Preliminary Task

Brief

For our preliminary task the directions were to create a 1 minute video. We had to make sure we included:

-A variety of camera angles and shots including 180* rule and shot reverse shot.

-Somebody entering a room using a door, this could use close up of handle...

-Two people having a conversation using shot reverse shot.

Planning

Idea's.

- Our group got together and we began planning our preliminary. Because we are free to do whatever we want, we found it difficult to start thinking of a main idea, we started with locations and thought it would be appropriate to do it in a church. We began thinking of possible story lines for the opening and several different ideas were put across, we finally came up with a simple storyline that only required two actors.

Location/Setting.

We went with the Church idea, this meant we could also use the graveyard next to it, but this meant we had to ask permission from our local church, St James' in Weybridge. Together our group went along to talk to the priest, he agreed to let us use the church and we organised a suitable time and date. We wanted to do it early evening so the setting would be dark so we decided  4:30 was a perfect time, however he was only going to  allow us to have the church for an hour and he was leaving us responsible of the keys!

We chose to use the church because it had everything we needed, special lighting and a big enough area to film, it had doors and windows. It was also a local option that we all knew well.

Storyline.

The time limit for the video is 1 minute, this means we have to keep the story line simple, and obviously short. After discussing 3 possible ideas, we finalised these ideas and asked people in the class what they thought was best. Once we had our idea finally set we made a story board to help us when we filmed. Along with the story board we made a brief plan of shots and how effective these would be. The story we came up with was about a girl who lived/spent time in the church, she is slightly haunted. Then another girl enters the church and discovers the strange girl and they begin to have a conversation, this strange girl then gets up and walks towards the stained glass window and then it ends. This storyline gave us the opportunity to use a range of different camera angles and shots, however we did not use a stand. 

Filming and Acting.

We had the option to use our friends as actors but to avoid confusion we decided to do the whole thing within the group meaning we were all going to have to contribute with filming and acting.

Target Audience

For our preliminary the target audience would probably be teenagers and above the age of 12 but under the age of 30. This age group is easy for us to aim for because being old teens ourselves what we find interesting would be what others of similar ages find interesting. We will also aim it at both male and female. i did some research on this website http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ and for a 12 or 12A cetificate the classification for the horror theming of films states "Moderate physical and psychological threat may be permitted, provided disturbing sequences are not frequent or sustained." This told me that our target audience was well set and our video would classify for a 12 and above.

Mise-en-Scene

Costume-None of us concentrated on costume for the preliminary, however we will when it comes to the real task.

Lighting-In the church there was a light control box in a small room on the side, we could have had it bright light or dim, we chose dim... we also could select what parts of the church would be lit up. This was extremely helpful and created a really good atmosphere.

Acting-The acting was not important for the preliminary, but we did do our best. The story and characters seemed to fit in well enough to make a good video.

Make-up-Again, we didn't use make up because it wasn't important.

Props-We didn't have any props, only the church keys that are featured in some scenes.

Setting-The St.James Church in Weybridge.

Filming

As a group Amelia, Meg, Jo and I took it in turns to film parts of our preliminary task. I was the main 'character' of the video so I had to film the clips that did not have me in it. Meg and Jo took it in turns to film the parts with both me and Amelia in it, and Amelia filmed parts that she was not in. We decided not to have actors from outside the group to avoid confusion and as a group we wanted to create the whole thing just involving ourselves.

Editing

After filming clip by clip, we had to put the clips we had taken together, remove the ones that went wrong and adjust the clips that we needed to use. By editing our piece, it add's skill to our work, editing is also important because you can add or take away things such as the audio (sound) to make the video better and more effective to the audience.

We use iMovie on the apple mac's at school, this program allows flexible editing, but it takes some getting used to. Here are some screen shots from our editing of the final piece using this program.

This is just an over view of the iMovie program, here it shows all of the clips we took: at the bottom of the screen, the clips we are using to create the preliminary task at the top left and then the main video view on the top right. Having the main video view helps us to edit because you can see the clip properly and experiment with what effects work and
what doesn't.

The green lines below the clips represent the sound that has been added to the clips. There are many different sound effects you can add that are provided in iMovie, adding sound  is a good way of improving a video, it will often add more tension, or depending on what sound effects you use it will intensify whatever atmosphere is being created.

The red line in the bottom right corner is the indicator of time, wherever the red line is, the clip it is moving over is what is coming up on the screen. This helps us too edit because we can add the effects we want more accurately than of we didn't have an indication of time.

The yellow line that surrounds the clip appears when you click and drag, you can make it bigger and smaller and it allows you to delete parts of a clip, on the video view it will show you in large what you are about to delete and when you drag either the beginning or ending of the yellow line, it will follow your moves on the larger view.

When you right click on the clips it brings up a list of options, most significantly it will allot you to choose play options, cut, copy and deleting options, trim, split and detachment of audio. We detached audio from most clips and trimmed many of them.

Transition options are useful and used for flowing to the next scene. For a lot of the clips we did not use any transitions, I feel this was a mistake because it doesn't add any fluidity throughout, however we did use it on some, we used blur between certain clips.

This menu appears when you click on the settings button at the corner of every clip. The first thing you can do is edit the clip itself using durations and changing speeds, there are various options of speed going from extremely slow to slightly slow and extremely fast to not so fast, obviously the faster you make the clip the more time it will cut off the duration. Video effects are also an option, we used effect on a lot of our clips, including *****.

In the video section you can change the appearance of the video, this includes the exposure, brightness, contrast and saturation. By changing the appearance of the video it can make it more effective and it can also work with sound effects to create a more dramatic atmosphere. The white point will also alter the appearance, but changing the appearance isn't always necessary if you are happy with the way the clips are to begin with.

Audio is a very important part of editing. This section allows you to organise the sound in terms of volume and how it fades in and out of the clip. By making the volume zero, you are basically detaching audio. Ducking allows you to change the contrast between the audio in the clip already with the sounds you have added.

Final Video

Evaluation

In some ways I am proud of our creation. I enjoy the way we have used audio and I think we grasped the concept well. We created everything that the brief stated and completed the task on time. I am happy with the camera angles and editing that we did and the way it slows down at parts and makes the sound echo. The lighting in our preliminary was really well done, we used the controls in a small room to set the lights to certain brightness and place in the church, and this built a really good atmosphere as you can see. We chose to do it at about 5pm, this meant it was dark and misty and we still had time to film before it got too late, I was pleased with this outcome. However, there are many things I personally would change… we didn’t use a camera stand because we mistakenly forgot to bring it with us, this reflected badly in our piece because the quality of filming was ruined. I would also try and plan more towards it because the story in my eyes doesn’t make much sense and isn’t a clear introduction to something, it is quite random. We tried but couldn’t cut the shots down to make the piece 1 minute long, this was due to the lack of planning about the scenes, once we started filming we changed the way we would have done things. Next time I would prefer to do more filming than acting, but it depends on how we work things out. The church as a location was a good idea and we were lucky to have permission to use it, however it is quite typical and predictable, and more gothic/horror than thriller. Next time we will consider costumes in detail, it will help towards the final task. Props were not included too well so next time we will use more and make them significant to the storyline. All of the things I do not like come together as a huge learning curve and should help my group and I to create a much better, well planned and detailed final piece.