Gary Holder

Evaluation

In terms of following the brief for the preliminary task I think our product was very succesful.The three requirements of the brief were met. However i believe that in terms of the story we could have worked harder, a clear cut conclusion would have provided closure and allowed for the release of tension which is a generic convention of thrillers. I think that our piece had a number of strengths, the editing was very smooth and made the whole thing flow together well, I also chose to lower the volume of the non-diegetic musical soundtrack during the dialogue which meant it was clearly audible. The  range of shots was also good and kept the scene interesting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My contributions to the group included giving ideas whilst story boarding , conducting research (into generic conventions of thrillers), arranging the location, filming and deciding on shot angles and framing etc. and editing parts of the piece.

One problem we came across was that in post production we discovered that a bag had been left in shot when the female character enters the room. to solve this i took out a camera and took a still image of the same shot then cropping it down and placing it over the shot, i then adjusted the brightness of the still image and the original shot to make it blend in. At first we were unsure as to whether the picture was noticeable but when we showed the piece to other people no one noticed it and so we decided to leave it in. It is shown below on the far right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above are two other shots we believed to be effective, the first because it was cut very smoothly from a medium shot , to a close up shot and then back to a medium shot and the second because of the effects we overlayed. To edit this second picture we used the special effects in adobe premier, with the help of our teacher we put on a noise effect to make the shot more grainy and also a black and white effect so that combined with the text they made the shot look realistically like a CCTV shot.

I was also in charge of getting the soundtrack for the piece. I found a website with free uncopyrighted music and looked through all of the songs on there, we finally settled for this one as it fitted the genre well as was reflected in our audience feedback.

Some other feedback we got was that the location did not fit the genre as well as it could have.Another group set their piece in a school which was effective as they didn't have to worry about the mise-en-scene, this made me think that if we are restricted to a certain location we should try to fit the story around that location rather than try to make the location fit the story. This is something I should keep in mind when I start work on my final piece. We also heard feedback for other groups saying that it is better to film in high key lighting and then lower the brightness in post production as the shots looked better when done this way. Many groups also had a problem with objects in the background and so I have learned to pay attention to detail when filming, some of our shots were unusable as they were out of focus so i need to make sure i adjust the focus when shooting to make sure that the shots look good. I think our choice of actors in this task could have been better so i think for the final piece I will be sure to pick someone with acting experience.