Strengths & Weaknesses Of My AS Coursework

Team Work

As a team we were very good at brainstorming ideas and combining each other's ideas. We were also good at sharing out research tasks, whether that be splitting into groups within our team or completing something individually, if we had to get something done we would all make sure our task was done on time. Unfortunately there was not one period of filming where the whole team was present. This was due to everyone having busy schedules, therefore we would choose a time that was ideal for the majority of the team. Towards the end of our coursework, during the editing period, the whole team was not always completely focused and got easily distracted from the work. However as a whole, we worked well together and everybody contributed to the project a fair amount.

Development Of Ideas

We were very good at coming up with plenty of ideas to choose from. We put all our ideas together, from the type of genre we wanted to do, down to the complete story line of the film and as a group we chose,which idea we liked the best. The main problem we faced was creating an idea that we were actually capable of creating. We often would get carried away and come up with amazing ideas, however would not have access to the resources or equipment that would be needed to make the ideas come to life. 

Research of Real Film Openings 

I conducted a lot of research into real film openings. I analysed a few that were of the same genre of my film opening; Psychological Thriller. I chose to analyse the opening sequence of extremely well known films: 'Saw', 'The Black Swan; and 'Se7en'. It helped me a lot, as it allowed me to not only identify common conventions of film openings in general but also psychological thrillers specifically. It also showed me what makes an opening to a film engaging, for example in a lot of thrillers the opening sequence is packed with action straight away but gives the audience no explanation as to who is causing it, why it is happening or where it is happening. It leaves plenty of enigma codes, which will encourage the audience to keep watching the rest of the film in the hope that eventually they'll discover the meanings behind these codes. We made sure to include this in our opening by keeping the identity of the antagonist hidden and beginning with the conflict that takes place in the story line.

Preliminary Material

The prelim task allowed me to get the hang of using the camera correctly and with a range of shots and angles, it also helped me learn the basics of editing. Therefore when I began to edit the actual opening sequence I was able to experiment with filters and transitions rather than learning the basics.

Camera Work

We included a lot of different shots in our opening sequence such as:

• POV shot 
• extreme close-up
• over the shoulder shot 
• long shot 

We used plenty more too. Sophie did the majority of the filming, she used a tripod for some of the shots such as the long shot. However when doing the majority of the close-ups she had to do hand-held shots in order to get really close-up. 

Mis-En-Scene

A lot of thought went into all elements of the mis-en-scene for the opening sequence. We started of by finding the perfect location. We chose my loft, which very easy for us because we had access to it whenever we needed it, as we had to film a number of different times for various reasons. We wanted to have chiaroscuro lighting to help give the opening an eerie atmosphere, and the lack of light in the loft helped us to achieve it. We made sure all the costumes reflected the character's personality. The antagonist wore black to show that he is evil and the antagonist wore light colours to signify that she is good and pure. 

Sound

The sound contributes a lot to the overall look and quality of the opening. We felt like when people spoke it came across slightly cringey and did not sound very realistic, so we decided to keep the dialogue to a minimum and only have speech in the form of a voicemail. We found an effect that muffled the voice and it sounded very realistic. We wanted the non diegetic sound to create a very creepy atmosphere, so we chose one that changed from low pitch to high pitch sounds and it did not have much rhythm to it.

Editing

Whilst editing I wanted to ensure that we showcased the different skills that we possessed in editing. I made sure to include:

• a dissolve
• a fade 
• a long take 
• non continuity editing
• superimposition

The various techniques we used also helped us to demonstrate the genre of our film opening, as we used a few techniques that created distortion and gave a creepy atmosphere. We only faced one major issue when it came to editing, which was the fact our first lot of footage was too dark and we could not lighten it enough for it to be useable. Therefore we had to re-film with a lot of light and use the editing to make the footage darker.