Karin Falconer-Bailey

Evaluation

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

When creating my preliminary task, I was introduced to 3 camera shots; the 180 degree rule, shot-reverse shot and match on action. Before knowing what these shots were and how they would have an impact on a media product, I thought as though these shots would not be an important aspect in the way a final product would appear. The preliminary task marginally expanded my knowledge of the importance of a storyboard, shot list, script and these three shots. However, after completing the opening of my horror film, I feel as if I have again expanded this knowledge from this task. As the preliminary task was a task to ensure I withheld a good understanding of how to perform the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action. The horror opening research and planning and creating a final product has been a step up from this. Throughout this task I have learnt that shots, camera movement and angles play a significant role in how a film is portrayed to the audience. The shots that we used in our final product were mainly close up shots, long shots, medium shots and extreme close up shots. The main angles that we included were low angle, high angle and an eye level angle. After looking back onto my final product I have identified that the shots, angles and camera movement that have been used has played an important role in determining the traits of characters within the film without knowing the full narrative. For example, in the opening when the female character is shown on the ground, a low angle shot has been used to focus on the masked characters. By doing this, the audience or viewer can identify that these characters withhold more power than the female character on the floor. If we used a shot such as a long shot, the audience would still be able to identify that these characters have power, but using the low angle shot puts the audience into the point of view of the female character on the ground.

From these tasks, I have also learnt managing time and planning, is very important for a final task. At the beginning of the task, Lauren and I had the idea of creating an opening like ‘One missed call’, the summary of this film is an individual receives a voice mail from the future, of the date and time when they would die. However, the footage we recorded for this did not create a horrific atmosphere; we then changed the plot to a girl’s best friend luring her to her death. However, we could not find a decent location to film this as we were going for an abandoned location, but, the location we filmed on had houses in the background which did not imply this abandoned effect. We continued with this idea but then changed the

Karin Falconer-Bailey

location to an alley way. As we planned and created the script for each of the ideas we came up with, this ensured that we didn’t lose a lot of time and in the end actually had time to create a final product. By managing our time, planning via storyboarding, shot lists and analysing step by step what horror films include this has enabled me to ensure that if any improvements for example if footage was blurry or the lighting was poor, by managing my time this meant that we could include these the final product.

Overall, from the preliminary task to the full product, I have learnt that small elements of films, which are seen as unimportant, contribute to the presentation of a final product.