Since the completion of our preliminary task, I feel a lot more confident in experimenting with different angles and I think as a group we have become more creative in our ideas for narratives. For our preliminary task our main focus was to include the essential task of filming a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character and having a short conversation, we didn’t experiment much at all with the plot, nor did we experiment with different angles, we just made sure we included the 3 principles which were the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot.
In our preliminary task we had a few issues with the editing of the sound. We had muted the sound in some scenes where the background noise was too loud, then brought it back again when the dialogue came in, at the time we we’re editing this we didn’t realise how odd it looked/sounded to have one scene completely silent, this mistake however has made has taught us the importance of ambient sound and background noise. With the experience of this mistake in our heads we were able to quickly fix a problem we had with the sound during the filming of our opening sequence, we were filming dialogue between two characters at a bus stop, but there was too much noise coming from the constant traffic, we made the decision of re-filming this scene at a completely new location where were we not disturbed by background noise.
During the editing of our opening sequence we experimented with putting music in some scenes to match the mood of the scene and create enigma, this is something we didn’t even think about doing in our preliminary task, although it was under a minute long so it didn’t matter too much. We definitely needed to have music in our opening sequence as it is one of the main conventions of a thriller, and it’s something all movies have. We chose the two tracks to include, Wake by Linkin Park and Something in the Way by Nirvana, both songs really match the atmosphere of the opening sequence. We used the song Wake at the beginning during the dream, I thought it went really well with the editing; as the dream progressed so did the music, it did well in building up suspense and mystery. We used the Nirvana track whenever she was alone, we edited it with the clips to make it look as though she is turning on the music as soon as she wakes up, and when Nadia pulls her earphones out and the music stop, this indicates it’s what she was listening to through her headphones. I think this song fit perfectly in the scenes and suited the character, the way it is mellow and calm, but at the same time quite distressing because of the lyrics and the foreboding element it has.
I think since our preliminary task we have developed our skill and knowledge of editing the most, we were more confident in trying out new effects and putting into action new ideas. We experimented with the many different effects on iMovie. We decided that it would be more effective to have just the dream scenes in black and white, this not only makes the definition between dreams and reality more clear, but it also adds a sense of anxiety and fright.
Black and white effect
We also used the effect “ghost trails” quite a bit throughout the dream; it made any movement seem exaggerated and appear ghostly, this effect alongside slow motion was really effective, we used both on the clip of the girl skipping along the brick wall and it made a huge difference.
We also used transitions to show the continuity from one scene to the next. We used many different transitions such as fade ins, fade outs, straight cuts, overlaps and dissolves. I though most of our transitions worked effectively, we would constantly change transitions until we were 100% sure it worked, I think the main transition we used were the fade in or fade out. In our preliminary task, we weren’t this experimental; we mainly just used straight cuts.
One thing that we could’ve improved on was probably the camera work, especially during the dialogue. We managed to get key shots like shot reverse shot and we stuck to the 180 degree rule, but the main let down was because we didn’t use a tripod; it wasn’t tall enough to do a successful over the shoulder shot. We had to do these shots free hand which despite us trying to hold the camera very steady, were still slightly shaky. However some shots, especially in the dream were deliberately shaky, to show the uneasiness of the setting, but during the dialogue shaky camera was unnecessary. Camera work is definitely an aspect we would work on to ensure high quality shots with easy to follow dialogue. Since our preliminary task though, we have certainly improved with our sound and editing skills.
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