Looking back at our prelim film and then looking at our full product. A lot could be said to have changed. In terms of the way we shot, our awareness of mise-en-scene, attention to lighting and even the way it was edited.
FIRSTLY
OUR audience has changed quite a bit.....
Our prelim film was based around a back swap between two criminals (or at least we tried to portray them as criminals with the use of a body guard character, dark settings etc)
VS
Since we went along the lines of making a crime thriller, therefore are audience would be the typical kind of audience that enjoy crime thrillers... I.e Males aged 18+ or even older because crime thrillers tend to be more popular with the older audiences. Other than the explosion at the end, there wasn't much action THEREFORE IT WOULDN'T APPEAL AS MUCH TO A YOUNGER AUDIENCE.
WHEREAS.... Four our FULL PRODUCT film this was changed drastically because we made some characters in our full product younger to draw empathy and link with a younger audience... We also based the location around a school area to create the typical school setting. The main character however (The janitor/caretaker) was much older having a set of young characters and an older character expands our audience from just a young audience to reach out to older ones... Although our audience primarily are young teens aged 15+ (15 IS USUALLY THE MINIMUM AGE FOR MOST THRILLERS) ... So our audience has changed quite abit in comparison to our prelim film... From an audience which targeted mostly grown men aged 18+ who like crime based thrillers... To a much younger audience 15+ who like thrillers.
VS
SECONDLY
Our attention to Camera work, Light, Mise-en-Scene and editing has changed quite a bit (for the better of course)
CAMERA WORK: During our prelim film although we used a variety of shots such as very low shots on the floor, close ups and match cuts.... Although a good variety i see them as quite basic and limited compared to our final product. We were limited to mainly just close ups and low/high angle shots = VERY BASIC SHOTS
CLOSE UP OF ARM BEING PADDED DOWN
CLOSE UP OF WALLET BEING TAKEN OUT OF POCKET
LOW ANGLE SHOT
MID SHOT
WHILE IN our final product we had a wayy larger variety(including the type of shots used in the prelim) POV SHOTS, EXTREME CLOSE UPS, AND MUCH MORE here are just a few........ A better range of shots!
POV SHOT OF GOAL KEEPER CLAPPING HIS GLOVES
POV SHOT OF JANITOR PICKING UP THE BALL (FROM A BALLS PERSPECTIVE)
ECU OF DOOR BEING LOCKED
LIGHTING
in terms of lighting there wasn't much changed although after reviewing our prelim film OUR TEACHER PHIL did give us some helpful advice about turning off the neutral density filter to make our film look better and we took that advice on too improve our FULL PRODUCT
AFTER READING THIS I LOOKED BACK AT OUR PRELIM FILM AND I DID NOTICE EVERYTHING SEEMED TOO DARK.
MISE-EN-SCENE
We became more aware of Mise-en-scene since when filming our prelim we weren't dressed to look like obvious criminals, in fact we really just filmed in what we wore to college and picked the best looking room in college.... This showed poor use of mise-en-scene.
Although for our final product we did show signs of taking Mise-en-scne into account. FIRSTLY IN THE WAY OUR CHARACTER DRESSED....
AND ALSO IN THE IN THE SETTING OF THE FILM
EDITING/SOUND
For editing our film we tired to work more on sound because UNLIKE OUR PRELIM we were told that we had to make our own sound track (via sound track pro) in order to avoid any copyright issues.... draggg.
When editing we tried to make one half of the film really fast and the second half fairly slow in order to emphasis in the contrast between the young characters and the old grumpy caretaker
The young characters had an up beat sound track while the care taker didn't rather he had creepy sound effects. WITHOUT THE SOUND I PERSONALLY THINK WE WOULDN'T HAVE A FILM WE WOULD'VE HAD A DISASTER THE SOUND MADE THE FILM itself.
FINALLY
Its down to the two most important factors (in my opinion) for doing a project like this... Two things we lacked through out the production of the film and which resulted in it been such a... hard time.... ORGANIZATION AND TEAMWORK SKILLS. Although we were fairly well organized when it came to filming our prelim.
ORGANIZATION was a lacked factor, by all of us.... only towards the end of our full product (last two weeks)did we begin to organize ourselves well.
Organization is a very important factor.... and the lack or it resorted in a limited choice when it came to location and since the location is soo important with a limited choice of location comes a limited range of ideas....
Long story short our organization skills weren't the best overall id rate them as pretty poor, the only times when they were best were when we filmed our prelim and when we were rushed for time (WEEK BEFORE DEADLINE!)
PLANNING SKILLS were one of the few aspects of organization we actually had improved in, WHEN FILMING OUR PRELIM THERE WAS NO PLANING AT ALL, most of it was all spontaneous and it surprisingly turned out well....
for our full product on the other hand WE HAD TO PLAN (Last 2weeks before deadline) and it took it upon myself to plan EVERY SINGLE SHOT and what we should do on the day of filming!
I can confidently say our planning skills have improved well.... Also i learn t how good planning can make a good film because looking back at our prelim film we could've made it sooo much better if we planning we may have came up with even better shots and vartiety of camera angles to make the clip even more interesting.
Although our planning skills only started shining after we were backed into the (almost deadline and we have no film corner)
TEAMWORK had improved well as when we got down to filming we all could depend on each other to bring in different props and aspects of mise-en-scene, were able to decide quickly on who should bring what..... One thing that helped alot with communicating with each other was the fact that everyone in my group had a BLACKBERRY making getting in touch so much easier and a lot less stressful.
Although we managed to EVENTUALLY work well as a group i think we would've worked a lot better if we were more decisive... Often our ideas and opinions clashed!
IMPORTANCE OF MEDIA TECHNOLOGY
Well first of all without meida tech we wouldn't have a film.....
Media technology was very useful,we used it for communication, filming, editing, researching, distributing..... BASICALLY EVERYTHING.
FOR FILMING WE USED cameras and lighting and memory cards (to save clips onto)
FOR EDITING WE USED
LIVETYPE, SOUNDTRACK, FINAL CUT
for research i used YOUTUBE and IMDB:
Very little research was put into our PRELIM film because we had to film and edit in the same lesson where as for our final film we had plently of time to research and we could use SITES ON THE INTERNET SUCH AS Google, Wikipedia etc..... BUT the main ones were YOUTUBE.COM (THE BIGGEST VIDEO SHARING SITE ON THE INTERNET)
AND IMDB.COM (THE INTERNET'S BIGGEST MOVIE DATABASE) Holding information on almost if not every film released covering every genre and types of audience... A VERY USEFUL TOOL FOR RESEARCH.
