Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it

to the full product?

Importance of Mise En Scene and CompositionThe picture below on the right hand side is a shot from our preliminary task whilst editing. Our narrative involved a criminal being questioned as to what crime she made and why she had attempted it, but the posters in the Mise En Scene on the wall behind my character do not depict this situation. The fact I am on the far end of the shot whilst this display of posters in the Mise En Scene is more in the middle of the frame/shot also takes importance away from my character and takes the audiences focus away from me as I am not in the middle frame.

This taught us the importance of Mise En Scene and composition and in our full product. We took much more care and consideration with our Mise En Scene and composition of characters/actors in shots. Making sure to use the rule of thirds and keep our victim in the middle of the frames to keep all focus and importance on her character and had the vampire in frames around the middle to keep importance of his character but not as much as the victims, until she lures him into the room and they are then positioned to show an equal amount of importance.

Importance of ContinuityDuring our Preliminary task we tried to do cross-cutting of the inspector walking to the room the criminal is held captive in, to her watching the time ticking away on the clock. The continuity in this we found whilst editing was not filmed correctly as the arrows on the clock as we filmed over a large time scale were too far apart, and made it seem as though it had taken him more than a couple minutes to walk around ten yards.

After having experienced this problem with continuity in our preliminary exercise we made sure to make the continuity fluent whilst filming and cutting shots whilst editing. We made sure of this by taking photo’s of the action and shots whilst filming besides screen-grabbing the scenes we had to re-shoot if we had found even a slight problem in continuity whilst editing, to make sure we didn’t make the same mistake at any point and have to do numerous re-shooting of the same scene.

The importance of a StoryboardDuring our Preliminary task we had not made a visual storyboard we just had the shots written down and had it in our heads how they would look on film, which could have been what led to our problem with the continuity of the footage as we wasn’t following a visual example of what the shots were to look like.

After having considered this as a fault in our preliminary task I decided as the producer to make visual storyboards of the footage and action before we shot a scene, so that we knew exactly what the scenes were meant to look like and where the characters were to be placed in terms of composition. Having a visual storyboard helped us to record footage a lot quicker, helped enhance our continuity when filming and allowed us to keep a clear record of what shots we had already shot which could be ticked off the storyboard, and which ones we still had to film.

The importance of Extra footageDuring our preliminary task there were some shots we did not particularly like, or would have wanted shot from another angle and continuity was a problem and we didn’t have alternative shots /footage to make it any better. This taught me the importance of extra footage as you want a variety of shots rom a scene so you can pick the best ones for the final product and have footage which you can choose to either add in to your full product or take out, either way it leaves you with choice, which is exactly what we had in our full product ‘Incruendo.’ For example, we had a problem with the lighting in the corridors we filmed in which resulted in us having to record scenes in darkness and then with more light intensity. In editing this gave us a lot of extra footage and a choice between shots as some were darker/lighter than others which then allowed us to create atmosphere by using the darkened shots at certain points in our opening sequence, alongside using the shots we shot in brighter lighting in the corridors.

We also had extra footage of blood dripping from the vampire’s mouth as he stops at the door to wipe it away but the continuity when adding this scene to our sequence didn’t flow, as it went from a long-shot of the vampire furiously opening the door, to the door having been stopped by his leg as he wipes blood away from his mouth, alongside he fact the red lighting in the classroom had disappeared.