Mr Judge One to One tutorial

After our one to one tutorial on the 2/02/15, it was evident that you are making steady progress for your research and planning, unfortunately there are still some outstanding tasks that need to rectify as soon as possible. Please refer to the SMART targets that we set up previously and have them completed for my next session. 

Final film

Evaluation

February feedback

You are making sound progress toward completing the coursework

Ensure that you complete each evaluation answer thoroughly

Add any further research and planning

Organise your web-log effectively

evaluation- question 7

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


I feel that I have learned a lot in the time between filming my preliminary and my final film. I haven learned about the importance of camera angles and choosing a location, which is best for my situation. Also, I knew how to you use the Adobe premiere Pro to edit my final film more than when I did with the preliminary task, and I learned bit by bit on how to edit the videos better on the final film. I have also learned a lot about the general conventions of films as I looked at many types of film during my planning, so had to look into things like suspense in thriller and horror, and fast cuts in action films.

From the preliminary task, I have learned a great deal about how actions are constructed to create tension, suspense and reach their target audience in an effective manner. In addition, through also analysing thriller openings I gained a further insight into how camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene makes the opening engaging and helped the group create our opening, ‘The Curse Of Illusion Mind’.

Moreover, I have gained confidence in my own judgement, use of technology and skills. Through practice I gained skills with certain technologies e.g. camera but still feel that I could improve more within editing and Sound Booth. Above all I feel that this task has been fulfilling within my development as an AS Level media student, by taking into account the peer assessments, teacher assessment and self-assessment I know exactly how to improve and what I am good at. Next year, I will try to be more confident within voicing my opinions and gain skills in Premier Pro alongside making sure there is more organisations within the project.

I worked with different people when creating our horror opening, however these people were my friends so I considered this is an advantage when discussing our ideas. As there are only two people in my group including myself and we’re both girls we were unable to understand views from each gender. I believe we worked really well as a team because we were confident when talking to each other and stayed in contact via our mobiles to make sure everyone was updated with what was happening. I believe we both worked well as a team by collaborating as this helped us to be organised. Also, we both listened to suggestions for improvements. We both reviewed the footage we had shot on the camera and decided whether we thought it looked effective or not and if it did not, we would try and shoot something from a different angle or leave it out. Overall, we worked to the best of our ability and had a very positive attitude towards what we were creating.

The preliminary task did not involve research, whereas this was very important when producing our horror. For example, the case study’s allowed me to identify different conventions and different aspects of mise-en-scene that were portrayed proficiently in thriller films. A few conventions in our horror opening where influenced by a few of the films that I researched such as ‘Insidious’ this enabled me to learn about the importance of costume and different camera shots when establishing the horror genre. Without research, many of the best parts in our horror opening would not have happened as using inter-textual references helped us to make a successful horror opening.

evaluation- question 6

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

I have learnt a lot more than I originally expect about technologies from my product. I learned about making blogs, and using the website blogger and all of its features.

I think blogger is easy to use as I can include screenshots and as much blogs as I want. Also, Blogger is free to use, so as for students it is suitable for us to use it for schoolwork. For the font, you have the basic web font options: Arial, Helvetica, etc. for subheadings, options are also simple: Heading, Sub-heading, minor Heading; adding lists, links, pictures, and video is also pretty simple.

On the other hand, it's complicated when I tried to upload pictures on Blogger, I’d always have to save the pictures as JPEG first or Blogger would not show the pictures when I preview the blog.

I also learn how to use editing suites such as adobe Premiere Pro to their full potential, which I would never have done as I never used it before.

I did the editing; I learnt how to edit videos whereas before I never really had an idea on how to edit videos properly.

I have learnt a lot about the power of camera angles and shots, and also how important it is to look into choosing the correct setting for shooting. For example, close up shot is used to show a character's facial expression; angry, upset etc. 

Also, I used a scanner to scan my storyboard into my blog that included images of what was going to happen in our horror an what shots we would use. The storyboard included explanations for each picture and included inter-textual references for each shot where it was necessary. Also, I created a shot list, which indicated what camera angles or shots we would use, what location we needed to be at and which characters need to be in each scene. I created this in the format of a table and uploaded it as a blog post under my planning label. 

I consistently used YouTube when researching the thriller genre, so the Internet was a very useful technology for constructing our media product because without it, research may have been more restricted in its range. This may have resulted in not gaining access to as many media texts, so I would have had to rely on DVD’s or films being shown on TV.

My preliminary task and the opening to my horror were both uploaded on to YouTube. This widens access to a potential audience. Both the rough cut and final cut of our horror was uploaded to YouTube, therefore I reviewed the rough cut on YouTube and uploaded it on to a blog post where I evaluated it and discussed what needed to be improved.

Luckily, all the member of our group owns an IPhones; this allowed one of us to create a group IMessage where we could all discuss what we needed to do, where we needed to be and what objects or props we needed with us on certain days. This was an effective way of keeping in contact as everyone was involved in contact as everyone was involved meaning that everyone was aware of what was happening and it was very quick to access.

We shot our horror opening on a digital camera. This allowed us to review the footage after each shot we filmed to see if it looked good enough or we could film the shot again to improve how it would be portrayed.

Add on to this, when adding the possible soundtracks, we had to download them on to Mac. Were able to put the soundtracks on to the software premiere and listened to each soundtrack along with horror opening and decided which one appeared as more appropriate. We had to position the soundtrack underneath the footage and cut it down so that the sound ended exactly at the end of the last shot.

Also, we used the Title Tool when adding our titles which involved the name if the film, crediting the actors and crediting the soundtrack. These had to be placed above the footage, but we had to make sure that we placed each tilt in an appropriate place, so the audience can understand.