Preliminary Task - Audience Response

On the cusp of the Half Term, our group had completed the Preliminary Task, and appeared all set for devising a two minute thriller. Beforehand, our teacher Mr. Sheriff insisted that we watched all 5 Prelims in order to accumulate a bigger picture of ideas when approaching such task. Therefore, during one media lesson, we sat watching our fellow peer’s thrillers, mutually conveying positive feedback in order to make a smaller quantity of errors in the near future.

Generally, I consider our Prelim was fundamentally accepted by the students as a whole. We provoked audience response through some less than admired acting, as well as effectively entwining the key micro elements of sound, mise en scene, cinematography and editing.

Our first and foremost form of feedback concerned dialogue. In hindsight, it appears that shooting large amounts of dialogue was a bad idea, as the cameras do less than a satisfactory job in picking up sound. Therefore, during our two minute thriller sequence, we will incorporate sparse dialogue, or perhaps none at all.

In terms of cinematography, the audience pinpointed one panning shot from outside a classroom that was poorly executed. The momentary jolt almost reminds the audience they are watching an unprofessional A level prelim, when the overall theory behind media and film to believe in the invisible art.

As Dave is seen walking into the classroom, the students quite fairly stated that a two shot, or a master shot should have been incorporated into the sequence to state both the protagonist and antagonist are in one room, sitting at the same table.

To finally conclude, we used Beethoven’s 9th Symphony to wrap up the Prelim as Dave walks from the classroom victorious. This is a key micro feature used at the beginning and conclusion of the prelim, which the audience said worked well, as the fast paced non-diegetic sound fundamentally mirrors the foreboding tension of the classroom scene, leaving the audience to question what the male lead will do next.

Our final response in relation to the prelim was the fade added in post production, which seemed well executed and used successfully. We were told by the Year 13 not to use extremely animated and vibrant fades such as Stars and Spirals as they look tacky and unprofessional, and therefore approached the fade in a subtle manor.