AS Media Prelim Task

Preliminary Task

• Our preliminary task was to create a short clip that involved match on action through a door, walking across a room and a few lines of dialogue.
• Our prelim task followed the horror genre. We tried to follow the main conventions by building suspense using music and sudden actions.
• We used a masked villain taking inspiration for the mask from films like ‘The Purge’. Other influences from different horror movies can be seen throughout the video. There was also a seemingly harmless victim.
• There was a chase scene involved where we used several different shots, including POV, before the victim entered the room and the villain appeared, only to give the victim a ruler that they had left in a maths class.

Research and planning

As this was only a preliminary task we already knew what props and location were available to us the only external prop used was the mask that the villain wears.

For our planning we used a storyboard that had all the angles and shot types we wished to use written down. It also held the plot we chose for our short film.

Our main concept was the idea of a chase scene, we built our short story around this idea and, since it is a common convention in horror films we chose that as our genre. This then evolved into the idea of a masked antihero who wanted to give the target a ruler.

Filming

In the filming we followed the plot and included a lot of the camera shots that we included in the storyboard but we also added several more.
 We added an extreme close up as Emma’s character fumbled with the keys to enter into the room. This, paired with the heavy breathing sound effect we added and the jangling of the keys was effective as the audience willed the victim to get the right key to open the seemingly locked door.

We still included the close up tilt at the beginning that showed a feet to face shot of the masked character, we also still included a stationary close up of the two characters feet as they ran.

When we were editing the tilt in final cut pro we also added suspense sound effects and music to make the scene more ominous.

In the filming we knew that we wanted to have two pan shots of the same room. One of them would view an empty room and the other would show the same room but with the villain sat on a chair waiting. When we were filming this we found that instead of two pans of the room, just having one and then adding the effect of the flickering lights and the sudden appearance would be more effective. It would mean more of a build-up of tension and with the correct non diegetic sound added in it could have more conventions of a horror movie included. We found this would be more appropriate.

The only problem that we came across whilst filming was when we were doing the pans we had to redo them several times due to it coming out shaky and amateur looking. We wanted a smooth pan but due to the stiffness of the tripod this took longer whilst filming.

When we were filming we included scenes where we saw the villain running but as we evaluated our work we found that I didn’t build the suspense like we were hoping, to improve this we could have made the villain walk or not physically move at all, just be seen over the victim’s shoulder as though they were teleporting. This would have fit into the more stereotypical horror genre.

Post Production

As we filmed the short movie in chronological order the arranging of the clips was easy and we had more time to edit. We edited the final footage on final cut pro.

When we were editing our chase scene we took inspiration from the opening sequence of another horror film. We made the shot so it was mostly POV and blacked the screen out in time with a heartbeat that we added in whilst we were editing, this was non diegetic sound. We had to add in each heartbeat separately to the blacked out screens as we found that if we tried to stretch the sound it would sound warped and out of time. Although this method took more time it made the scene dramatic as we built tension using the heartbeat and the mostly unknown position on the villain. It also fit in with some horror conventions so that it was more obviously in the horror genre.

When we were editing the match on action of Emma’s character walking through the door we had to be very careful as to where we cut the first and second shot so they smoothly linked together and the final product looked smooth and in time. as you can see in the screen shot we took that the scenes were cut so that there was no continuity errors.

We used the technique of blacking out the screen more than once. The first time was in the chase scene and the second was when the villain suddenly appeared in the room that the victim had run into. We used it to present the lights flickering which started out slow and became faster before it was edited as though the masked antihero had supernaturally appeared. We used sound effect that sounds like shattering glass for this which we found was not as effective as the sound of shuttering lightbulbs would have been but it still worked with the scene and made it more dramatic.

The title we added in one of the shots was criticized in the audience feedback as we found that the font used was not appropriate to the genre we picked out.  The title also didn’t match what the video itself was titled, one of the saying ‘the ruler of the mask’ the other ‘ruler of the mask’. To improve our short film we could have chosen a more appropriate font and made the titles match.

Evaluation

When we watched our final product back there were a few thing I felt like we could improve. This included the timing of the ‘jump scare’ sound effect at the beginning when the victim first sights the antihero. There was also the scene where the victim first pushes through the door and it bounces back that I felt we should have re shot as it made the scene look a bit clumsy. I think we did well in the chase scene and the blackout editing we included. I enjoyed the filming and editing process of the task and learnt new skills whilst using final cut pro. I feel more confident in my own abilities in this subject and I am proud of the final product.

Audience Feedback

When we were presenting our work to the rest of the class we got a range of feedback both positive and negative. The audience liked our use of sound (the added heartbeats, heavy breathing, suspense building music and diegetic sounds like when we had the jangling of the keys) they found this effective as it made the clips fit more into the horror genre that we gave it. The enjoyed the wide range of camera angles that we included and how many conventions we included to make it more effective as a whole. The audience also gave us constructive criticism for our finished product. In some scenes there was background noise where we filmed at lunch so it was a contrast to the quietness that was included in the first shots that were completed during lesson time. There were also a few moments when the shot was shaky. This took away the quality of the short film as it looked amateur. There were some comments about how we could have matched the breathing sound effect to the victim breathing as this would have been more effective. There was also some smiling in serious moments of the short film.