep everyone focussed. At first we planned for Elliott to be the male protagonist and to be filmed smoking a cigarette. We changed the anti-hero to Cal, because he fitted the role better with his looks. We had to scrap the idea of smoking, as Cal doesn’t smoke, but changed his actions to those that were also conventional of Film Noir. I also wrote the storyboard pictures down, so we could read what we had to do if the pictures confused us.
- 4. Animatic We then created an Animatic from our storyboard. An animatic is a photographed storyboard. We shot our animatic within school, which was problematic due to the props and background. This advised us on where to shoot our OTS, which we decided would be Cal’s house, as it is easy accessible. Also, as we were in school we wore our normal clothes, but as the idea of the animatic was to practise our camera angles, and work on our timing, this didn’t matter. Our feedback was to change location and increase the amount of camera angles as they weren’t so diverse. Our feedback was given to us by our teacher. We had to use building blocks to make up for the lack of props within school.
- 5. First Recording My evaluation to our first recording is in a link to my blog. I used WiseMapping to create a mindmap of the strengths and weaknesses of the video. We asked our teacher how we could improve the aesthetics of the blood, she said we should use jam, and so in the final OTS the blood looks more realistic. On my blog, I have made a post explaining how we made my bullet wound. I researched online how to create it with make up, and Cal used wax and make up to create it. Strengths Weaknesses Improvements… Editing Actress breathes while dead Add voice over Use of spotlights No bullet wound and male protagonists blood is unrealistic Add music Props Background mise-en- scene Add foleying noise Continuity No transitions Improve continuity Quick shots should be added Improve mise-en-scene No title screen Include bullet wound and better blood No underground casino scene Include title and underground casino scene
- 6. Second Recording and Final OTS We recorded our OTS twice, but as we had technical difficulties, we have a second recording and a final OTS, both including the same recorded material but the final OTS with the voice over. Our final OTS doesn’t include our foleying bullet sound or our background music, our teach tried to help our group, and others in our class with this problem by getting technicians into our lesson to help us. Sadly, they didn’t have long enough to solve our problem, and we couldn’t download our music as explained in a different question. His leaves our OTS unfinished, but to an audience who wouldn’t know this, hopefully our OTS will look finished to them. Things we did well Less continuity errors – making sure the money was in place was hard, we decided to film each segment with me in first, so the money wouldn’t change place. The “Underground Casino” scene has been added, which gives the audience background information – hook and enigma. Wound created and blood more realistic.
- 7. How to improve final OTS… • Some parts have bad continuity due to Cal editing parts from our first recording into this video. When getting our class feedback and showing them our OTS, we asked if they could see any continuity errors, they answered no, and so we chose not to re film, as it would take too much time and the continuity errors weren’t strong enough for us to change. • The beginning is a little pixelated, this is due to the low quality cameras, and we can’t help this. • Finally, our OTS isn’t finished as it doesn’t include background music or our bullet sound. We’ve tried to make it work, but the Macs in school will not let our group, and others in our class, upload some music/sound. Although we could improve on some things, our feedback results were amazing considering our unfinished OTS.