Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The preliminary task taught me about the 180 degree rule and that as a film marker you must not go over the imaginary line of 180 degrees around a subject or the audience will get confused. However, some film makers use it to confuse the audience on purpose.
Match-on-action was also something I was taught in the preliminary task - that each shot has to follow on to the next shot in chronological order, meaning it makes sense for the audience.
I also learnt the importance of shot-reverse-shot, shown by this scene in pulp fiction. It is used to create a relationship and connection with two characters - used in our film when Darcie walks over to Adrian to take his coffee mug.
Our first attempt at filming our Thriller opening proved more difficult that we first thought. We has badly planned what we were going to do so we spent a lot of our time trying to think of the best way to do the shots.
The location also proved very difficult to use because it was very small and also the lady who owned the café couldn't let us use it for long - so we were very rushed for time.
We also had a continuity error in that the man who played 'Adrian' took his hat off halfway through the shoot therefore some of the shots didn't have the hat, but then the end shots did - thus changing the continuity of the film completely.
Due to the café being so small it proved difficult to use a tripod so we just use the camera handheld - which was a big mistake as we got a lot of camera shake and knew we had to use a tripod next time we filmed.
The biggest problem was trying to film the scenes after the girl has turned off the light because there was only one main light in the café, therefore once we turned it off it was pitch black. We tried using a torch and the light on the camera but the footage was unreadable and film failed so we had to re-film.
We went over our idea again and made more detailed storyboards (here) and a final shot-list (here). We made sure to use these on our actual shoot after fully checking the café we were going to use the second time - location shots (here).
We used the costume to relate to The Third Man by Adrian Doyle's costume as a tribute to the 'Noir Thrillers' of the 1940s. However, we planned Darcie's costume to be classic, but modern at the same time so that the target audience could relate to her.
Our narrative sequence is generic to the Thriller genre because of the aspects of the mise-en-scene we incorporated. The use of tilt shots connote mystery and confusion because the audience don't quite know what's going on because they are unable to tell good from evil - a Thriller convention, just like in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the audience cannot tell if Lisbeth is good or bad in some parts. We also used many close-up shots to give direct contact with key aspects of the mise-en-scene and also show the audience exactly what they should be focussing on. Also close-ups are a key Thriller convention.
The halo around the 'A' in 'Angel Café' reinforces the idea of irony,
thus making the audience think outside the box and work out the
meaning behind the title for themselves without too many blatant clues. 
We decided to put the titles for the actor names like this because it is bold and also interesting. The audience will have to tilt their heads slightly to see the first name of the actor, then straighten back up to see the surname. This is used as a metaphor for the tilt shots in the film and that it will be confusing at first, but once the audience understands the narrative they are able to think more clearly and think for themselves. At times editing proved difficult when the shots move where you don't want them to be or the sound didn't quite fit with the shot you were trying to work with. It was a learning curve for all of us and we managed to help each other out and get what we wanted in the end.
The main problem with editing was when all of our files corrupted, meaning that we had to start again and the files had to be re-converted. We think this was because we used Emily's digital camera and not a camera from the school, so the file type was different.
The final problem was changing all of the heights of the shots to 75% of the original height, because we shot in widescreen on Emily's camera it meant that on a square screen our shots looked very vertically stretched and by reducing that the shots looked much better.
Overall, I think that we worked well together, but our planning wasn't so great. The key to filming a great product is planning all the time, however we know shots are bound to change on-shoot, but planning in advance is always useful and I think that is definitely where we lacked. I feel my strengths in this process lied in editing, ideas and camera work. However, my weak points were planning and making sure I know exactly what I'm doing before we go to shoot the film so then the shoot can run smoothly - if we did so I think we might only had needed to shoot once or maybe twice at the most, lighting and shooting with the right equipment also were a weak point - using a tripod more often would have helped a lot. I am overall very pleased with the finished product and think that it works well as a final edit and also the narrative works well - and still stand by the decision to put the film into black-and-white because not many contemporary films are in black-and-white and therefore it would definitely give our film an edge over other films.
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