EVALUATION AS FILMS

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)

Your evaluation of your own skills in this area – strengths, weaknesses, and things to work on. Be precise, giving examples or evidence  (e.g. on camera, discuss particular techniques such as focus pull)

The biggest thing I’d say as a group and as an individual that has been taught is the titling. It was said previously that the titling wasn't a very focused point of film creating in AS. We thought with this, and decided to use Photoshop to create our institution logo and titles. Alex created the logo, but I played around on Final Cut Pro with the video effects on the macs, to try and make it fit with the thriller theme. We used two cameras, to film Holly's Dad and Alex, playing Elijah. This sped up the filming time which meant we had more time editing. However, we noticed that the DSLR camera we used picked up more noise when we uploaded the footage to the macs, but we had separate recorded sound so it didn't really matter. Using two cameras was a great advantage for us. It saved us a lot of time. Because Alex had a camera, there was no reason why we couldn't be provided with two, so when there was the chance we seized it. When filming a shot reverse shot (SRS) sequence, it can be very difficult to capture, especially with one camera. I set up one camera focusing on our character Elijah (portrayed by Alex) and Holly set up the other one to be facing her father. Both the cameras started rolling at the same time and captured the sound at the same time too (even though we edited that out). This was a much quicker way to deal with things, and made the acting more natural as we didn't have to stop the camera each time a new character spoke. Organisation is key. We organised our sound and video footage in "bins". A bin is basically different folders differentiating parts of the film. I found this was a very simple way to help navigate to different areas of our film. I also learned not to rename clips but to name them in the log area. This saves it from messing up with the original name and losing work.  ORGANISING FILES ON FINAL CUT PRO; I created a blog post for this, so if we ever needed to refer back to it - we could. It also showed my better understanding of Final Cut Pro.

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?

E.g. consider  techniques used, narrative, character, mood, sound, themes, titles etc

Elijah is portraying a teen or young adult if you'd prefer, by wearing a shirt with the collar done up, and his hair slicked back. His costume is like this to show sophistication. This was the original thoughts of this particular character, to show he has all the power and authority. This character is shown to be innocent at first, but with this particular shot, we enter a completely different atmosphere, and show a more sarcastic character, showing the emotions in his face. We went against the normal formula of thriller conventions. The saturation of the film is different as we didn’t make it dull like the stereotypical thriller.

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 looked at different thriller openings to make our ideas more concrete and to fit the formula of a thriller film. Moodle had a selection of films already listed which we looked at and analysed different ones each in the group. We tried to incorporate some of the ideas from each film.   

One of my interests is theatrical make up, which we also experimented with, looking back on different types of scars you can make. We also did a trial in college with paint and tissue, which wasn't what i wanted, so i went out and bought the correct equipment, and made a slit throat with wax and a bruise wheel paint pallet.

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 logo (HAM PRODUCTIONS) was thought about with the different video effects, I took some time in the editing suite alone just flicking through the different effects, and stumbled onto "bad film" which made the logo shake and distorted. I feel this fitted well with the theme because it flickers, and thrillers stereo-typically deal with low lighting.  The names of the actors involved looked semi-professional. The theme was that the last names are highlighted in white. This makes it more obvious when it then fades out onto the film footage of outside of the station. The text then fades out. We experimented a lot more with transitions. I really liked the cross fade because it didn't make anything look too harsh, and I liked the look about it. But obviously, before all the editing could be achieved, we needed footage to edit! As for sound, we had that recording the whole time. We placed in on the desk behind the computer which was used as a prop in the scene. This was good as it was in between both of the characters so the volume was equal. We used a sound recorder, and left it running the whole time we were filming, it ended up being a 19 minute sound clip I do believe, but this was easier. It meant we could just listen to the same recording and just find what part we needed.

                        

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? 

From the research I found, we are usually introduced to the protagonist of the film in the opening, however without the context we are unable to tell sometimes. Also, sometimes in film openings, for example "The Usual Suspects" the opening, is actually connected with the ending. Sometimes it works better to not have everything in chronological order because it makes it seem fragmented. This establishing shot from the opening scene from "The Woman in Black" shows how distorted the colour is. It is always important to notice things in shots like this, because it gives away what time this was set in, because it is clear from the props, that it isn't a modern day setting. In thrillers, the lighting tends to be a lot dimmer than if it was, say maybe a comedy or a romance. One of the main points of making a thriller is to raise the enigma in the audience and obviously 'thrill' as well as entertain. We used conventional colours for our titling, the common red and black. It's centered on screen so your eyes are immediately drawn to it. The red glow has many different connotations, but in this case we wanted it to represent danger, blood and evil. Red and black are common colours to see within a horror film, colours are very important. For example - Cabin in the Woods used red writing to show their directors and actors (on the right). Another thing with titling I've learned is that half of the time these days, actors names don't get mentioned at the beginning of films, but in the credits. You tend to only see the director mentioned. Not always, but mostly. However in our film we featured ourselves in it. At first this was a difficult process because all the fonts looked really amateur with our theme, along with fonts like "Comic Sans" which doesn't really have connotations to scare an audience. So instead we created all the typing in Photoshop and inserted them as photos and added fade in effects to them. As you can see we have a very basic font for our characters and people who were involved in making the film. The font and colour matches our title "Elijah" which all ties together. Again, the black background suggests evil and alone. Soundtracks are very important in thriller films and you tend you get music which builds to a crescendo. In our opening, we did achieve this! With a soundtrack called "Long Note Two" we found that it would slowly build up with its eerie tones to create an enigmatic tension when showing our production companies and other titles.