The filmmakers successfully observed cinematography conventions like continuity, match on action, and the 180-degree rule when filming their thriller. While they had to change locations, they reworked their storyboard and shooting script, which helped filming go smoothly. They also made some creative changes but ultimately kept most of the original plan. Their tight schedule required efficient use of time, which they managed well through preparation and experience. Learning from mistakes on a preliminary task, they improved areas like camera settings and planning shots. The crew assigned roles and communicated collaboratively while filming, and they organized actors, locations, costumes, and props with respect and preparation.

1. Evaluation 3
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel
you have learnt in the progression from it to the full
product?

2. How well did you observe the conventions of continuity,
match on action, 180 degree rule?
Though out our whole thriller I would say we successfully observed the conventions of continuity, match
on action and the 180 degree rule.
I observe this because watching through the sequence, all of our clips are almost perfectly continuous
and are always shot from the same side. For instance, when Sam is walking through the warehouse
initially, we see him start to walk past an Aston martin, and then there is a shot from inside the car where
he walks past it, and then another shot where he has finish walking past it.
We felt it was best to not challenge any of these rules for fear of making it too complex for ourselves,
and to not risk confusing the audience. Which is why we made sure we kept to the rules properly.
We never used the shot reverse shot technique as there was not really a direct point in our sequence to
use it.

3. How did the storyboarding and creating a shooting script
work in practice? Did you make creative decisions from the
original plan? For what reasons and with what outcomes?
Due to us having a problem with our original location, we had to re-do our initial idea,
luckily it was the same type of scenario so we did not actually have to alter our storyboard
too much. As well as our original drawn storyboard, we wrote out a plan of shots that we
understood and would shoot at our new location. This along with the storyboard came to be
vital in the shooting of our thriller as we followed most of the shots in the story board and all
of the shots on this list that we made to the letter.
We did make some creative decisions to depart from the original plan, but most of them
never made it to the final cut of the movie as we found that there was no true place for them
in the two minutes that we had. Most of these creative decisions were just other shots that
we thought would look creative and clever but would not necessarily do anything for the
drive of the story.
The reasons we tried to do some of these creative ideas was to see if we could do any
interesting things that were totally improvised. Just because the improvised things we tried
did not make it to the final cut of the movie did not necessarily mean they were not
interesting. One of the things we experimented with was a totally different ending to our
sequence which would have created a totally different follow-on story if the film were to be
made into a full length feature film.

4. How did you manage your time and with what success?
At the beginning we assumed time management would be very easy as we had a lot of time, but then we lost our
original location, and could not get a new one for a while.
Surprisingly though time was quite easy to manage considering our production schedule was quite tight due to
getting the locations late. We also managed time successfully as well in even the short space of time we had on
each shoot date.
Shooting Schedule:
Bedroom and house scene – 12:30 – 17:00 25th February
Car warehouse – 9:00 – 12:30 9th March
Public school bay – 12:10 – 13:00 14th March
Even with this tight schedule we still managed to shoot exactly what was needed and all of our other creatively
improvised bits. Which shows that even in the short span of time we managed to use our resources, and experience
to an advantage to be able to get things done without rushing.

5. What mistakes did you make and did you improve in the main
task having made errors in the preliminary exercise?
Assuming mistakes were made in the preliminary task, which few were, we definitely managed to improve
them in this main task. One of the problems I encountered in the preliminary task was that because I had
never had experience with the cameras we were using, I accidently left the ND Filter (Neutral Density) filter
on which made the lighting conditions look under exposed. Due to making this mistake in the preliminary
task, I knew to check all the camera settings properly before I started to shoot anything.
Another mistake I made in the preliminary task, is that I drew up my storyboard quite frivolously, and
accidently left out an establishing shot. In the main task however, we had thought about what we wanted to
do thoroughly with proper planning instead of jumping straight in so we knew exactly what we wanted to
shoot, and made sure we got every shot.
Without sounding overly confident, I do not actually think many mistakes were made in the main task. I
know there is issues with understanding the story and some of the blips when Ollie is walking to the red
car, but I do not actually think anything exclusive went wrong or failed.
We took most little things into account, ranging from making sure other equipment or people were not in
the shooting space on set. We also made sure the white balance was correct at every location we went to,
so we could guarantee the lighting would be perfect.

6. How did you organise your crew?
Even though every single person had to take part in every aspect of pre, during and post-
production, we still all assigned ourselves set roles from the beginning of the project. For
instance I was the director and I was the one who managed to find the actors, so seeing as
I had the chemistry with the actors and my main set role was the director, I mainly did the
organising of the actors during the scenes, and organising location dates.
All of us made sure we used communication critically. We thought that one of the most
important things was communication. It was not really down to one person to organise the
crew, but it was the crew ourselves working collaboratively to organise each other and all
make sure we were on the same wave length so we each organised different things.
Like I said, I did the directing for the most part, along with Andrew, while Sam acted so he
could not do a lot of the filming but his role was also as the writer, so he came up with the
main bit of the story as well.

7. How did you manage actors, locations, costumes, and props?
 Actors – We managed our actors very well with respect that one of them was part of
the main crew anyway, so he would be at every shoot date, and the second actor we
gave him a copy of our production schedule to make sure he would show up to every
shoot date knowing exactly where and when to get there.
 Locations – Obviously these were a little harder to manage as our original one fell
through, but when we had our new location of the car warehouse, all we had to do was
tell the owner what day we wanted to use it and he would allot us the time.
 Costumes – As we wanted the costumes to be as ‘Teen-realistic’ as possible and we
did not have a costume designer, we allowed the actors to wear what they think their
character would wear. The only issue with this is that we had to make sure the actors
would wear the same thing on every shoot date.
 Props – The only official prop we used other than the smart phone which we had on us
all the time anyway, was the golf club. This was easy to manage as we organised to
bring it on the shoot day when we needed it. When that day came about I brought it
with me, as it was on my to-do list for that shooting day.