Question 6

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

Working with technologies such as digital cameras (etc) has taught me that if you plan a film well enough, it will run smoothly. However after filming our opening 3 times, we learnt as we went on, experience is a big part of learning about filming which is where the preliminary task worked well to introduce us to using cameras and editing the material.

When editing the preliminary task, it was relatively simple. However we did not have to include transitions such as cross-fade. Also we did not have to use a soundtrack running underneath the footage.

During the construction of this product, I understand the importance of practicing stills and camera angles, also knowing how your camera works. I completed the main camera angle stills early on in the course and therefore was pretty confident on how those shots were supposed to look, this was not the case with the video camera shots though. If we had practiced before, not including the preliminary task, we may have only had to have done 2 shoots, instead, we did 3 and ended up getting very frustrated with the duff shots.

The sequence of shots is very important, especially when editing into such an adult genre such as a Noir Thriller film. I learnt that the pace of the opening has to be consistent to encapsulate the audience and encourage them to watch the rest of the film. In the final edit of the 'Angel Cafe' we used mostly the 'cross-fade' and 'cross-dissolve' effects, also 'fade to black' to transition the clips. 'Fade to black' gives the illusion of passing time. In the 'Angel Cafe' before the final edit there were quite a lot of long walking shots. We solved this by fading the clip to back, it makes it appear like time has passed since the last clip was shown, and allows you to crop the clip to a further extent.

I learnt that camera angles are one of the best things in your arsenal when filming. The shot alone can imply something that you don't have to spell out. For example, in 'Angel Cafe' we see the male role of Adrian Doyle walk past the window, however the camera is on the outside and he is inside the cafe. This suggests that they are alone together, and isolated from the rest of the world. They are trapped in. This is much like the shot of Holly Martins in The Third Man when he is sat in the window and the camera is on the outside filming him from the other side of the glass.

In the amount of time our thriller has to fit in (2 minutes) and due to the sub-genre of our thriller opening (Noir) we decided not to incorporate flash backs or flash forwards because of the plot. It would over-complicate the existing story line.

In the final edit, we laid the black and white filter over the top of the original colour. It sophisticates our opening sequence.

When we initially set out to shoot 'Angel Cafe' we were filming strictly by what we had planned on the shot list. This was not the best thing to have done, after filming another two times, we realised a lot of compulsive ideas come when you're on the set filming. Our FIRST SHOOT was unsuccessful for the reasons that there was not enough light when we filmed the darker parts of the thriller, for example, when she is looking for the keys at the end and he grabs her shoulder. It was too dark to edit the brightness of the frames and change the look of the shot. This was one of the main reasons why we had to abandon the whole shoot. We had also filmed all of the wrong shots. We were adamant that mid-shots were the way forward when we should have referred to our research, then would have realised that close ups, high and low angles were the right choice. This we carried forward to our second and third shoot.

I have had quite a lot of editing experience, and find that essentially most editing programmes are very similar. After already having experience with Adobe Elements via the Preliminary Task, i found editing this quite simple. However we had to involve more transitions and cuts, titles and sound edits. Placing the titles was the one of the hardest parts of the edit. We had the sound title at the beginning and it simply did not look right. We tried shuffling the words about to see if that would change our opinion on it, it did not. I suggested moving it further down the timeline of our edit, and it turned out to look better because of the composure of the shot.

The titles process was one of the quickest processes in the whole ensemble of them. After coming up with production company names etc, we got onto Adobe Elements and designed some. We tried 3/4 different looks for each title but decided on a consistent font for all of them. The titles are all white, contrasting the dark image of the opening. They suggest the surrender and objection from the victim Agnes in 'Angel Cafe'.

The sound was easy enough to find, we were initially going to do a blurred sound of the radio in the cafe on in the background as non-diegetic sound, but during the filming sessions forgot to involve a clip of a radio and therefore the audience may not understand that was the intention. However, knowing that we wanted a slow creepy soundtrack for the first sound when the characters and their situations are being introduced. But then we decided on a more intense sound for the cliffhanger. We found these sounds by typing into sound cloud, 'Creepy Piano' for the first one and 'Tension' for the second. We have snippets of diegetic sound during the clip however wanted something to go on top to increase the tension in the audience and throughout the opening.