Looking back at your prelim project how have you progressed from then to now?

Looking back at my Prelim is weird because I can't believe how much we've changed (editing-wise) in that time. It's a huge step from our soul-selling-for-jaffa-cakes film to Esther. But how did we progress?

Technologies.
There is a massive difference in the amount of technologies used in our Prelim to our Final Project.

Prelim technologies - Sony bloggie (Ralph the camera), the Mac in HRC and Final Cut Pro. We used Ralph to film with (and it was really strange filming our prelim because we weren't used to the cameras. And we filmed our prelim before we needed to and ended up not liking it. So we refilmed another and that's the one about Sarah selling her soul to me for jaffa cakes.), The Mac to edit because it had the editing software Final Cut Pro on it. When they went to HRC (I've explained in my last prezi about why I couldn't go) they were going for a tutorial on how to use the Macs and to edit the whole Prelim together and although I wasn't there they kept me up to date on what was happening and my input still counted.

Final Project technologies - Sony bloggie, the Mac in the Cam Room, Final Cut Pro, Paint, Microsoft Powerpoint, Midi Keyboard, Input device, Microphone and Garageband. Again we used Ralph to film (we owe it all to him! he was FAB), the Mac in the Cam room to edit it all together because it too contained the editing software we needed. We also used the Mac to research for our Satanic Ritual. Final Cut Pro was what we used to edit it all together, we put all the clips together in order and then added effects/rapid cuts/transitions/colour corrections later. Paint was going to be used in the making of our Production sign as we originally wanted it to have moose antlers on it however we changed our minds half way through our production as we felt the antlers were too much and the edited production sign wasn't needed. Microsoft Powerpoint was what we actually used to create our Production sign. We chose the font and the colour of the background and then we converted each slide to HTML so we could use them as pictures. The effects you see on the production logo were on Final Cut Pro and placed over the top so that they'd move. The Midi Keyboard was where we recorded our original music, The input device was what we used to connect up the midi keyboard and the microphone. Garageband was what everything was recorded onto.

This is a picture of what Garageband looks like and how it's used. The blue, green and purple lines at the top are the recorded sound/music. The larger purple line is a close up of whichever line of sound you've chosen so you can be more specific if you choose to cut any of the music.

We used more technologies during our Final project because we wanted to make it look more professional and more advanced than our Prelim. We wanted it to feel like a real film opening whereas our Prelim was just a tester for all the camera angles we could use later.

Cinematography.
We had a wider range of cinematography in our Final Project than our Prelim as it was longer and even though the whole point of our Prelim was to use a variation of camera angles we used twice as much in the death sequence alone.

Camera angles in the Prelim - Long shot, close up, tracking shot, two shot, over-the-shoulder shot and zoom.

Camera angles in our Final - High + low angled shots, close up, extreme close up, tracking shot, panning, mid shot, establishing shot, wide shot and long shot.

We wanted our cinematography to convey what we were representing or trying to represent in our film so we used more of a variation in our Final than we did our Prelim.

Other aspects of our prelim - We broke the 180 degree rule as we didn't know what it was at the time we filmed it. Infact I think it was the lesson after we filmed it that we learned what this term meant and how to use it.

Other aspects of our Final - We used the 180 degree rule because we remembered that it's important to stick to it this time.

Editing.
Our Prelim was the first time we'd ever tried editing so it's awful compared to our final. Our final took us months to edit together so you can see that alot more precision was involved. The prelim was edited together in one day and put on our youtube that same day...so it's not at it's best.

An example of a gap between shots in our Prelim.

Editing used within the Prelim - Plain/Simple cuts, No adding of effects or filters and there's gaps of darkness where the transitions are.

Stop motion blur in Esther

Editing used within our Final - Rapid cuts during the death sequence to build the tension, use of filters in our abstract dream scene such as stop motion blur and bad film and colour correction used in the opening shots because they came out really bright (which doesn't fit in with the conventions of Horror).

You can tell when looking at both our Prelim and our Final that more care was taken during the Final editing process. We wanted our piece draw people in and stand out from everybody else's. We didn't want to do a typical horror and we figured that we could show this through our use of transitions and filters when we edited it all together. By the time we edited our Final Project we were much more confident with Final Cut Pro and had sussed a lot of the technologies (I said a lot of because there were some we just couldn't get) we wanted to use by the time we were editing it together.

Mise-en-scene.
In our Prelim we didn't focus much on the mise-en-scene and put alot of our concentration into getting the cinematography right. We didn't think about how the colour of our costumes, the lighting, the make up, the props, the setting etc would effect anything within our Prelim because it was a task based on camera angles. We took a different view of this in our Final.

Mise-en-scene used in our Prelim - No artificial lighting was used. It was all natural, the colour of our clothes weren't taken into account however they do actually match what we're trying to convey, We used one prop and that was the jaffa cakes.

Mise-en-scene used in our Final - Mostly artificial lighting or colour correction, Plenty more props such as the pentagram and the book, we put alot of thought into the lighting especially during the death sequence and we used more than one location.

Mise-en-scene was a huge priority for us in our Final. We thought carefully about costume and lighting as those were the aspects that were quite important to our production. We saw Jess in lots of dark clothing to show how she was corrupted by
Esther (who is also seen in dark clothing near the end to show that she is showing her true colours) and Sarah wore flowery clothing and dresses to represent her innocence and naivety to Jess's mental disability. The lighting during the death scene was homely and warm so it signified a sense of normality in Sarah's life and in no way give away what happens next.



Sound.
There was no consideration of sound in our Prelim. We didn't see it as relevant (much like mise-en-scene) because the point of the task was to show 5 camera angles. However we did use a conversation to show this. Our Final Project has a lot more use of sound and music played a huge impact in our opening.

Sound used in our prelim - only dialogue picked up by Ralph, we didn't think of the quality of the audio on our camera and  we made up what we were going to say on the spot.

Sound used in our Final - Use of voice overs in dream scene, created and used original music in the death sequence, we adjusted sound levels of the room (such as the TV) to suit the shot, scripted dialogue that we'd all thought out together.

Esther would have been nothing if it weren't for our use of sound and music. The voice overs were used to keep in with the conventions of a Psychological Thriller in our dream scene and a horror as we used effects to make them sound creepy, we composed our own tensious music to go behind the death scene and found some on a creative commons website for the dream, we took into consideration other devices making sounds in each shot so that they didn't distract from the goings on and scripted alot of our dialogue so it was clear and concise. Unlike our Prelim where everything was rushed and decided on the spot. It didn't matter too much what we spoke about as long as we got it on film.

THE END. :)