Evalation Activity 7

Now, as I look back onto our preliminary task and even earlier stages of my blog. I can see how we have progressed with the editing and how much smoother and consistent our film is. We have also increased the amount of editing skills and shown a wider range of shots with in the correct places. We used some jump editing, added a granite affect and defined the lighting on each scene which gives it a better overall look. I personally think that our film was realistic and what it contained would be what you would have expected to see in a thriller opening sequence.  We both enjoyed creating the short films, but can also see the improvement in our skills and confidence which then produced our overall thriller film using a wider range of skills and technologies.

Evaluation Activity 6

During the production of our film, my partner and I learned how to use many new pieces of technology, which include:

·         Garageband- which was a product that I had never used before, which we then used to create our music in our film. We took time in choosing the music making sure it fitted to the scenes and used fades in and out, making it run smoothers.

·         iMovie- we used mainly for out preliminary task, and it was my first time I found it fairly difficult but as I got used to it, it became a lot easier, we both experiment with affects and adding music.

·         Apple Macs- which we used throughout the whole course, preliminary, main movie and creating our blogs as we were going along.

·         Video camera- both my partner and I knew how to use a camera, the difficult thing was, knowing how to create the tension and which shots did this.

·         Camera- we used for casting and location shots.

·         Tripod- was used to keep the camera still, however we didn’t use it that much due to a lot of our film being hand held which fits to thriller genre.

·         BlogSpot- which is where all of our work has gone on to, after you get used to the fact of it and learn how to organise your work it is an easy more efficient way of producing work.

I now feel more confident using these technologies and enjoyed learning the new skills.

Evaluation Activity 5

A typical thriller tends to use specific camera shots in order to emphasise and create tension, such as:

·         Long shots- introduce the audience to the surroundings, which would normally be eerie and where the action is going to take place.

·         Close up shots- which also create tension, either used on a person’s face to show emotion or on an object to highlight for a reason you would later find out.

·         Hand held/ following shot- which suggest someone is being followed.

·         Jump shot- this is regularly used within a thriller, at a stage where there is a lot of things happening. Usually put with dramatic music or added noises which add to tension.  

·         Dark settings/ lack of lighting- used in thrillers to surprise you as the audience watching, the dark makes people look more intimidating and scares others.

·         There are not as many graphics- unlike horrors thriller tend to use less graphics, tends to be more visual and psychological.

·         Music- tends to be played in the background of scenes, which is non diegetic. This creates tension and helps determine the mood by the genre of music.

Here are some clips from the film which Eva and I produced, which fits to the conventions of a thriller.  However I think we challenged them, by using a school setting even though it is targeted at an older teenage audience.

Evaluation Acitivity 4

The audience for our media product would be for both genders of a teenager or younger adult. Their interests would be similar to the stories which they are watching in programmes of films.

These would be the  features of our typical target audience:

•  They would shop in the main stream shops, such as Top Shop, River Island and All Saints.
• The music that they would listen to would be off the charts.
• Television programmes that they would watch would be soaps or comedies, that can allow them to relate to the story.

Overall, we have discovered from our feedback that our characters and story line met the expectations of our target audience.
This is a picture of a male and female that we surveyed as our expected target audience.