The Preliminary Task

   The brief for the preliminary task was to create a short 1-minute film to develop and practise our knowledge of camera angles, shots, movements, match-on-match action and editing with iMovie.

   For my preliminary group, I worked with two other girls within my Media class; Anna St Pierre and Jordan Winter. For our preliminary task, we decided to create a comedy horror film, which followed the story of a girl who is being followed by an unknown person.

   Our story board consisted of 12 shots that took our protagonist through a door and down a flight of stairs, while a mysterious figure is glimpsed to be following her. She proceeds to walk down a hallway, stopping to look behind her, before entering a classroom and opening her locker. She takes a book out and closes the locker only to come face to face with her follower. Startled, she drops everything before the mysterious person apologises and returns a book to the protagonist. Upon accepting the book and placing it back in the locker, our preliminary short film ends.

   To film our task, Anna handled the camera work, whilst Jordan and I became the two characters, the mysterious follower and the protagonist respectively. We made sure to film when the light outside was best and most consistant. We also made sure that our clothing stayed in place as much as possible to ensure complete continuity. Anna's camera work included continuous medium and close up shots, high-angled shots, point of view shots, close ups, medium shots and long shots. We also used tracking shots. This all added to the atmosphere of the overall film, thus making it effective and provoking.

   When editing our film clips, we made sure to stay close to the story board in order to structure our film well. We used iMovie, which helped us to choose exact moments within our filmed clips that were just right. We then used adjustments to match up lighting in certain clips so it seemed flawless and matched the previous. We also used non-diegetic sound effects, such as suspense and mysterious, to add to our short film to create a better atmosphere. Our diegetic sound was mainly at the end and consisted of brief dialogue between the two characters. This helped to relax the previously tense atmosphere to one of relaxed comedy. We applied a black and white effect to the whole film to increase the tones and shadows from the lighting, as well as to create more atmosphere.

I really liked how our preliminary task came out, as it seemed as professional as an amateur attempt could look. It also helped to develop my understanding of how camera angles and shots work, and how to use iMovie in more depth when editing.