Preliminary Task - The Secret in the Woods

In my preliminary task I worked with a group, which consisted of Tia, Rhia and myself I feel we worked well as a group and we got all our work done to a high standard and within the time scale we was given; I therefore plan to work in this group for my 2 min opening film clip.  During this task we completed planning, then the filming and we then edited the clips together to get our 15-second film together. In this blog post I will be discussing the task as a whole talking about the planning/filming& editing and the positives &negatives which we experienced during the task its self.

The first thing, which we experienced, was the planning stage in this stage we started off by thinking of basic ideas and what our first ideas were we then narrowed our ideas down to one main idea which we was going to film; we then made a storyboard of our ideas and put the different shots and angles in which we planned to use along with the type of music we want to add into the different shots. After we completed the mood board we then discussed the mise en scene of the clip we arranged what outfits we wanted the characters to wear and where about we wanted to films top be able to get the best out of the environment we had to film; we therefore decided to wear everyday clothing so that the film looked as realistic to be in a school environment we also had limited environment to film in therefore we needed the costume to look realistic to the environment the characters would be in. I feel we used our planning time very effectively which allowed us to be fully prepared for the filming this meant we was able to complete the filming quickly and get everything we wanted to get done in one sitting as we didn't have much time for everything it also meant that we didn't leave anything out.

After planning what we went off to film our preliminary task we had decided to film our clip started in the woods and ending in a classroom with two characters. We also knew we had to include the three different shots these were match on action, 180 and shot reverse shot so we was making sure that we included these while filming our different shots.  I took on the role of filming and then Tia and Rhia took on he role of acting. I found that the filming wasn't a hard job and I was able to include most of the different factors I needed to. During the filming I needed to stay aware of the different shots which needed to be added into the shot clip; I feel we added the three different shot into the short film well there are all very clear in the clip. The first shot we had to include was match on action this was used when Rhia was shown running through the door you can see her opening the door on one side and then on the other side where she’s already inside the door this shot is very clearly shown. The next shot which needed to used was shot reverse shot this shot was shown during the conversation which was had between Tia and Rhia’s characters the filming during this was not very clear and felt a bit jumpy as the shots are seen from different angles this is because we filmed the two sections of the conversations separately this means that the two parts of the conversation are shown with different angles; also during the second part of the conversation the top of Rhia’s head is shown to be cut off and this shows how we filmed it in two parts and doesn't seem continual. From these mistakes we made during the filming of shot reverse shot we have learnt that we should film each part of the conversation separately and then edit it together so that the conversation doesn't seem jumpy and flows better. The last angle we needed was the 180 degree angle this is shown during while Rhia is running out of the woods this shot is well set up and clearly shows how the shot is used to see a good transition from the different shots.

The last stage in making our preliminary task was the editing this is where we put everything together and added in the sound, titles and some transitions. To edit our film we inputted all of our filmed data into it iMovie this is what we editing everything together; I felt this programme worked well and allowed is to use all of our filmed data usefully. After we inputted all of the data it was we put together of the clips we filmed in the order in which we wanted to this allowed see what we needed to add in and change we decided that we needed to add a transition between the scene of Rhia’s characters running through the wood and into the school hallway this changed seemed to sudden and didn't seem to flow probably so we added in a fade in transition so that the two shots flowed together better. Once we had everything edited together we decided to add music into the background of the clip to add a sense of suspension so that it seemed liked a thriller the music we used was base music from a background of a horror we added the music only to the beginning of the clip where Rhia was running to her destination as this creates a sense of uneasiness on to the audience as they are unsure where she is going, why she is running and who she is going to meet these are the sort of questions in which the audience should be asking while watching a thriller so I feel that we completed the task to a high standard.

Overall I feel my preliminary task went well and although the clip was only short it showed the three different shots which needed to be seen during the clip so we therefore completed what we set out to achieve with this task.