Pre-Production Evaluation

Pre-Production

Before starting to film our prelim, we all discussed what storyline we would base our short video on. As the prelim was estimated to be around thirty seconds long, we knew that we had to create a basic story that would enable us to add in the necessary camera angles and editing techniques. We were told that we had to include a shot reverse shot, match on action and we had to stick to the 180 degree rule. We had to include a character walking through a door and also a bit of dialogue must have been implemented by two or more people. By brainstorming our storyboard as a group, we came to the conclusion that the prelim must be simple. We decided to base the action in a detention room where two students are sitting and seem to be having an argument, (shot reverse shot, dialogue). Then a teacher enters a room through the door, (match on action). The teacher would hold up two exam papers and ask who copied of whom, (180 degree rule), as the exams were identical. The original story board is as follows: As a whole, using a storyboard definitely benefitted us as a group. We learnt that it is crucial to have a plan before filming because you have to keep organised. Furthermore, we knew when we were going to add the compulsory requirements. After having the lesson with the year 13s, it really gave us an insight on how many problems can actually arise during the filming of our thriller, some of them also came up in our prelim video. Some of the best information that they gave us was about filming the footage. We had never realised that when filming, you would have to take some risks such as deleting some of the footage that you may thought working with the other scenes you have filmed. They also taught us that we shouldn’t be afraid of things like editing and trying different things. They also mentioned that when you are filming, don’t rush it but editing takes longer so it’s best to film all the footage first so you can spend the majority of your time editing and making your thriller film better. Another thing that we had problems with is trying to find a good way to film our prelim. We decided that the best way to do it was on the Smartphone app, IMovie. We found this app really easy to use and helped us a lot because we have never done anything like this before. This also made the task a whole lot less stressful for the group, causing fewer arguments.