1. Question 7: Looking back at your
preliminary task, what do you feel
that you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full
product?
Freya Bruce

2. • The aim for our prelim exercise was to create a Continuity task involving filming
and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting in a chair
opposite another character, with whom he/ she then exchanges a couple of lines
dialogue. This task should demonstrate shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180
degree rule. Firstly we watching a few examples like sexy beast, we then
did a story board of our idea. This prelim exercise was helpful because we
were new to filming it helped us understand some of the key aspects to
filming. We learnt how to set the white balance and focus the camera and
even just simply place it on the tripod and how to effectively walk with the
camera. I think that buy learning the basic 180 rule, shot reverse shot and
match on action really helped when going to film our main opening title
sequence. One problem that we found when recording our prelim was
there was one of the cast members foot in the shot. Even though this was
a mistake it was very helpful and it made us very conscious when filming
‘released.’ While editing we learnt hoe to effectively match music to an
action, for example in this we used a ticking of the watch and the walking
of footsteps. We felt this was very effective and proceeded to use this in
our opening title sequence. I think our prelim was not only useful in
learning how to film and edit but it also helped to highlight the division of
the skills and to work out who was best as director actor and camera man.

3. • One of the main things I liked about our prelim was the colour
contrast of the red in the first shot. Because we felt that the
red that was incorporated with the Mise-en-scene of the nails
and fake blood worked so well with the conventions of the
thriller genre we used a red effect over our opening title
sequence.

4. • After our prelim we then started to plan our opening
title sequence and film released. It was a clear decision
in my group that we wanted to create a psychological
thriller genre. From this we found 12 films that we
wanted to relate to and each studied their opening title
sequences and made a presentation.
After doing this we started to story board our
ideas. We found that from our story board we
were more creative wen planning out ideas and
giving lots of details about what types of
shots, showing that we mainly wanted POV
shot, establishing shots and close ups. Our
planning was very useful. Once we had our story
board we started to draft our plans of our
costumes, Mise-en-scene, recces and shooting
schedules. We had learnt from our prelim what
we needed to do in order for our film to be
successful.

5. • On the day of filming we felt that we stuck to our
costumes and shooting schedule, however when we
started to edit our footage and make a rough cut we
released we were not happy with our shots. Therefore
we planned a re-shoot for that day. This effected our
costumes and mise-en-scene as we were unprepared
for our re-shot. However we made a story board for
our reshoot with locations and information that we
wanted close up shots from under the pier. however
we kind of took a gorilla warfare approach, going
around Brighton getting shots of what we felt would
look good.

6. • We used a match on action that we learnt from our
prelim when showing DI Bruce walking down the
corridor. We felt this was very effective In our prelim
and though it was one of the successful shots in our
open title sequence.

7. • I think the most effective part of our opening title
sequence was the editing. I think that we had lack
of good footage and if I was to do it again I would of
used more simple footage. Using close ups and
heavy use of mise-en-scene and character rather
than location. From doing this I feel like I have
learnt a lot about how to use the cameras and what
creates a good film. I learnt how to use effective
editing and editing techniques like how to layer
‘free film burn’ an effect that we found on the
internet over the top of our footage.