Task 7

The camerawork in our initial prelim is very basic;       The Tilt:

we only used one filming technique, which was tilt up at the beginning, we then have a still camera for the duration of the film. In our thriller, we again use basic camera skills, for the ballet sequence we use none, we just have a still camera so all your focus can be on the ballerina. One of the main camera techniques we adjusted was the fact that we shot the whole ballet sequence in slow motion, which meant we could straight away see the elegance and beauty of the piece come to life as the footage was immediately played back on a TV screen in the studio. In the second part at the office we have a tracking shot, which was a bit more complex and difficult then our tilt in the prelim as it required teamwork between all of us as one was pushing the tracking seat, one was filming and one was holding the microphone, so this took a few more attempts then the camerawork in our prelim as there was just a lot more going on. In our thriller we also used a lot of different levels of filming, as we were lying on the floor at one point, and then next we were at the top of the room in a scissor lift doing a birds eyeshot.

The mise en scene in our prelim was just a natural setting outdoors which we had done no adjustment to, just added a chair as a prop, so again this was very basic, but we realised by working outside you can often get a continuity problem as if you are shooting for a long time, the natural lighting will change. So learning from this error we shot inside and build two sets, our ballet set was very simple with a black floor and walls so nothing distracts from the beauty of the ballerina who we made look very beautiful and elegant, with glittery make-up and pretty white and black leotard/tutu. For our second set we recreated the media room to turn it into an office. This required a lot of heaving lifting, but we were really pleased with the end result and were confident that it represented a police/detective office well.

The editing in our prelim was simple; we just cut from shot to shot, to get different angles and perspectives on the situation that took us one 1hr media lesson. So editing in our thriller is where things really stepped up a notch, as overall we spent about 10hrs editing. Instead of doing the abrupt cuts from shot to shot we used cross fades to merge the footage together and make it flow as one piece, this made the piece a lot more graceful. We had a lot more footage for our thriller, so the task of picking and choosing what clip would work best where was a lot more complex then in our prelim, but this better as it meant the shots we chose were the best of the best. The most complicated part of the editing was doing the bridge between the discrete ballet sequence and the initial office scene as it was hard to make the transition natural and not too abrupt as there is a big contrast between the two scenes. By adding an establishing shot of the surrey police station we were able to effectively achieve this.

Some of the differnt angles we edited together.

The sound in our prelim was not great, again due to the fact that we chose to film outside, we had the problem of the wind which kept changing so it was getting in the way of the dialogue. Another issue was the dialogue, as we didnt know our lines we spend too long focusing on getting the lines right and not on the camerawork. In our thriller we filmed indoors so we never had the problem of wind, also we didnt have any dilalogue in our ballet part so it meant that we could detach and remove any audio picked up and we could add music without any interuption of other sound. The sound in the office was more complicated as we had to add digetic sound effects like computer/phone noises and car noises, but we also had to ensure that these sounds effects did not outshine the sound of the dialogue. So after some adjustment of the volume we got the perfect balance between all the sounds effects in out thriller.