AS evaluation - Amy Sharp

Digital Technologies:

Looking back at my AS work I feel my digital technologies skills were strong, the camera techniques used were thought through and each shot was carried out the way I expected, for example our extreme close up shots were important to capture the thriller genre in our film and built the tension therefore we focused on getting those right. We tried to vary the shots as much as we could and I feel they weren’t over complicated and each shot complimented the films intentions. I feel I could have used blogger more as well as prezi and other presentation software however each post I produced was to the best of my ability.  Editing was left later than I hoped therefore I feel we could have used final cut, garageband and photoshop more to improve the editing of the film overall. This is the same with social networking as we could have received more audience feedback for stages in our research and planning to help create a stronger piece.

Creativity:

I think the editing was creative in the way we created the ‘flashbacks’ we took time to focus on this aspect as it was the most important part of our film. Using final cut we layered transitions over the footage to merge them together creating the light headed and dizzy POVs in the film. I think this worked extremely well because it achieved what we hoped for, however I think the soundtracks used aren’t as effective. This is because we had poor time management in editing and left the soundtrack till last and we found it hard to find anything that matched what we hoped therefore settled with what we could find. The narrative overall was different and a spin on the classic stalker thriller because it was aimed to be a repeat of her previous experience and having the last shot of the bridge was creative and effective to the thriller genre.

Research and planning:

With research and planning we used real media texts to guide us, individually we looked at separate texts. For myself I think my research was thorough and effective because the film ‘seven’ played a large part in our planning. When we were planning we fed back our ideas as a group I took inspiration from the opening sequence in seven because of the distortion which later went into our flashbacks. We equally had a say in the planning as well as the story synopsis so we were all happy with the product we were creating, my main roles were: props, make up, hair and audience feedback. I think audience feedback was not as effective as it could have been, I think we thought about it too late in our planning however there was more I could have received audience feedback on. 

Post Production:

Overall we did not leave enough time for editing however I feel we successfully created what we planned. I learned more about sound editing in this process, mainly controlling the volume to make it fit with the visual. I also learned about how effective transitions can be and it completely changed the flashback sequence and made it stronger. I created the logo as well as the title in Photoshop, I had rarely used it before so I was simply seeing what I could achieve and I am proud of the outcome, one of the technicians helped with the title as I wanted the shadow and wasn’t able to do it alone. Sound was a serious problem due to not having enough time and not researching effectively, this is something I want to make sure we have time for this year. 

Using conventions from real media texts:

The enigmas and flashbacks disturb the equilibrium of the sequence early on to make the storyline more interesting to view, and ending the opening sequence with her almost returning to a state of equilibrium it is once again cut off by the following of the antagonist whom would be recognised by the audience from only his shoes, keeping his identity hidden. These being conventions of a thriller film, I think it was successful because keeping it on a second disturbance of equilibrium draws the audience in.