Preliminary Task
The preliminary task was a rather restricting task, and I had little freedom as to how I wanted to approach it.
In the short piece of film, we had to film someone walking to a room, opening the door, sitting across from another person and have them exchanging a joke. Therefore, the amount of creativity we were allowed was limited. Although, we could choose what joke was told and the different shots, angles and camera movements we could include. However, certain shots were hard to capture due to the device we were using to film the footage; we used an iPad so shots such as a tracking shot were hard to capture as it was hard to hold the device steady. In addition, we only had twelve frames on a storyboard in which to complete the short film so were also limited with out creativity. Shots such as shot-reverse-shot were imperative to use in the task as we had two people conversing.
However, we did have a sense of creativity during the post production phase of the preliminary task. For example, we could choose what titles we would include and also the music that would accompany the footage. We also had freedom of editing. We edited using iMovie which doesn't offer a lot of special effects or transitions which once again limited the choices we could make.
Two Minute Horror Movie Opening
During the process of planning, filming and editing my horror movie opening, I had considerably more freedom and more creativity was allowed. However, there were certain things that I had to adhere to which once again limited certain creative choices.
The genre that the movie opening had to be was the central creative constraint; the two minute film opening had to be a horror and therefore had to follow or perhaps challenge codes and conventions of the genre. For example, we decided to challenge the convention in horror films of the male being the villain and a female character being a victim - my horror movie opening had the male being the victim, but the villain was unidentified, which is also a horror convention. During the production phase we had considerably more freedom as we filmed using a HD Canon Legria camera. Using this camera, we were able to alter and change the lighting and focus and other effects. We could also create the storyline and characters ourselves which required a lot of creativity. However, we were given advice which would affect our choices; for example, we were advised against including dialogue as it would be very hard for the camera to pick up what was being said.
More creativity was also allowed during the post production phase compared to that of the preliminary task. As we edited using Adobe Premiere Pro, we had more options when it came to effects and transitions, unlike when we edited using iMovie. Titles were able to be created to a higher standard also. On the other hand, we still had to adhere to the codes and conventions of the horror genre which eliminated possible choices. For example, the colour of the font in the titles would not be in yellow, as it is a cheery colour and not usually associated with they type of actions and incidents which occur in a horror film. That's why we decided to have the opening titles in a neutral white, with a red mist surrounding them. In addition, Freesound was also available to us which we could use to find pieces of music to include in our horror movie opening. Once again, we had to keep in the mind the codes and conventions and the overall tone of a horror film and our opening and use suitable music accordingly.
