Evaluation - Question (7)

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


IDEA: Do a video of filming me and superimpose the questions on the screen when talking.

SCRIPT.

QUESTION: How did the planning stage help to make your final thriller film?

ANSWER: The question should pop up on the screen about now. But yeah, the planning stage played an extremely large part in building upon our knowledge of what was needed to create a structurally sound thriller film. The older posts on my blog (which should show up on the screen now) gives a more detailed understanding of the stages from what I have learnt. But I will be giving a quick overview now on how it helped us to create a higher level piece of work. There are over 30 blog posts so I will obviously not go into too much detail, but I will just run through a few of the most effective blogs upon our final film.

First would be the typical conventions you would expect to see within a thriller film. This gave us an idea of what to include and what was needed to be able to link to, so our film would be placed within the thriller genre.

Next would be the importance of researching different thriller sub genres. These helped the group to be able to understand what should be expected in certain branches of the thriller genre and so what to include.

Another important blog post was that of understanding some of the main camera techniques such as match on action, shot/reverse shot and 180-degree rule. Understanding these basic functions was key for developing a great piece of work.

The researching of other thriller films placed on several posts was also great for beginning to understand the effect of other prestigious thriller films upon the audience, one would be “The Shining”. This then linked with other posts I made about thriller ideas I had for our final production.

The large post on my audience profile was extremely useful on finding out personally, what the people actually wanted to see in a thriller film and what those certain people were like. This gave me an idea about the target audience we should hope to reach and how to secure them into our target audience.

Obviously all the blog posts were useful but those are some of the most important blogs.

QUESTION: Has your use of specific shot types improved?

ANSWER: Due to being placed in the filming role in both the preliminary task and also the final film I can easily distinguish between the improvement in our final production compared to that of the preliminary. With the practice I had obtained and also understanding more about different media techniques and shot types, everything has become a lot easier. Due to being new to media studies at the start of the course, catching up and understanding key terms was a great necessity and I obviously became more familiar throughout the course, being able to improve my technique while filming certain shot types including match on action, aerial shots, close ups, over the shoulder shots and so on.

QUESTION: Do you feel more confident with the equipment?

ANSWER: One of the evaluation questions that I have answered shows how I am more confident with the equipment I used throughout the course. These certain types of equipment and technological devices included the camera, blogger, iMovie and mobile phones. I guess I have become more confident with the tripod and understanding how to use that more efficiently. But overall, confidence has been achieved throughout due to practice, and everyone knows practice makes perfect and that was most definitely the case.

QUESTION: How successful is your main product in fulfilling the task?

ANSWER: Well the question that we were first given was explained in detail about all the different technical skills that were needed. These included:

Effective use of editing: The whole editing process has been done with great care and also the transitional devices that were featured in the final film. The editing makes the meaning apparent to the viewer and the is appropriate with superimposing, credits, cuts and many more devices.

Effective use of equipment and what is being filmed: The use of the camera was controlled being used with a tripod to steady the movement. There is also a variety of different shot distances in the film including, close ups, aerial shots, medium shots and so on. Also the mise-en-scene in the film has been discussed and used for the best possible outcome including, the costumes, setting and props.

Effective use of sound: Sound has been used throughout including non-diegetic sound which was created by myself and implemented in the editing process but diegetic sound was also used. Hyperbolic sound was also used to emphasise certain scenes.