Over the filming process, we learned how to: use a camera and miscellaneous equipment; use Final Cut Pro to edit our footage; create non-dietetic music using Soundtrack Pro and create idents using Motion.As a massive fan of conspiracy thrillers – my favourite films being Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Trilogy – when looking back to the planning process, it was easy to think of an action-thriller scenario. However, I wanted to step out of the generic norms held by the majority of modern action-thriller films and add a mystery element to our opening. Having seen Contagion recently, I thought the conventions of a medical emergency film made this newly profound concept of mine bold and interesting – the outbreak of a deadly virus from the city’s water system. Also linking to our research - we used a convenient location e.g. Cara's house as oppose to using a shady location commonly used in horrors. It was easily accessible, relatively close to the college and big enough to film.
Though pre-production for this film was simple, there were many flaws to it. Switching on a camera may be easy but achieving continuity was definitely a challenge. We had to ensure we made a five-second-gap before/after capturing dialogue or movement. There was also the tedious process of filming the same scene two or three times over – something we failed to do for our pre-lim. Looking back at our pre-lim, our picture was delayed and we missed out the top-third of Deborah's face, on occasions. There was also missing sound and the short spray of light-exposure at the beginning of each shot which made life difficult. However, considering the fact we had one lesson to film this, it was adequate enough to present to our peers. Furthermore, we learned from our mistakes and amended a great deal of our filming techniques. However, though some would argue that one of our shots was out of focus, this was deliberately done to reinforce her ill-state.
Composing the storyboard, unlike the challenges of the pre-production, was a more successful task – Cara’s house was the ideal location. We had thought of a vast range of angles and shot types, for example, wide shot, match-cut and extreme close-up Our uniques shot, however, was a first-person POV. We added the video-effect 'Earthquake' to make the shot look surreal. On the other hand, when it came to shooting the rough-cut, the lighting was extremely poor due to the adverse weather conditions outside: the top light only made it look cosmetic. We were able to amend this by re-filming large chunks of the opening. Even though this gave us less time to edit, we still had something presentable to import onto Final Cut Pro. I also think the constructive criticism for our rough-cut was far too nice: critiques thought the concept was good, the shots were acceptable, meaning that the film was fine enough to present without sound and titles although when it came round to editing our final-cut, we incorporated titles from a 3D template on Final Cut Pro. Deborah also made respiratory sounds created using Soundtrack Pro. This was good as it gave the audience an insight into how bad Cara's situation was. For our post-production, we have uploaded our film opening to Vimeo and are awaiting reviews from our target audience.
Overall, I'm please with the way our film has gone, considering the lack of commitment from one person in our group whose name shall not be mentioned, I think we've definitely 'raised the bar' from our prelim in terms of technology as well as maturity. Just by adding idents, and our own soundtrack, there is no excuse for lack of innovation. Not being billed as your conventional thriller, I think it's an interaction viewers will enjoy to be a part of.
The video embedded below is a montage of still shots taken from both our prelim and our final cut. There's a real difference in quality.
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