Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Primarily when we began filming our preliminary task I was very excited at the thought of using the camera and it's equipment such as the dolly to menuver it, believing that it would produce good quality shots every time with ease. Yet throughout my preliminary task I realised that more difficulties arise than what you would expect, the dolly became fragile and brought great difficulty to filming in actual fact. For example this shot of Chloe's feet as she walks towards the camera is incredibly jolty and shakey due to a dolly wheel being slightly faulty. When it came to experimenting with the camera and different creative angles we tended to stick to the more simplistic camera angles that we had more experience and felt safer with ie. mid shots. This developed as we began thinking about how to create our thriller, by creating our preliminary task we became aware that on certain surfaces dollys can be almost impossible to use correctly - creating a smooth and effective shot. Therefore when choosing locations often they were places that we had visited and trusted, believing that the passers-by would be minimalistic and the paths would be smooth.


The preliminary task lead to much more confidence with directing the camera than I had primarily, especially since we had chosen to do a classic Film Noir film, therefore unusual angles such as birds eye and tilt shots are used throughout. With our preliminary we did not have to deal with certain shooting issues that we did with our Thriller. A majority of this was to do with the different locations, since with our preliminary everything was shot indoors at school when most students were occupied in lessons. Whereas when filming our thriller we had to consider the weather conditions since it was partially located outside, in other words rain or extreme weather would have an impact on the shot/ may damage the camera or costume. However we found that in the alleyway that the forceful wind added an aspect of building tension and pathetic fallacy - it's appropriately dramatic, as if a moment before a storm therefore foreshadowing that something negative is about to occur. One of our key parts of location was the City Hall steps - I was certain from the primary stages of planning that the huge staircase and beautifully old-fashinoned, grand wooden doors would set the scene for our film. On the other hand with our preliminary task locations were barely thought of, we selected a clear and empty school corridor and decided to set the thriller in that space. This was convenient at the time yet did not possess many connotations, create stylistic shots or add any layers to the task.

Yet I learnt to deliberately select locations which would add layers of meaning - such as the dressing room scene, the touch of the candles, cream walls, vintage newspaper added to the vintage feel of the opening.
From our Preliminary task to the planning and creating our thriller, I gained particular ideas on what I would like to explore with the creation of the thriller. Firstly I became aware that the sub-genre of thriller that I wished the thriller to fall under was Film Noir, since I found it so stylistic and glamorous with many creative possibilities. Such as unique costume, unusual camera angles, stylistic editing and minimalistic title sequences. It was also a genre I knew little about, therefore had the opportunity to explore and learn within the genre. The preliminary also helped develop possible character types for the thriller since with our preliminary task we based it in the modern day, with modern characters with lots of speech. The use of modern characters meant that we hardly introduced character when acting as we merely acted as ourselves, which meant that often we found it amusing and difficult to focus. Therefore we chose to involve classic characters that would almost certainly ensure pure focus and be so unusual that we were constantly Film Noir inspired. We found that during our preliminary task not having any objectives for the scene meant that the piece had little point and often we found ourselves lost. Whereas after our research within the openings of other thrillers within various films, we found that often either the character, location or perhaps some aspects of narrative/themes. Therefore when thinking and planning our thriller opening, I knew that I had to think of different aims and for the first half of our thriller/ dominant part I wanted to fully introduce the character of Scarlett.  Hence the vast shots of the character preparing herself since every prop we used had a connotation of her personality. Firstly the rouge red lipstick connotes her passionate yet dangerous side (since red connotes blood etc.), followed by the glamorous diamante earrings - slowly placed in suggesting that the character of Scarlett is careful and does possess classic feminine qualities that a woman in this era would possess. Then the diamonte earrings are a clear reference to her weatlth etc. We built her personality and character in order for the audience to identify with her, so that when she was in danger they would feel a sympathy for her therefore resulting in the tension and build up being effective. Whereas in our preliminary task there was no introduction of characters, we went straight into dialogue/plot.
Not only this, between creating our preliminary task and our thriller opening, we learnt of the importance of music. Non-diagetic sound was completely unthought of in our first task, no music or sound effects were used to engage the audience in anyway. In terms of diagetic sound we were novices also, when it came to editing our preliminary we had issues with the diagetic sound of a photo-copier in the background, different volumes of characters and clarity of speech. None of which we predicted. Therefore in terms of our planning for our thriller, I had full awareness of different sound aspects that we had to pay attention to/ be aware of. For example when filming outside the City Hall I knew that we may have difficulty with various diagetic sounds of vehicles, yet the thriller was set in the 1930's therefore there would not be loud and modern car engine noises/horns blaring. I found that my preference is diagetic sound as it sounds more realistic, therefore when desiring a jewelry box tune for the very beginning, we recorded the sound of a real jewelry box for on average two minutes then when it came to editing looped it, continuing to remove any hitches or blips in the sound. This created the impression that the piece is realistic and I believe engages the audience as if a non-diagetic sound sounds reasonably unrealistic the audience can be removed from their engaged state - simply being reminded that they are watching a film. When a thriller needs to build tension and engage in order to be effective I knew that this would be a negative thing. Yet due to safety aspects we could not use a real gunshot, therefore I searched for the most realistic sound effect of an old-fashioned gun (in order to fit with the time era) and it seems to work well. I've learnt that sound is so important when it comes to truly bringing the audience into your world, especially when that world is the dramatic, glamorous, unusal world of Film Noir.