What I have learnt

By doing this opening film I have learnt a lot about camerawork, editing and producing.

From doing a storyboard for 'The trip' we were able to identity which camera shots would fit in best with the atmosphere which we were trying to achieve. By doing this planning beforehand it meant that we could try out these shots to the best of their ability during filming. We managed to stick to the shots which we said we would incorporate into our film from the storyboard. Some of these shots included match on action, over the shoulder and long shot. To emphasise these shots even more we learnt how to take the clip from different angles. We used both high and low angles throughout our film to fit in with the action which was happening between the antagonist and protagonist. From our preliminary task we learnt how to do the 180 degree rule and match on action which we then able to use in our opening film. From doing this I have become more confident with using the camera and finding which shots would fit in best with the action and setting which would be on screen.

Editing was a fairly new skill for me before starting our opening film and continuity task. I have now learnt precisely how to create continuity between shots by editing them and fitting them in to the right places. I have also now managed to add an effect on to the sequence which we have filmed. This has meant that the lighting of the shot could be changed to create the right atmosphere for the film. The main editing we did was for continuity purposes so that the film could run smoothly. However, we did add a dark effect onto the car park scene due to the fact that it was very light on that day which did not fit in with the rest of our shots. We also added music to our opening film. We had a few problems with finding the right music to fit in with the atmosphere that we were trying to create for our psycho thriller. We eventually found one from a royalty free website which we used two from. One of the music sets we used throughout most of the film until the end with the knife scene where we used a more tense, slower beat sound track.

I have learnt a lot about producing of films since making our opening film. We had to make sure that we were choosing the correct target audience in order to make our film a success. This meant doing audience research before and after the making of our film so we knew that we were targeting the right sort of people before we finished and would have produced our opening film. I have also learnt about what it takes to put together a film. Organisation is key and connecting to and being able to contact all members of the team is a very important thing to making sure that the film is created in the time frame and that the process runs smoothly. I have learnt to work with other people and how to assign people a certain role or task according to their ability. This meant that we could get what we needed to do to make our film a success quicker as we assigned each other roles within the group. This meant that the production of our film ran well because we all got on with each other and were able to get the opening film complete with enough time left over to work on our blogs, evaluation questions and audience feedback.