Looking back at you preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Development of skills since the preliminary task

Sound:
I feel as editor that our biggest improvement was the sound, this ranged from ambient sound to the music we used. In our preliminary task we scrapped all of the background noise in shots where there was no talking; this made the whole production seem bizarre and ruined the continuity. We spent quite a lot of time making sure that the sound in the opening sequence was to a high standard. We went a re-filmed a scene due to the background noise overpowering the conversation between the characters. We spent a long time looking for the right music to fit our opening sequence as we understood that the music represented the mood of the movie. We had a very specific idea of what mood we wanted in our opening sequence so we had to find the right music to reflect a ‘calm before the storm’ mood. I feel the music was the strongest part of our production as it did a good job of building up the suspense and enigma. Another reason I feel the sound was our strongest element was the use of new skills. I recently discovered the technique of extracting the audio from a clip. This technique allowed us to turn a confusing scene into a self explanatory scene. Instead of it seeming that the main character is just seeing the mental institute the use of dialogue made it seem like a flashback, which was our original intention. We played around with the sound of the dialogue until it seemed like a fuzzy memory that has come back to haunt the character and makes her realise what she is seeing. We also used sound effects to enhance the mood of the production; certain parts of the production seemed to need a little something more. By adding sound effects we managed to not only fill these parts of the production, but we also managed to build up the enigma.

Special effects:
Special effects played a very important part in our production, without them much of the production would be confusing and boring. One instance that may cause confusion is the definition between dreams/ flashbacks and reality. For dreams and flashbacks we decided to make the clips black and white. This way when the clips changed from black and white to colour the viewer would clearly know that they are supposed to be different.

Also for the dreams and flashbacks we added in an effect called ‘Ghost trails’ this meant that if there was movement in the clip it would be exaggerated and appear as if the movement is ghost like. We added this effect to several clips, but it was mainly to clips in the dream. This was to make the dream seem more haunting. Especially the clip with the girl skipping, it would just be comical if we saw a clip of a girl skipping along a wall. Adding ghost trails made the clip less comical and more haunting.

Transitions:
Transitions play an important part in the continuity of a production. We used several different transitions, mainly fade ins and fade outs, but we also used straight cuts, overlaps and dissolves to make the production appear continuous. I believe most of our transitions work effectively. There were many scene changes in our production and the most effective way to show this was to have a fade in or a fade out. We learnt this from our preliminary task as we used loads of straight cuts in that. It was not as effective to have one scene cut to a completely different one as it ruined the continuity and confused the viewers. Overall I believe we used transitions well as our production flows quite well, there are only a few instances where the transitions could be improved.Camera work:
Out of all the elements in our opening sequence I would say that camera work is the weakest. I wouldn’t say the camera work was particularly bad; it just needed a bit more work. If we had used a variety of angles in our shots then they would have been a lot stronger. Some of the clips were done free hand, so they were slightly shaky. This was effective on some clips, such as in the dream as it showed the disequilibrium of the situation. But for some of the clips, such as the conversation there was no need for the shaky camera. That scene probably would have been more effective if the camera was on a tripod. But, we did stick to the 180 degree rule and we used over the shoulder shots in our opening sequence, so it wasn’t all bad. Overall if we were to improve anything about our opening sequence I believe we would focus on camera work.