What I need to work on- Jenny Allan

Last year in media we had to make a two minute opening for a Thriller, in this post I am going to explain what I need to work on to make this years task much better than last years. 

Our opening was about a girl being followed and stalked by someone who has always wanted to be with her. This was honestly a bad opening, we ran out of time and the narrative was rushed. The dialogue for the film was made up on the spot and avoided the sense of realism. 

What went well and badly:

* Camera Work 

The framing was good in our film everything was in shot and at the right height. This was one of the good things in our film.

The camera movement was very smooth as  well so everything ran together. We had a few panning shots when the main character is walking to her house. We tried to make things look like they were normal and that nothing was wrong.

I'm hoping the camera work this year will be good if not better than last time. I'm hoping that we can really narrate the story across with the cinematography.

*Mise en scene 

 We didn't use many props associated with the genre of Thriller this might be one of the reasons why are film failed. We used 3 main props in our film this being a mobile phone, some food from the freezer and a television. However, we did in fact use a lot of props in our mini narrative but they made no sense with the film. This year we have done a prop list and have many more things to be using in our film. We need to make sure that the props we use were around in the time period that our film is being set in the 1940s. We have set a much bigger task for ourselves.

The location we used last year wasn't very interesting I thought and was a bit cliche. I think we should have spent more time looking for a better location so that our film would have been a little bit more interesting. Also, I have learned that if you find a good location then it can do most of the work to fit with the style of genre for you. This year our location is in an old manor house which really connects with our film.



 
* Editing 


The editing if I'm honest wasn't the best there was one shot that was out of focus and blurred when it wasn't meant to be. 


Because we have the wrong video up on youtube I can't see how good the cutting was on the other film but on this one the order it has been put into is all out of order and makes no sense.

I think the cuts could have been more effective by using the advantages on the mac, and also, during the mini narrative I think the cuts could have been much quicker to create a more tense atmosphere. 

This year I have learned much more on editing techniques and hope to improvise this into the media film. I feel as those the way it has been edited makes the film much more interesting to watch and engages the audience more.  




* Sound

I think we should have put a soundtrack over the top of the beginning scenes so that it wasn't so plain and to be honest a bit boring we could have made people jump when the main male character walks into the camera shot watching her walk down the road. I think this would have created a much more thriller effect and also, might have made the audience emphasis with the character and fear for  her. 


The dialogue of the phone conversation was obviously thought of on the spot. It jumped away from the sense of realism and they way it was spoken made the film look like a comedy or the way it was spoken. We could  have also, had the sound of a phone ringing to allow the audience to understand that her phone is ringing and that there is someone on the end of it instead of her just reaching into her pocket to answer an un-ringing  phone.

I remember in our old film when the male character appeared from the behind the fridge we did have a noise that was meant to make the audience jump


What I'm going to work on: 

This year I am going to make sure I work on timing make sure everything is ready to be filmed and completed not rushed and make the sound work well with the editing and the camera work. 

Also, make sure there is a good communication in the group and that we all know what we are doing at what time and where. 

The video that I have uploaded is the wrong one on "youtube" but there isn't the right copy anymore so this is the only one I could find.