For my preliminary task, we needed to make a short film of which a character must enter a room, sit down and hold a two line conversation with another character. Within this, we needed to included techniques such as shot-reverse-shot, match on action and consider the 180-degree rule.

By completing this task, I got to grips with the camera that we would be using, and got to experiment with software like Wix and Sony Vegas Pro 11. As it was only a ‘practise run’, and therefore not a very long task, I didn’t manage to fully understand all of the equipment I would need to use. Therefore, going into the main task, I had to quickly pick up on techniques and how to use certain software. 

            Since the preliminary task, we have spent a lot of time researching who our target audience would be, what they would like to see, and therefore, researching other films of the same horror-thriller genre. By doing this, we looked into what techniques the successful horror-thriller films used, and tried to display our findings in our own work. We took most of our inspiration from The Purge, and The Ring, and conveyed many of the ideas they had to make their films effective.

We decided as a group, that using dark costumes would have the best effect on our audience as it would panic and worry them more than if the antagonists were shown wearing bright colours. This is because it made the film more realistic, but also concealed the characters better, making them less obvious and more dangerous.

In our preliminary task, we didn’t take much notice of the costume of our characters, we just made sure they wore the same clothing throughout. In a way this made it realistic, as the patient shown in our film would have been wearing everyday clothes. The only costume we thought to include was a doctors coat for the doctor. We felt this was a key item needed to distinguish the difference between characters, and ensure the audience realised that one character was a doctor and the other a patient. By doing this, we realised how important costumes were in order to portray the correct feelings and effects to the viewer – especially if the costume represents the character being shown. I feel that our preliminary video would have worked better, if more thought would have been put into the doctor’s uniform, to make him look more professional and therefore realistic. For this, we could have used props like a stethoscope to ensure the character’s profession was clear.

            For our preliminary task, we used the camera techniques (shot-reverse-shot, match on action and 180-degree rules) that we needed to include, but generally kept camera shots the same and didn’t experiment too much to add effect.

For our main task, we used different angles, lighting and handheld camera technique, to add effect. The angles we used and the amount of zoom we had on the camera, built tension as it either showed the audience the whole scene, or only little bits of it. This worried the viewer.

In comparison to our preliminary task, the addition of new camera techniques made the overall finish of our video more varied and interesting, but also built more tension as it wasn’t always ‘same old same old’.

            During the preliminary task, we had our first experience of Sony Vegas Pro 11. I found it extremely difficult to understand, as it was a new software for me. Because of the difficulty I had getting used to the software, I did very little editing, meaning I didn’t get to grips with it fully in preparation for the main task. Therefore, going into the main task, I had little knowledge of the technology, how to use it, and what to do to make our film opening as good as it could be.

Luckily, Issy, one of my group members, was able to get to grips with Sony Vegas Pro 11, and showed the rest of us techniques that we needed to know, like how to fade scenes together, add sound and add extras like credits and special effects.

As well as this, we all got to grips more with the camera we were using, uploading different scenes and cutting bits to make sure our timings were as good as possible, and that everything fit together smoothly.

            In our preliminary task, we didn’t add or remove any sound, which is what the final video lacked. If the preliminary video had appropriate soundtrack and score added in, we could have improved our overall video.

From this, we learnt that our main task video needed sounds that would have effects on the viewer and also make it more like a real film opening, and not just an amateur movie.

For our main task video, we added a soundtrack, which built tension for the audience. We also added sounds like sirens which showed the audience how dangerous and criminal the characters in the film opening are. This creates tension and makes the viewer nervous for what might happen.

After comparing my preliminary task to the main task video, I noticed that the addition of suitable sounds made the biggest impact on the presentation of our video. It made it more realistic, more effective and more interesting for the viewer. The preliminary task seems much more boring than the main task, and the main task seems more like a real film opening.

            Titles and graphics are needed to make the videos seem more like real films. In the preliminary task, we didn’t add any credits, which made the video seem very simplistic and amateur. We realised that in order to make our main task video as good as possible, we needed credits that looked like real film credits, and that faded on and off the screen smoothly to have the biggest effect.

By getting to grips with the new software (Sony Vegas Pro 11), we were able to create the best possible outcome by learning how to add titles on to make them an appropriate size, colour and font. We also decided that using capital letters on the person’s name would make these titles stand out, but not too much as they weren’t too big, and the title of the person was written in lower case letters, to show the name is more important. We also made the person’s name bigger than their title, to emphasise their importance.

We learnt that this would work best from looking at the difference in final outcomes from the preliminary task to main task. Our main task final cut had a much better outcome in comparison.