What I Learnt Last Lesson

Last lesson I learnt about the new brief that has been set. The brief said:
The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of 2 minutes.
We also got a mark scheme which everyone is aiming to get Level 4- Excellent in.
There are 3 parts of the mark scheme including Research and Planning, Practical work and Evaluation. At the moment we are just focusing on the Research and planning section.

As we watched the beginning of 'Mementos', we looked out for some of these conventions and I found that in order for it to be a good, effective thriller it needs most of these; from the first 5 minutes 'Mementos' seems to do so. It included eerie music, violence, makes you ask questions, shock of blood etc, tension and a non-linear narrative.
I also learnt the differences between horrors and thrillers:
Thriller: you don't see the murder
Horror: See the actual murder with blood etc.
Thriller: Threat of what might happen
Thriller: Makes audience work it out
Horror: Shown and told what happens
Thriller: Target more sophisticated audience (older ages)
This helped so that in the future, these wont get mixed up.

WWW and EBI

WWW: I think that our group's idea worked really well and the way we edited our sequence worked well as it now all flows and looks as if it could be just one long clip, instead of loads of different shots. We also included all of the shots we needed to which went well as this is what was needed to make it continuity editing.

EBI: We used a few more different shots to make it look more interesting and if we used a more quiet room in order for our dialogue to be heard and the people in the background wouldn't talk over our dialogue.

I think we did stick to all the rules that were given and that the continuity editing in our piece is correct and looks effective to the viewers.

Reflections on editing

Editing the sequence went quite well for most of it, only with a few mistakes that made us have to film a few scenes again as it didn't look right or continuous in any way. One example of this is when Emma was putting the cup of tea on the table in front of Todd by bending over and then in the next shot she was standing upright straight away; this didn't look correct and was obvious that it was 2 different shots so we had to film another clip of the cup itself being put on the table to break the 2 clips up and look as if Emma was standing upright. However, most of the clips did flow quite well, the only difficulty we had was the background noise and the dialogue as it was very hard to hear most of the dialogue being said as there were other people in the room talking over our group. To edit this we used iMovie on the Mac's and this way easy to use and allowed us to do everything we needed in order to make our sequence look continuous and effective as possible.

Reflections on filming

When filming the sequence, the continuity editing did seem harder to keep up and make sure everything looked exactly the same when on different shots. We made sure we followed the rules by doing it quickly and staying in the same positions to make sure the next shot would be the same as the one before. The continuity editing did prove difficult when dialogue was said and then when the person had to move in the next shot, as this could sometimes look out of place and not look realistic as they would move too far or would be in a different place etc. We used a camera and a tripod to do all of our filming as this was all the equipment we needed to make it look like a good sequence and the tripod helped to keep it all looking smooth and at the same level all the time. For our location, we chose to set it in the common room as it was supposed to be the setting of a cafe. We used the kitchen as we thought this would make it come to life and look much more realistic and look more like a cafe. This also made it look effective for continuity editing purposes as it always looked the same everytime we filmed it. Also, we used props from the kitchen in the common room like a cup, bowl of sugar, spoon etc. in order for Emma to make the tea, and for the story to actually make sense. This also added to make the continuity editing show more as in every cut, the props are used and by carrying on the actions with these props it shows that the continuity editing is actually working and looks effective.

Reflection on planning the sequence

To plan our sequence everyone in the group made their own storyboards and put all their ideas down, and then we shared them with eachother. This allowed us to think of different ideas and in the end come up with a sequence that would include everyones ideas together. This took quite a while as there were many ideas but the end result came out well. Every shot had to include the continuity editing and we made sure of this as we went along by discussing what shot it would be etc. It wasn't that hard to follow the rules and keep continuity editing in it during the planning as it seems easy as we all knew what would look continuous and what wouldn't.
Here is an example of some of the ideas I came up with at first: