Today's Lesson (8th October, 2013)

Preliminary Task

Cast: Jess Mitchell (Mrs. Mullen's minion), Amy Nock (Miss Hill's Sidekick), Myself (Miss Hill) and George Tuvey (Mrs. Mullen).

2 lessons beforehand, Miss Hill told us that we had to create a very short film (2 minutes maximum) called the Preliminary Task. In this exercise, we had to incorporate a prop (that we randomly selected blindfolded) into the film, match-on-action, shot-reverse-shots and to follow the 180 degree rule. In addition, the narrative of the Preliminary Task had to include the following: someone opening a door, that same person walking across a room, then sitting in a chair opposite someone and have a conversation with them. This narrative had to contain all the conventions that we required for the Preliminary Task, as well as ensuring that we strictly followed and used continuity. Continuity was vital for the Preliminary Task. In today's lesson, we finished the editing process of our Preliminary Task. We had completed the filming for our Preliminary Task the lesson before (after the first initial lesson of being set to complete the Preliminary Task where we selected the prop and discussed what we were going to film etc.) which only took that one lesson due to using the lesson before that to discuss as a group what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. We wanted to be fully organised and have the Preliminary Task planned out properly before filming it. We completed the editing during today's lesson with the exception of us coming into our media classroom at lunchtimes and starting editing the film. In addition, in the editing process, we added sound effects and music.

The beginning of the planning our thriller film opening

After finishing the editing of our Preliminary Task and publishing it and uploading it onto our YouTube channel (SillyKiwiProductions), we began planning for our legitimate thriller film opening. Firstly, we gathered our pre-made brainstormed storyboards made in the activity in the lesson where we were introduced to the Preliminary Task. Each individual from a production group had to go and collect different pieces of coloured paper, look at what element/convention was written on the paper (mise en scene, editing etc.) and merge them together with the other members in your group to create a rough idea/outline of a full thriller film. This wasn't our real, initial idea of what our thriller film opening was going to be. For example, one of the created storyboards was about a psychopath and a police officer on the same boat and we didn't want to make anything like this. But, the whole idea of this activity was to take conventions/elements from the created storyboards and loosely place them into brainstorms for our real thriller film opening. So for example, if we liked the idea of using an abandoned house as a location and a knife as a prop, we could use them in the brainstorm for our thriller film opening. This wasn't compulsory, but we could do it if we wanted to.

Because we spent a fair amount of the lesson editing our Preliminary Task, after we looked at the created storyboards from the activity for inspiration, we didn't have much time to actually come up with any ideas for our thriller film opening.

We'll begin planning next lesson hopefully!