Research into thrillers

Actual Coursework Task

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Tast - Editing

Following on from filming our preliminary task, we had to edit it in the edit suite using

adobe premier. My group split into two and India and I edited together to try and make a short sequence using the storyboard we had been given and the shots we had taken.

Whilst editing, I found that it was difficult to edit some shots as they weren't perfect according to the storyboard. To prevent this from being a problem, we should have taken more back up shots so that we had more to work with during editing. For example, during a close up shot of Lila, we realised later that she was staring in the opposite direction to how she had been before. This resulted in us not being able to use the shot as it did not look naturalistic or professional. This is an example of where a changed back up would have been idealistic.

The editing was a great learning task as it taught me the importance of precision and patience. To produce a fluid, effective looking sequence, one had to be patient regarding how long it might take to go through footage and cut which linked to precision as it is terribly important to be as precise as possible to make it look as naturalistic as possible.

Sections that consisted of several different shots to show one motion was difficult to edit as sometimes it looked uncomfortable to watch. The first edit, there was a shot of Lila turning around that consisted of a close up, then medium close up, then establishing shot. We got feedback that said that it did not look professional or effective as the editing made the shots look disjointed. Taking this feedback, we re-edited the shots by cutting a few and then found it to be a lot nicer to watch and less uncomfortable, which our peers agreed with.

Sound was another thing that, whilst filming, had to be thought of massively. At the beginning of the scene, the door opens and makes a very irritating screeching sound and if the dialogue were to start before the door closed you would not be able to hear it. During filming, luckily we took enough shots trying out different things for this to not be an issue, which was lucky and therefore showing the importance of filming things several times.

Preliminary Task - Storyboard