Evaluating my skills an development throughout the AS year.

Digital Technologies: how skilled are you in these areas?

This includes your use of camera techniques, your use of blogger, your use of prezi (if you used it), the internet (used for research for example) final cut editing techniques, garageband, photoshop (if you used it), social networking (if you used it)

During the filming process we struggled to film our opening as it were drawn out in the story board due to restrictions in the house we filmed it in, this meant we has to stray from our original plan and adapt to the setting we had. Despite this we did use a range of camera techniques. The main issue we found after putting our footage on a mac was that our framing could have been a lot better. There we shots where the heads were cut off or it just didn’t quite look right. On the whole our camera angles, distances etc were varied. I think my use of blogger was good. As a group we tried to use blogger a lot to document what we were doing, and resource for a lot of research. I made it look very presentable and clear to read. The thing I could have improved on is embedding video. I always had to ask for help as I found it very confusing. I personally found the editing process the hardest part. I didn’t know anything about Final Cut Pro when I started the year and only knew basic skills by the end as a result; I tended to take a back seat in the editing suite still imputing my opinion and ideas. I think this year I will have to work hard on trying to push myself to do more of the editing. We used social networking as a group to communicate between each other to arrange days we were filming and days we would come in out of college timetable to edit/do the blog. This worked well for the whole group as it was an instant way of arranging what we were going to do to meet the deadline. 

Creativity:

In what ways did you try to be original? How successfully did you balance the use of standard conventions of thrillers with the aim to be different or original?

Eg consider  techniques used, narrative, character, mood, sound, themes, titles etc 

I think we managed well to be original in our thriller opening as we stayed away from the usual generic, long slow-paced shots accompanied by a creepy non-diegetic soundtrack. We went down the direction of a fast-paced more energetic opening. We wanted the concept of enigma to withstand through this so we left a lot to the imagination and didn’t give too much away about what the film would be about without it not making sense. We tried to use conventions of a thriller but I don’t think we used as much as we could of done. As I have said we stayed away from the stereotypical type of opening which was a bitter sweet because although it made our plot very original it limited the amount of conventions we could use without it looking silly. Saying that we did use some for example, the font of the title, the dark low-lit feel to “Enrico’s” room and the use of enigma.

Research and Planning:

How thorough and effective was your research into real media texts? How actively did you use your findings to create your own ideas? How well did you record your findings? How individual was your research? What was your role in planning and what was effective or not so effective?

Our research and planning got better as the year went on. When we first started out as a group we only put on blog posts which we had been told to do, not off our own accord. If we had done lots of research at the beginning of starting out we maybe could have taken inspiration from lots of different film openings and made a better product. This changed about half way into the coursework. We started researching a lot of different things from, music to costumes to similar film openings. This really helped out a lot and this year I will be researching more right from the start. We analysed a lot of real film openings when we were in the editing process such as Mr Brooks and Pacific Rim. These did help us out but I felt that I was kind of too late. As it was done during the editing process it felt like we had done a lot of research for nothing as it was too late to input our findings into our final product. One of my most crucial roles in planning was to take all the pictures of the storyboard and upload it to the blog and also recording the voice over for the real time storyboard video. This was important as it had to be done by a tight deadline and we, as a group, we really needed it to be finished to be able to film. It took a lot of time to record and edit but it was done within the deadline. 

Post production:

This refers to the entire editing process (sound and vision).

What specific skills have you individually developed in this area?

What do you need to work on? How successfully did you work on sound and vision together?

The post production stage was the hardest for me as editing is not my strong point. I started the year knowing nothing about Final Cut Pro and by the end of the year I had basic skills. I tended to take a back seat when editing as there was someone in my group who knew a lot about the program and could make it the best it could be. This year I will hopefully push myself to do more editing. I know the basic skills of how to transfer footage over to the mac and cut footage up but I find it hard to put it all together and use for advanced features.

Using conventions from real media texts:

Which specific conventions of the thriller genre did you choose to use in your product? How successfully did you use them? What were the reasons for not being able to use them? 

There were a few conventions we really researched. One being the title, we looked at a lot of thriller openings to see the different approaches of how to put in a title and the font used. We looked at films such as Mr Brooks and Argo. We also used enigma which is the biggest convention of a thriller, we done this by not giving barely anything away about what the film may be about and by talking about an event that the audience hadn’t seen apart from a few hazy flashbacks. Because we didn’t go down the normal route of a thriller opening there were a lot of conventions we couldn’t use. One being sound, we were limited in using sound, as the usual thriller creepy soundtrack wouldn’t of fit our opening at all. So in the end we just used diegetic sound, and that involved a bit of music in the flashback scenes.