This is my individual answer to question 7, Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
After producing the main task i knew there were several things that we would need to improve on for our main task, such as making sure everything was done and time and to work with reliable people, which i think i achieved with the main task. I wanted to make our main task more real for the viewer to watch and we had to improve on the mise-en-scene, the framing, camera work, the lighting and the sound.
The Mise-en-scene Preliminary Task:
Throughout the whole of our preliminary task i personally think that the mise-en-scene is very poor and really effects the accuracy of the piece and makes it less realistic and believable. For example this scene below, there is quite a lot of mess around the edges, as well as hangers on the wall which look slightly odd which could have been taken down for our filming. Also on some of the wide angle shots which get all three actors in shot there are several people walking past the door which is fairly distracting and could have been prevented.
As our mis-en-scene was not so great in our preliminary task we wanted to take extra care with our main task and we wanted it to be as realistic and believable as possible. I feel we did much better with the mise-en-scene, we made sure we didn't get anything else in shot that wasn't necessary, such as cables (as there were some lying around on the floor where we were filming), and anything that was in the background made sense with our piece, such as a noose. We also used different locations so that we could show different memories within the girls head
Here are some screenshots taken for our main task, we concentrated on making the background as blank as we could so that all attention would be on the girl and what shes was doing. In the first we have a fairly clear shot of her looking directly at us with the nooses ominously in the which adds to the horror concept of the piece, and within the 2nd picture you're now able to see these nooses a lot clearer, making the majority of our piece black and white means that scene likes these stand out incredibly well. There is such a large contrast between her with the nooses and the wall, its extremely eye catching.
Framing and Camera Work Preliminary Task
The framing in our preliminary task was another poor aspect of our piece. I think this was due to being fairly inexperienced with the camera we were using and that we wanted to get it done fairly quickly. I only noticed the framing mistakes when it came to me editing our piece, there were also several problems with the camera work, some of the scenes weren't as steady as i would have liked them to be. A lot of it was fairly shaky despite the fact we were using a tripod. The first picture is something which bugged me throughout the whole editing process as its extremely wonky and off center, the same for the fourth picture, the two actors aren't in the center of the shot. I tried to make sure these certain things didn't happen when filming our main task.
Framing and Camera Work Main Task
As the framing and camera work was such a big problem in our preliminary task i wanted to make sure that our main task was much better, So focused a lot the accuracy of our framing. There are certain parts in our main task which are fairly shaky however that was done deliberately not like in our preliminary task, it was done deliberately to add to the effect of our piece to make it more creepy and eery, as we wanted to make our piece as believable as we could, We also re-watched the footage straight after filming it to see whether or not there were any problems with the framing, so some points were filmed several times to ensure that it was perfect and we were all happy with it. We also tried out different positioning with our scenes to see which one looked better, for example there is a scene where she is to the left of the screen. We originally tried it with her in the center and decided that it looked better with her to the left.
The sound was a massive downfall in our preliminary task as for the speech we didn't use a microphone the sound wasn't as crisp and clear as it could have been and also by using the cameras microphone it picked up other background sounds which affected the piece, and it would've been a lot better with out it. We also didn't use any other music over the top due to not having enough time to find any that suited the piece, i feel the piece would have benefited massively if we had placed a soundtrack on top of it.
We don't have any dialogue within our piece as we wanted to focus mainly on the visuals of the piece. There was some background noise which we kept in such as birds, however we did have to cut out other background noises such as talking, especially on the glass smashing part, we wanted the sound of the glass smashing but at the very end there was some talking/laughing which we had to cut out. We did have a soundtrack over the top which took quite some time to find as we wanted it to match perfectly with our piece and we didn't want it to deter away from the visuals of our piece. we eventually found a piece of music that was perfect for our piece, it managed to fade in and out at the right places. We only edited the soundtrack in one way, we extended it slightly so that it faded out at the correct part of the sequence.
Lighting Preliminary Task
We used natural lighting for our preliminary task which was quite a hassle as in some of the shots the overhead lights were on without us realizing so the lighting differs between each shot. However we did notice that during our filming so we had to end up re filming certain parts that weren't lit enough as the ceiling light wasn't on.Â
For our main task we used decided not to rely on natural lighting so we used artificial lighting for almost all of our shots, however we wanted to get the lighting perfect, so that it wasn't too bright or too dark. As we wanted it to be dark, mysterious and eery but not so dark you cant make our the features of her face. I think we did really well with the lighting. The only time we relied on natural lighting was for the outdoors shots of her face as it was still fairly light outside so it wasn't really needed and they didn't take that long to film, so that there wouldn't be any changes in the light whilst filming it. By the time it came to filming the parts within the cellar it was a lot darker outside and the cellar itself had minimal lighting, so artificial lighting was needed for our piece and for us.
We as a group feel that we have learned quite a lot since filming our preliminary tasks, such as paying attention to the little details and that everything needs to be spot on and planning is very very important. I think our main task has come a long way since our preliminary task, there are no where near as many mistakes or problems, evaluating both pieces has made it clearer where we have improved. Overall i think its a much stronger piece, as we were all learning during the course and improving our own skills and contributing them to the group. We helped each other learning new key skills and understanding the areas we were weaker on.
