Preliminary Task and Evaluation

Evaluation:

In the preliminary task, we were asked to make a short film based on a conversation between two characters. After discussing ideas, the final product ended up being a conversation between a business woman in her office and a mysterious, unwanted messenger with shocking news. As a first time working together, we organised pretty well with the job roles, identified the genre, came up with a script, made storyboard and got actors. The longest process was the editing. Looking back on the product, I notice a few mistakes, things that went better than expected and things I would have done differently.

- What Went Well
The enigma code was a significant theme to the preliminary task, as it built a lot of tension throughout, kept the audience's interest and ended on a 'cliff hanger'. This helped the product really stand out as a thriller as it kept all the genre conventions, such as low lighting, dark colours, intense background music and an abrupt beginning. The sound in the video was something we were initially worried about, as the video was shot on DSLRs and no external mics, but it turned out better than expected. In post-production, music and sound effects were added to help intensify the mood and give the video a more professional appeal. All the transitions in this were straight cuts, serving their purpose of intensifying the mood and helped to accent on the variety of shots used.

- What did you learn?
This was an interesting experience, as it was our first time working on a thriller piece. We learned the genre codes and conventions for thriller, the difficulty in scheduling and recasting, the problems you have to keep in mind when organising locations (such as availability and lighting), and the settings you need to film on when shooting on DSLRs. However, the most important thing we learned about filming was to always bring chargers for the camera in case we need to film for longer than intended.

- What would you do differently next time?
In future, we would keep in mind the lighting required to film at certain locations, the importance of filming on cameras on the same setting and would remember to white balance before filming. Another thing we need to keep an eye on is the focus - as seen in our product, the focus shifted a few times while the characters were talking, confusing the audience on the focus of the scene. We would also add titles in the beginning to introduce the company and the name of the short film, and consider different ways of recording audio (such as external mics) to intensify the characters' speech even more. The most important thing to keep in mind, however, would be the steadiness of the camera in longer shots, as there was shaking and shifting of the camera that distracts the audience from the scene.

- Were there any problems?
The biggest problem during filming was the fact the e changed cameras and the settings we shot on. This didn't give us enough flexibility during post-production and made the footage look grainy and unprofessional. When we tried to fix it, it brought the quality down and any colour correction made it look unrealistic and unprofessional. Another problem we faced during filming was the availability of the actors and locations, which made us reschedule a couple of times and wasted a lot of time. Also, the camera we initially filmed on ran out of battery while filming, causing us discomfort.

- How did you overcome them?
Somehow, we managed to make the footage look slightly better with some colour correction and making the low quality shots shorter. In order to overcome the availability problem, we had to change the location we were shooting at and re-shoot everything, as well as replacing one of the actors with someone with more flexible timetable that matched ours and the times the location was available at.