AS EVALUATION

 

Skill area	Your evaluation of your own skills in this area – strengths, weaknesses, and things to work on. Be precise, giving examples or evidence  (eg on camera, discuss particular techniques such as focus pull)
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)	In the main task, we used a wide variety of technologies (editing and filming) and learnt from the process. We learnt how to use a camera, with the right methods and procedures, and the framing of a subject.  We learnt how to use white balance and the difference it makes when you do not white balance a subject, making the shot seem very unsaturated and unrealistic, and so we made sure to white balance our cameras before shooting for the final product. We used the internet widely to research into thriller genre, types and how to create certain images on our final product. Editing was something we struggled with, with the framing of our characters, as our tripods had very limited movements and we wanted to avoid zooming in on the cameras as much as possible, we had to crop most of our images on Final Cut Pro to get the correct framing of our characters and not cut off the tops of heads or have irrelevant items in our shots. In our interrogation scene we struggled with the entire framing, our shots becoming 'samey' throughout with not much variety until the end when the tension builds we were able to crop the shot size down to attempt to create atmosphere. We have also learnt from the continuity editing of our product, in the images titles and sound, for example our use of filters, to alter the pace and go into our flashback sequence, creating clear contrasts between the interrogation and the flashback. We had a few problems with the editing software, as all of us are mostly used to working on Windows 8, It was very new to be working on Mac's. We used social networking on Twitter to ask people to complete our survey on Survey Monkey, in order to gain audience feedback, which proved to be useful as it affected our final piece.

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            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?	We stuck usually to typical thriller genre conventions, as we felt it would be easier to make an opening out of. We felt our character of Elijah matched up with standard stereotypes, we characterised him this way as we knew this kind of character would interest and attract an audience, having a young attractive male with a deranged mental sanity, is a compelling character, having the costume, hair and body language reflecting the personality or mental state, we felt like this could challenge our audience to try figure out the character, presenting him as dangerous but if analysed is complex and interesting. However in our film we went against the typical conventions of the genre, as we didn't de-saturate the colouring in the film, which is commonly used to create a duller effect. We wanted to go against this convention, so we made the colouring in our film stand out, making it vibrant, which catches the audience’s attention and could potentially make it disorientating. We created enigma in our opening  although not in a typical convention, we did not reveal any characters, (commonly used in the thriller genre, e.g. the Usual Suspects)  We had all of our characters presented to the camera, as we wanted to show the audience that the 'innocent' character is not actually innocent.    We researched many films, in the thriller genre and took some ideas and used conventions in our own film. We wanted to take something from the opening of Shutter Island, which creates enigma and mystery to the audience making them ask questions, using stereotypical conventions of the thriller genre, such as using unfamiliar locations and the soundtrack and dialogue to create danger or apprehension within a situation. Dull colouring and dull grey lighting creates a desolate atmosphere. We recorded all of our information on the blog and ideas and planning we may have had. We struggled with different ways to blog our findings, To prove our research we generally used pictures and didn’t blog in any other formats to give variety, which may have made our posts repetitive. As a group we all analysed different films, leaving our work to be individual. We all gave ideas as a group which contributed to our final idea, although we based our story around a setting we could acquire which ended up letting our film down.
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?	We edited in titles, accompanied by sound, which improved the authenticity of our film, and improved from the preliminary. Looking for uncopywrited music happened to be quite a difficult task; we went through pages upon pages of mediocre sound files that didn't match the thriller genre, we finally found two clips we were interested in using, which we used in our final product. Our editing process was long and difficult as we weren’t used to Final Cut Pro. I believe I developed skills in the editing and sound area, especially with the recorded separate sound, putting over into FCP, to make it match with the images on screen. We needed to improve on our Shot Reverse Shot sequence as we had to crop a lot of our images on FCP as we filmed in one camera shot size, which affected the final product of our film.
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?	I looked at, Kill Bill, Inception, Shutter Island, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Usual Suspects, which all follow the usual conventions of the thriller genre, using the technical codes, creating enigma, using unrestricted or restricted narration to attract the audience. Shutter Island uses restricted narration throughout the whole film leaving the audience knowing less or the same than the characters, which leaves the audience on edge. We however decided not to do this in our opening, We used a sound bridge and flashbacks of the main character Elijah's mind, to give the audience more information than the other character which is not commonly used in the thriller genre, as usually restricted narration is used to create surprise.