What was your role?
In our preliminary task, we all helped to plan it and all of us contributed ideas that we could use. I suggested the idea of using a video tape or something similar as I thought it would perhaps make ours a little different to other peoples. When filming our prelim I didn’t do any of the acting, we wanted to use young girls as these were a convention of horror so I couldn’t do any of it. Instead I helped with the filming, the tracking shot of subject A walking down the stairs was filmed by my. This took a few takes because it was hard to keep the camera level and still whilst walking down. I also helped with the editing of the prelim, I did as much as I could but the software we used was new to me and I therefore couldn’t contribute as much as I would have liked.
What worked well?
I think that our location we used was very good. We filmed at the springs in Ashwell, which is a village near our school. It was isolated from anything else so in the video gave an effect that they were lost or it was just the two subjects alone, this added tension to the whole thing which is good for a horror film. Isolated locations are also a convention of horror that you see in a lot of films today. Our location was also very convenient because it wasn’t many people around so we could film quite easily and it was close to one of our group members houses so we had a place we could meet and get everything sorted out before we left. Another thing that worked well was the editing. We used iMovie which is a programme for the Mac. It enabled us to choose from lots of different transitions and we were able to get the ones we wanted in our film. It also had a big choice of sound effects that we could use. We used this feature a number of times including when subject A opens a gate at the start of the film. We added a door creaking to create more tension. This programme also let us adjust the brightness of the picture, this was useful because at some points n the film it seemed too dark to see what was happening.
What didn't work so well?
We wanted to film at night because this was a convention of horror, however our location had no street lights and was very dark. On our first day after filming the first couple of shot we realised it was too dark to see what was happening. We tried to use torches to brighten it up but this still didn’t work. We were able to edit the parts we’d already filmed so they seemed brighter but the rest of the filming had to be done on a different day, when it was lighter. This was slightly annoying as it was more time consuming but the next time we filmed it was lighter and we weren’t rushing to get all the shots we needed.
What will you do differently for your main task?
In our main task we will plan when we are filming and what we need to film more thoroughly to make sure we get everything done efficiently. Doing this will also mean we can plan all the equipment we need, this wasn’t a problem when film our prelim but it is easy to forget something one day.
