We looked at two other groups preliminary task's and evaluated them using mise-en-scene, editing, sounds and camera angles.
Akshay, Emma, Catherine & Georgia:
the use of the mid and long shot suggest the struggle the character is feeling, the diegetic sound of the creaking of the old building signifies its age and uncomfortable nature. The diegetic earie music suggests anticipation and creating suspense. The use of the jump cuts leaves the audience feeling confused and uses the conventions of horror, this is for showed through the mixture of non-diegetic and diegetic sounds. the ark ward positioning the character is placed in is taken from Hitchcock and the canted angle implies the disorientation - the use creates a witness - the audience feel as if we know something we shouldn't. the typical covention of horror 'the light flickering' is a sign to scare the audience. the connotation of red implies evil/danger approaching. The eyes of the wall - imply that someone is watching - scary.
the use of the mid and long shot suggest the struggle the character is feeling, the diegetic sound of the creaking of the old building signifies its age and uncomfortable nature. The diegetic earie music suggests anticipation and creating suspense. The use of the jump cuts leaves the audience feeling confused and uses the conventions of horror, this is for showed through the mixture of non-diegetic and diegetic sounds. the ark ward positioning the character is placed in is taken from Hitchcock and the canted angle implies the disorientation - the use creates a witness - the audience feel as if we know something we shouldn't. the typical covention of horror 'the light flickering' is a sign to scare the audience. the connotation of red implies evil/danger approaching. The eyes of the wall - imply that someone is watching - scary.
Daryl, Hannah, Luke & Abbie:
the diegetic sounds of the footstep implies someone/something is coming closer, the diegetic sound of the door creaking symbolises the old building - history behind? this mirrors the ending (sollum beat). the barrier is placed to make the audience feel as if they and the charcter are isolated from the situation and foreshows the character is isolated/will not leave the room. the use of the point of view shot reveals the villian. the door is closed this make the audience feel as if they are being locked out. The use of the shaking of the camera could imply the nervous character - disorienation - something not right. The use of the over the shoulder shot implies the weakness the character is compared to the dominent villian. the slow motion implies somethings not quite right - we sympahise with the character. the low angle shot of abbie (the villian) show the control of the character. the extreme close-up shot revealing the bright blue eyes could symbolically represent the innocence.
What worked well?
· The way we positioned the camera in the opening shot worked well, the sunlight from the establishing shot from above the buildings worked well with the idea of the contrast between the establishing shot panning into a close-up shot of the entrance into the school. The idea we came up with was with the calm atmosphere contrasting with the editing techniques we are going to use. We are going to use sharp editing movements to contrast.
· The scenes we decided to use worked well as they were within distance of each other for example, the entrance we zoomed into, lead to the corridor we was going to use, and the boys toilets and classroom, were right next to each other, with the corridor in-between.
· The more we practised with the camera and the camera angles we were going to use. The more we practised the better we got, for example we was doing a point of view shot and looking across and then up to reveal the person. This took some practise but when we worked efficiently it worked really well.
· We managed to finish the whole task in one hour, which included all the different perspefic shots because of all the different techniques we wanted to us this meant the more time consuming it was.
What didn’t work well?
· We didn’t block off the specific areas we wanted to work within, so because we filmed it in a working school, students and teachers constantly interrupted and we had to start the filming over and over again.
· Our camera eventually ran out of battery and it was hard to reset the scene to how it was because in-between the camera being charged, students had been in the room, and messed it up. We had to look at the footage and reset it from that, this was not the ideal way. But we didn’t think to check the camera and see how much battery there was. Because this has happened in the preliminary task, we will make sure the same mistakes will not be remade when making our horror film.
· We did not use specific clothing for what we wanted, and therefore we had to make do with what we had. For example one of our actors was wearing a ring, this was not used to represent something, but in our horror, we could us such a prop to represent something.
the diegetic sounds of the footstep implies someone/something is coming closer, the diegetic sound of the door creaking symbolises the old building - history behind? this mirrors the ending (sollum beat). the barrier is placed to make the audience feel as if they and the charcter are isolated from the situation and foreshows the character is isolated/will not leave the room. the use of the point of view shot reveals the villian. the door is closed this make the audience feel as if they are being locked out. The use of the shaking of the camera could imply the nervous character - disorienation - something not right. The use of the over the shoulder shot implies the weakness the character is compared to the dominent villian. the slow motion implies somethings not quite right - we sympahise with the character. the low angle shot of abbie (the villian) show the control of the character. the extreme close-up shot revealing the bright blue eyes could symbolically represent the innocence.
We also looked in what worked well and what didnt work well with our preliminary task-
What worked well?
· The way we positioned the camera in the opening shot worked well, the sunlight from the establishing shot from above the buildings worked well with the idea of the contrast between the establishing shot panning into a close-up shot of the entrance into the school. The idea we came up with was with the calm atmosphere contrasting with the editing techniques we are going to use. We are going to use sharp editing movements to contrast.
· The scenes we decided to use worked well as they were within distance of each other for example, the entrance we zoomed into, lead to the corridor we was going to use, and the boys toilets and classroom, were right next to each other, with the corridor in-between.
· The more we practised with the camera and the camera angles we were going to use. The more we practised the better we got, for example we was doing a point of view shot and looking across and then up to reveal the person. This took some practise but when we worked efficiently it worked really well.
· We managed to finish the whole task in one hour, which included all the different perspefic shots because of all the different techniques we wanted to us this meant the more time consuming it was.
What didn’t work well?
· We didn’t block off the specific areas we wanted to work within, so because we filmed it in a working school, students and teachers constantly interrupted and we had to start the filming over and over again.
· Our camera eventually ran out of battery and it was hard to reset the scene to how it was because in-between the camera being charged, students had been in the room, and messed it up. We had to look at the footage and reset it from that, this was not the ideal way. But we didn’t think to check the camera and see how much battery there was. Because this has happened in the preliminary task, we will make sure the same mistakes will not be remade when making our horror film.
· We did not use specific clothing for what we wanted, and therefore we had to make do with what we had. For example one of our actors was wearing a ring, this was not used to represent something, but in our horror, we could us such a prop to represent something.
Evaluation of preliminary task.
what was my role?
- within my group we all did abit of everything as this was the first time we had experimented with recording equipment, we shortly realised that we all had different talents with Ben & Ellie taking the lead with the directing while Myself and George was featured in the preliminary task. We all had our chance to do some directing and putting our own input into what we personally thought would look better and how we could improve it. when it came to editing; we all had a go, but Myself and Ellie took the lead of editing as we all had stronger parts. when it came to deciding on what cheesy music we was to put into the prelim i suggested the latest hit 'what makes you beautiful' but one direction - this was a very popular song and was specifically aimed at our age group. we thought that George could take on the role of one of the boys from the group and show the confidence they have. this would provide us with an entertaining comical piece of media. when it came to the location we all decided that the best place would be the old part of the school, where there was the boys toilets next to a classroom, which had a spaced hallway where it would enable us to film. when film we deciding to include some vital pieces which could let the audience think into deeper meaning including the boys sign and the posting saying 'living the dream'.
what worked well?
- i feel everything in our preliminary task worked well, there were many strenghs including we all agreed that the location was very good - it enabled us not to travel far as it was closely together. the timing where we filmed the prelim was perfect. it was a cold bitter morning but the sun was shining and this enabled us to come up with the establishing shot. we got out first scene by fluke when we decided we wanted to capture the majority of the shot types and angles. we walked outside and the sun captured our attention. the reason why Ben is walking out of the door is because when deciding where we wanted to start our pan two girls walked out, we thought this looked effective and made the shot more exciting then just panning round to a empty door. the use of the jump cut we placed from the establishing shot to the close-up shot in the boys toilet created the idea of disorientation and automatically confuses but draws the audience in. when it came to editing the piece. the music fit correctly and mirrored what George was doing. when we was filming we managed to keep the toilets, the hallway and the classroom relatively clear, this enabled us to carry on without any distractions.
what didn't work well?
- there was only a couple of weakness and that was when we got out flip cam from the library the battery was only half full, we didn't think anything of this was we thought we only had to do a couple of scenes, it will be fine. when we started to film the prelim we decided against many scenes and decided to re film them, this caused us to loose all the battery. we had no choice but to leave the room, when we came back the boys in the background had disappeared and the books had been moved, we tried our hardest to reposition the books but we knew that because the boys had moved, this would cause a continuentity problem, we knew this would be ok, as long as we declared we had made a mistake. we also edited our prelim on windows movie maker, we thought at first this is fine, this is better than on final cut on the macs, as we was not experienced within them. but we decided after hours of editing, and trying to make the film into a movie, that for our final task we would defiantly be using final cut.
what didn't work well?
- there was only a couple of weakness and that was when we got out flip cam from the library the battery was only half full, we didn't think anything of this was we thought we only had to do a couple of scenes, it will be fine. when we started to film the prelim we decided against many scenes and decided to re film them, this caused us to loose all the battery. we had no choice but to leave the room, when we came back the boys in the background had disappeared and the books had been moved, we tried our hardest to reposition the books but we knew that because the boys had moved, this would cause a continuentity problem, we knew this would be ok, as long as we declared we had made a mistake. we also edited our prelim on windows movie maker, we thought at first this is fine, this is better than on final cut on the macs, as we was not experienced within them. but we decided after hours of editing, and trying to make the film into a movie, that for our final task we would defiantly be using final cut.