Preliminary Piece and Evaluation
On the 31st October we got set the preliminary task of making the titles and opening of a new fiction thriller, to last a maximum of 2 minutes. We were put into a group of 3, and had 2 weeks to complete the task.
Overall, looking at our final preliminary piece, it clearly conveys and supports a typical stereo type of men. The two actors were male, both in suits and both dressed formally. The mise- en- scéne conforms to dominant ideologies, making it overall quite effective. The mise- en- scéne of the room we used was appropriate as it had stairs leading up to it, and it was quite small, emphasising mystery and confined thriller.
Even though the location we used was effective, the lighting through the room was far too bright. There was a window right in the middle of the shot, shining too much light into the room, making the shot reverse shot look washed out and bleached- which is the opposite of what we want for a thriller.
The overall non-diegetic sound of our piece fitted well with the genre. The soundtrack caused suspense throughout the piece, and when the sequence got more intense, the original soundtrack faded into a more piercing soundtrack towards the end to emphasise the antagonist’s power and role compared to the protagonist.
To improve the piece, we could have added some sound effects, such as a door bang when the door closes, to make the feel scarier and create more tension. We could have added some diegetic sound into the piece as the non-diegetic sound overruled the whole piece.
We used a variety of camera angles, such as low angle to make our antagonist look powerful and strong at the end, and high angles to make our protagonist look weak and helpless.
We added a pull focus shot half way through to engage the antagonist's request and the protagonist's response. This was slightly effective; however we could have made it more obvious to the viewer as some of the class did not identify it. We could make this more obvious by making the camera focus on the protagonist for longer- this would have enhanced the effect as the antagonist would have been blurred out.
