In the opening shot of Sin City you get a tracking shot up the body of a girl, and in our thriller we have a similar opening because we do the same tracking shot up our characters to body to get a sense of what the character is like and what they are wearing and finishing with a close up of their face shows the audience what the character looks like, and engages the audience into the character's emotion.
In the movie Heat they use a lot of over the shoulder shots, and in our thriller opening we have used a lot of these sort of shots to create the feeling of panic our character is feeling and also the sense of being watched.
In Pschyo when Marion has runaway after stealing the money, and she is in her car she has very expressive facial expressions. You can tell what she is thinking through her expressions, and in our thriller opening we want to create this because our character is very scared of the thought of being stalked, and once bumping into her stalker we want the character/actor to look extremely panicked. We want to create the looks Marion has in the car, because they are very effective within the mise-en-scene.
1). What planning did you do for your filming task, and how did this planning aid in the filming?
For the planning of our preliminary task we did a story board, a shot list and a shooting map. On the shot list we decided what shots would be used throughout the preliminary task. For the story board we drew what would be within the mise-en-scene, and the angle of the camera. For the shooting map we planned out where we would get our character to walk, and what way they would leave. All the planning before the preliminary task helped because the shooting of the short film went quickly and smoothly because we knew where we wanted things, and how we wanted it to look. We referred to the shooting map, and shot list a lot while filming because these two things helped us with where to put the camera, and what we had decided through filming.
2). What camera and editing techniques and codes did you use in your film and how do they influence the audiences understanding of the film? (eg. camera and shot types etc; match on action, shot reverse shot, 180 degree rule)
We used close ups, long shots & mid-shots. When Liam & Ellie (actor's in our preliminary task) were having a conversation we used a reverse shot between them. When Ellie was speaking we placed the camera over Liam's shoulder, and the same when Liam was speaking. We made sure we used a range of camera angles so we could practice filimng these shots. We only followed one of the characters movements to the other character so the audience would understand that the short film was from this characters point-of-view.
3). How did you use new technologies in your construction, planning and evaluation (eg. digital camera; non-linear editing software; youtube, blogger) and what skills do you have at using this technology? (strengths and weaknesses eg. steady/shaky camera; variety of shot types; smooth/clumsy; independence when using technologies...)
To construct the prelinminary task we used a digital hand held camera, with a tripod. A few times myself and my prodution group took the camera of the tripod because it was easier, sometimes this resulted in a shaky scene. I think some of the preliminary task was quite clumsy because you can hear the people behind the camera speaking, and the actor in the preliminary task sometimes went the wrong way. To edit the preliminary task we used Adobe video editing which is quite simple to use once you get the hang of how things work. We then uploaded the video into youtube and from there we embedded the video into our blogs. Using new technoligies is quite important for the preliminary task because we relied very much on these new technologies to achieve the outcome.
From this preliminary task I have picked up several techniques which I can apply to our thriller opening, and the mistakes I made on this task will hopefully not happen with the thriller opening.
In Pschyo when Marion has runaway after stealing the money, and she is in her car she has very expressive facial expressions. You can tell what she is thinking through her expressions, and in our thriller opening we want to create this because our character is very scared of the thought of being stalked, and once bumping into her stalker we want the character/actor to look extremely panicked. We want to create the looks Marion has in the car, because they are very effective within the mise-en-scene.