Prelim

NOTE TO THE CUNTS WISHING TO STALK MY BLOGS SPECIFICALLY FOR POTENTIAL MEMES FUCK OFF AND IM TALKING TO YOU JACK





Introduction

As part of our coursework unit, the class was asked to produce a scene, in order to prepare for the creation of our final thriller sequence piece, before we began to start the opening of the thriller film, we were asked to produce a preliminary exercise, counting as 20 marks towards our coursework. The preliminary task was set to allow for me to practice elements that I may be not so good at and also try for the first time, things including camera techniques, Mise en scene, editing, using Adobe Primere Pro software and sound, which will provide me with a coherent understanding of media techniques before creating my final piece.
The scenario that the preliminary is based upon, is titled "You're Fired", where the basic plot outlines that character A is called into the bosses office to receive some bad news about their job, I worked in a group teaming up with Abigail Bacon and Danielle Duffy and together we devised a plan for the production of the preliminary working from the brief given to us.
Below is all the work attached of what we got up to, who completed this and why this would be effective to us. I've also included self evaluations to my work, explaining how I felt what went successful, and what went bad in order for me to establish what I can do better for next time.  

Media Preliminary Final Script

Above using Scribd, I uploaded the final script in a standard that's expected from a typical layout and format of a professional script. The group planned the script together and worked on the plot, discussing what we think audience would want to watch and how would the plot grab their attention with suspense, anticipation and twists. 
We discussed plot twists and dialogue and how this would keep audiences watching and preventing from turning the film off their screens.
This task was very team-work based and parts involved having to act out dialogue to figure out how this should be said and how we can embed acting into this, it was particularly needed for the end where the scenes got more intense.
Nearing an end to our completed script, the team decided the roles we should have and decided that the two central characters would be played by Abigail Bacon (as Chief) and myself (as Miss Crawford), with Danielle Duffy working the camera.
This allowed us to connect to our roles, so for me as I was playing Miss Crawford, I placed individual research of how I think my character should act, speak and look like, I relied on Mise en scene and typical representations of my character so I researched crime-action TV shows and films, as this is where our genre fitted into, being a government conspiracy, action film scene, so looking into the representations of these characters particularly a female who's strong and independent, as I knew this is what my character should roughly be like, I found US show Person of Interest representations very useful, especially female characters Sameen Shaw and Root (portrayed respectively by Sarah Shahi and Amy Acker) as they fitted into the female category very well.  
Personally, I found that this task went very well and I enjoyed working in my team and also as my own building up character research, I felt that we made a great job of the script and love how we all put our own inputs into it, making it our own personal project.

Annotated Script

After creating the final script of our Preliminary task, we than proceeded to annotate our scripts, we sat down together and discussed in detail about technical detail, things such as camera angles and character actions have all been annotated in red pen by myself.
The annotated script will deem very important, especially when it comes to filming as its something that will give us insight to what we're doing, it will also prove useful when the time comes to making the shot log as its quicker to pick the shots out and create a list of needed information.
I enjoyed this task as it allowed us to work closer as a team to discuss with confidence and ease about the annotated script, I believed we discussed each shots in a professional and coherent matter, taking down one another views and responses and respectfully reviewing them. To annotate the script, as a group took us around 1hr30mins-2hrs, however despite this time we knew that everything was discussed and noted as we worked through the script slowly making sure that we left no stone upturned.

Preliminary Shot List

Above is the completed shot list of the camera scenes and edits we completed for the prelim, this was done in order to read the script a lot easier and quicker when it comes to filming our scenes. Using the annotated script for reference, we sifted through all the notes, dialogue and camera angles we noted down around each scene and was easily able to create the shot list. The shot list took a while to complete, it consists of four pages of 111 shots for the prelim, although detailed it would help us in the long run as we start to film the shots, it would save the group time and energy.

Storyboard Preliminary


     
Above are our groups storyboard, they're 28 pages consisting of 111 shots altogether of our You're Fired Prelim, as they're were so many shots to complete we split them up evenly and worked through them, I did shots 6-73 whilst Danielle Duffy did shots 1-5 and 74-109, whilst Abby Bacon completed the shot list, we did this over the period of one weekend. However both myself and Danielle had to prevent on filling out the timing and edit box as we felt as a team we needed to discuss all together about these two elements and than write them in when we felt happy with those decisions, again for this, the storyboards were spilt into three and were completed when the shot lists and storyboards were completed. For me I enjoyed completing my numbered storyboards, my task was to use Abby's shot list as a reference for the camera angles and than write in shot numbers, action, sound, shot and dialogue as well as drawing out what we would be doing in the shot scene, here I used my annotated script for reference to know what we would be doing, so for example in Shot 70 (see pictures for reference)there's a scene where Boss brings up her gun to reveal her aiming her gun at Miss Crawford who, vice versa is doing that also, in this edit it states that they're is a eye line match there so it was my job to try and replicate that in my drawings and made sure that it stuck to the description at all times.

Shot Pictures

Before we got to do any filming we were allowed to practice taking pictures on the camera and work on lighting and character positions, this was a good chance to roughly go over things before filming underwent for the prelim. Here are the pictures of how we got on, as you can see we tried different poses and reaction shots of our characters in the location we were going to film in to make it easier to establish where positions will be, especially the lighting stands as we did not want this to intervene throughout shooting.

 
Throughout this task it got us thinking about many things, especially about our positions as well as our characters throughout filming, our prelim consisted of some heavy scenes where floor space will be necessary at all costs. So throughout filming we will have to move and alter things around yet we still want to keep character positioning throughout the film still realistic and strong so when we play it all throughout the prelim wont look confusing where characters end up everywhere.
This task was a great way to experiment using our filming space, storyboards and shot lists as a way of establishing what will be happening in each scene, myself and Abby tried practice runs (seen in pictures) of what may be happening and if we thought the position was realistic or not, if not than we seek other options at hand.

Shot Log



The shot log was all the shot numbers that didn't make the final cut for the prelim, they were either scraped or replaced, the shot log provides information about these shots and why they could or could not have been used for the final outcome of our preliminary, things such as unwanted background, shine across faces or lighting stands seen in the background were one of many things why we choose not to include in our preliminary as we felt it would obscure people attentions from our prelim plot to the minor problems that these shots consisted of. In a way, we have self-evaluated our shots, explaining if we could or could not of used them and why this was decided.
We discussed and worked together as a group closely, going through all shots and placing the usable ones in one file to be uploaded onto the editing software in an exact order and the scrap ones in another. Whilst completing the shot log, we referred back to the scrap file and investigated why we couldn't of used these shots, or if we could have why they weren't used for the final cut, I found this a great task to do, especially as it got the group aware of common problems that we may experience whilst filming for the preliminary, especially the frequent problems of unwanted background and sound.  
It also got us to self-evaluate our work in an coherent and professional manner, watching these clips as if we were the audience and thinking what they would be thinking about these clips flaws and how and what we could do to better these skills in the long run.      


Final Piece for the Preliminary


 

After watching this through myself, I felt it really went well, this prelim was highly successful especially as this was the first moving image coursework I have had to do, especially in the two week time period we got as well, I felt that we were successful in choosing our shots, they all fitted in well with the story and it made me feel like I was really there in the scenes, I also found that editing went with ease and a continued flow, I really thought I would struggle when it came to editing, especially as I have not attempted to edit before so I believe that this was also highly successful. The only thing I would have to say was that I would of liked to have spent more time on sound and audio as there were parts that was difficult to hear and understand, so I think for next time spend and arrange more time in which I can work and edit on sound. But overall this preliminary task has really helped me to experiment and develop on skills I would of never thought to have used before. I have also got a wide range of strengths and weaknesses so I know what to improve on for next time.

Audience Feedback

As we presented and shown our prelim to the other group, we were allowed to get feedback based on what they have watched, us as a group asked for feedback of their views of the prelim and got them to note it down on a feed back response page, right down to editing, camera shots, sounds and narrative. This was an important task for us as it allowed us to get valued feedback from other people that were not involved in the production of our prelim, it provides us with accurate guidelines to the strengths and weaknesses of our prelims, this can than get recorded and placed towards the thriller opening task which will soon need to take place, allowing us to improve through our mistakes and make the next task a lot better.

 
Evaluation


Overall

Throughout the two weeks of doing the Preliminary, I got very familiar with the idea of working closely as a team and producing scenes using professional equipment such as the software editing program, Adobe Premiere Pro whilst also having full access and use to filming equipment such as cameras, tripods and lighting stands.
The task also got me thinking to how being in a group is very important, for me I don't think I could of completed this prelim on my own in the time given, so for me the final thriller opening sequence would be great if we collaborated and worked in a team again, the simple things like working closely as a team and sharing the work proportions equally and placing in more time and effort really brought the group together, I have learnt many skills and confidence in doing so in the process.