What have I learned from my preliminary task to main task?

Since the preliminary task, I have learned a lot about how to make a successful video.

Mise-en-Scene

In terms of mise-en-scene, I put a lot more research and work into finding effective props, costume and the set up for the thriller while the preliminary task was much more simplistic.

For our thriller, we wanted to have a strong impact on the audience and make them really believe the characters so I looked into costume. I wanted the police to wear the uniform that suited their police rank in order to show a wide variety of different police positions. For the action police, we used two fluorescent police jackets and one black police jacket, which not only gave the video vibrant colours but also carried the theme of danger as yellow with black represent danger. The sweaters on the police sergeants in the car made them look particularly authentic so they were instantly recognizable to the audience and created an impact. Our criminals wore simplistic and naturalistic clothing, but Ted was instructed to wear a black suit to give him an edge and make create a sense of hierarchy within the gang. The bolder choices we made for costume for our thriller enabled us to create much more exciting characters than the mundane clothing in the preliminary task.

We filmed in different locations (e.g. containers, outside a car, around green areas), we used authentic costumes for the police (paying attention to even the type of costume for each type of police officer) and we spent a long time setting the container up with the table and the chemistry set to make it look as criminal as possible with the flour and curry powder for drugs. The preliminary task, in contrast, was not particularly exciting because it was in a classroom which we didn't alter in any way. The lighting was simply the naturalistic light of the room, which resembled home videos and because of the set being particularly dull, this looked rather more amateurish. The lighting we used in the thriller wasn't particularly stylised but was much more interesting because of the contrast between light and dark throughout the video. The majority of the scenes outside with the police were in broad daylight which presented them as more innocent whereas most of the shots of the gang were quite dark. The only light in the container was the lamp over the table Ollie is found working at, which gives the gang members much more of a sense of secrecy and of criminality. This contrast in lighting was particularly useful for the shots of the container doors opening from the inside because they created a certain impact.

A thriller scene inside (dark)

A thriller scene outside

Prelim

For our preliminary task, the only prop we used was a memory stick. Seeing as our setting was just the classroom as we found it, we based a lot of the story in it. Therefore, as there happened to be a computer in the room, we used it to our convenience and decided to add a memory stick to the plot. The memory stick did help to create a sense of mystery, but the props we used in the thriller were much more sophisticated. As we wanted to make the police, exciting and therefore realistic, we wanted to see as many typical police gadgets in the thriller. We managed to find all the police gear, (e.g walkie talkies, guns, police siren, bulletproof vests) We also added elements such as the coffee flask for one of the sergeants in the car and a newspaper for the other as we wanted to really complete the stereotype of police relaxing in cars and give the scene a little bit of colour, which we didn't think about for our preliminary task. For the criminals, we got Theo to carry in a box of guns to add to the sense of danger of the gang. This helped to characterise them further and also to create tension in the police, while in the preliminary task, we did not attempt to help characterisation through props and so the characters were not as recognisable or interesting.

Direction 

When directing our prelim, we were very messy as we did not have much of an idea about how we wanted to our thriller to be or even what happened. I found directing difficult because there was no real sense of who had what job in the group so there was often confusion as to when to cut a short. For instance, when I had the role of director, some other people would say 'cut' before me so I wouldn't get as much of the shot as I wanted. I was assigned definite director of the thriller which made it much easier to get the shots I wanted because I would leave a shot running longer than necessarily required which sometimes was useful as it gave us more options when editing later on. Generally, our group worked much more as a team for the thriller because we had better organisation and preparation for the shooting. As the process functioned well, we were able to experiment a lot more with different shots and different ways of doing things and found that this was much easier than the chaos of shooting the preliminary task.

Camera/Editing

In the prelim, we mainly used shot reverse shot for the dialogue. Besides, that nothing much happened in terms of editing apart from a close up of the foot kicking the door and a close-up of the memory stick being inserted into the computer. Those two close-ups helped to give some more vibrance to the video by starting it with a high energy (from the kick of the door) and by ending it with suspense (created by the close-up of the insertion of the memory stick). Apart from those, the shot-reverse did not create much tension or impact. 

Close up of door kicking in the prelim

Low Angle shot of Simon

In our thriller, we never used shot-reverse shot because there was no real dialogue apart from small talk between the sergeants in the car. For that scene, we wanted their conversation to all be in one shot so as not to draw too much attention to it but also to have that scene move at a slow pace so as to create a bigger contrast with the fast cuts later and heighten the suspense when the audience think the police are about to arrests the criminals. Generally, we used many more features on Final Cut Pro to make our scenes cut together much more cleanly and we were able to convey a narrative throughout without using any dialogue.

Sound

We did not use any sound effects or music in our prelim so the only sound was the dialogue. We did not catch the sound particularly well in the prelim so the volume between the two characters was unbalanced which gave the video a very amateurish feel. In our thriller, we used sound more creatively rather than just dialogue. We had ominous sounds rather than music during the credits in order to set the mood for the thriller. During the cross-cutting, we had no speech or music because we wanted to give a realistic feel but also create tension from the silence. The words we used in our thriller were superficial and meaningless to the plot because we wanted to communicate the feeling through the editing rather than conventionally through the dialogue as we did in the prelim.