1) The author and their group had issues with their preliminary film task due to a lack of planning and communication, which resulted in problems like not following the 180 degree rule for camera shots. 2) For the main task, they planned all aspects of filming thoroughly, such as what shots to use, equipment, and schedule. This improved their work significantly. 3) Through practicing with the equipment on the preliminary task and rehearsals, they felt more confident operating the camera and equipment, which saved them time during the main filming.

1. By Nikitha Manthena

2. There wasn’t much planning during the preliminary task, we just
created a story line, which wasn’t too hard as it was an argument
that had happened between the two characters in real life. We
then visualised what we wanted it to look like and had a list of
camera shots given to us by our teacher to include in the task. So
we made a quick storyboard according to the instructions given
which was to “create an opening sequence to any movie in the
thriller genre, it should consist of someone walking into the
room, sitting across the room from someone and exchanging
dialogue; it should also last for roughly 2 minutes.” Our lack of
planning and communication during the preliminary task caused
us problems as the 180 degree rule didn’t follow the rule and the
editing was also bad because we overlapped dialogue and you
can see extra bits that were wrong and needed to be cut out.
However this helped us when planning for the main task as we
knew that we lacked communication and detailed planning, so
we made sure we spoke thoroughly about everything and
planned everything. For example what shot we will be
using, where we will be using it, what scene, what props we will
be using, whether it will be on a tripod or not, who will be
controlling the camera and what day and date we will be doing
it. This helped us as it made a huge improvement because we all
knew what we needed to do and we knew how to do it as we
learnt from our mistakes from the preliminary task.

3. Yes, our use of specific shots have improved. When
we were doing our preliminary task, we did the 180
degree rule – over the shoulder – shot reverse shot
wrong because the camera went from Alessia’s left
shoulder to Charlotte’s right shoulder when it should
have been Alessia’s right to Charlotte’s right so it
wouldn’t confuse the audience. Therefore we
learnt from our mistakes and did it correctly the first
time when filming for the main task, which was
beneficial as it saved us time from redoing it if I was
wrong as we didn’t have much time to make
mistakes.

4. Yes, we do feel more confident with the equipment
as we have had a go using the camera and
tripod when recreating stills, the preliminary task
which made us more confident using it when
filming our opening scene. This helped us a lot as
we didn’t need to spend time figuring out how to
use it and what button to press because we have
used it before, so we just got straight onto work
which saved us even more time. It took some
stress off as we has one less thing to worry about
as the camera is the most important thing we
needed.

5. I feel that our end product was quite successful as we had
plenty of experience in how to do the shots, how to
work the camera and how to put things together. I feel
that we did the best we could in the time we had and
that everyone in our group put 110% into it to make this
work. I think this task was very successful in the end as
the camera, editing and planning all helped the film
look good. When you first see it, it isn’t supposed to look
like a thriller, the whole point is to confuse the audience
and make them wonder why this is a thriller because we
feed on their curiosity and then they see the shooting
and the blood, the curiosity then turns into fear and
mystery. We achieved those emotions as those were
the feelings our audience felt when we played the final
version to them. Hence overall, I believe our end
product is successful due to the fact that it did what we
wanted it to do.