Chylo Dynair - Question 7

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


When creating our preliminary task, we came across many problems (that were luckily resolved during the making of our final piece. One problem we had was avoiding too many conventions of thrillers, which in affect made it hard to see them as thrillers at all. In our group, we did want to break away from the norm and have some unique aspects to our thrillers, but in our preliminary task, we avoided (in my opinion) too many conventions, which lead to the film not seeming to be a thriller at all.


For example, in our preliminary task, we had used humor during some conversations. Although at the time we thought this was a good idea because we felt that comedy appealed to our target market (teenagers) we found that by having humor - and at the same time having little suspense, shadow and light, and intriguing characters - there was too much conventions of a comedy, so our piece didn't seem to be anything like a thriller.


Another problem we had was with casting. During our preliminary task, we were unable to (and found it unnecessary to) cast any actors to film at such an early stage in the process, but after editing our preliminary task, we found that the actress we had chosen would give the team unnecessary difficulties during our final task. Although the actress used (me) was a part of the group - so would be more willing and free on more occasions in order to be filmed, we found that if I was used in the final piece, it would make it hard for us to use the convention of shadow and light. Because I have a dark skin tone, the lighting used on set would need to be bright at all times in order to see my facial expressions clearly, so we wouldn't be able to have a dark(er) setting that is usually seen in thrillers.



Here is an image of Flora shot in the dark room with the red lighting wanted in our film. Flora has quite fair skin, and difficulties are still found when trying to point out certain facial expressions or features. Although we wanted this mood for this particular shot, this would have been how every shot turned out (if not worse) if I was used in the final opening.