Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Last week we completed our preliminary task which we thought went really well. The main aim of the task was to get to grips with editing, and in particular continuity editing. Our brief for the task was to create a short piece of about 30-60 seconds long of a short conversation. We had to include the 180 degree rule, match on match action and a shot reverse shot. We decided to film our preliminary task in the style of a horror film, as this is our chosen genre, and we felt it would help us when it came to the actual filming of our coursework piece.

To begin with, we decided on a location for our task. We decided to use a set of stairs and a long corridor, and we managed to find these within the school and they really helped give our sequence a spooky feel. We then created a storyboard for our short sequence. This included all the shots we were going to use, locations, dialogue and any editing techniques we may use. This helped us a lot as we were able to see exactly what we had planned to do when we were on location.

Our first shot was of Tally, walking up the stairs without shoes on, and we shot this as a medium shot so that the audience were able to see the surroundings of the staircase as well. We then cut to a side shot of Tally's feet on the staircase walking up, and this was as shot as a close up. We chose this shot as we felt it built up the tension, especially as you can't really hear her footsteps. We then cut again to the beginning shot, but further up the staircase. We had to use continuity editing in this scene, so as to make sure the movement form the side shot to the medium shot were smooth and flowing. We then had a shot of Tally in the doorway with the light from the window behind her illuminating her, giving a sinister silhouette. We shot this as a long shot so that the audience were not able to distinguish any of Tally's features, to give her a more horror like characterisation, and also as a leading line, to lead the audience's eye towards Tally. We then had a medium shot of Tally's back, walking towards me, the victim, crouching on the floor. We used a medium shot as well as the rule of thirds so that the audience were able to see the victim as well as the protagonist. The shot then moved onto a close up of me talking, and then a jump cut to an ECU of my face whilst talking. The ECU was used so that the audience would be able to clearly see the emotion on the victims face as they were talking. We then cut to a low angled medium shot of Tally talking, and we used this so that shadow was cast on her face so that the audience were still not able to distinguish her face, and it also gave her a more powerful impression. We then cut to a shot of me on the floor struggling to get away whilst Tally walked towards me slowly. We used a medium shot for this to again allow the audience to take in the surroundings.

We put a black and white filter on all of the scenes and shots in this sequence and also adjusted the contrast so that the dark and light were exaggerated. We used this as we thought it would be really effective in the mise-en-scene of our task. We also used a dissolve effect between some of the shots, as the jump cuts looked too jerky and out of place. We also found two sounds which we used, including a horror soundtrack Tally found on the Internet, and the sound of wind howling. We used the horror track throughout the sequence, as it built up the tension to the conversation and we used the howling wind sound effect in the shots in the hall as it also adds to the mise-en-scene of the scene.

The hardest bit of the preliminary task was the continuity editing, to make various shots seem one long continuous shot. One bit which was particularly hard to achieve was when I was talking, and we then jumped to an ECU. We had to shoot the dialogue twice, one as a medium shot and the other as an ECU. When we were editing the shots, we had to split the film exactly between where i was talking, and this proved difficult, but we finally managed to achieve the match on match action we wanted.