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.