Evaluation of last years work (AS) - By Joe Blissett

Digital Technologies:

From looking back over the AS year, I believe that my digital technology skills were strong, using knowledge aided by the lessons to help our group strive in achieving the best we possibly could. An example of this would be during our filming sessions where we experimented on varieties of different camera shots in order for us as a group to find the perfect shot for the appropriate scene. By using the blogging website ‘Blogger’, it helped me portray my ideas well enough for the examiner to mark effectively. It also allowed me to quickly and easily go back and edit any work I believed needed to be redone or edited, another useful step in assuring I could achieve the best I could. The internet was helpful however it was not used as much as we could’ve used it, although when we did use it, it was used in tasks such as researching in making bruises using make up. I believe my ability to use final cut pro was very useful as along with my other members of my group, we were able to create a good short film, with everyone chipping in at different moments with knowledge they knew to aid the task in hand.  

Creativity: 

In terms of creativity, I believe our film had a mixture of conventions that matched the thriller genre, however some parts of it could perhaps suggest different. Our aim as a group was to create a film that made the audience have to think about the conclusion instead of giving it away; giving the aspect of suspense to help achieve this. This could be seen particularly right at the end, when our main character (in which the audience did not know whether he was a protagonist or antagonist) was seen pointing a gun to his head whilst jittering and shaking. This made the audience understand that he was likely going to commit suicide, however as the shot cut to black before a gunshot was heard, the audience were unsure in whether this had really happened or not, and so made the audience have to think through the film again to work out the character’s fate. The use of sound linked well with the typical conventions of the media genre, using non-diegetic and minimal dialogue to help achieve the suspense feel to it.

Research and Planning:

My research and planning turned out to be effective as it helped structure how a short film is planned out, as well as giving our group multiple ideas about the typical aspects of the thriller genre to help create our own unique ideas that would go towards our final piece. I recorded all of my findings on the blogging website ‘Blogger’ which helped the other members of the group understand whether or not that had found similar findings that I had, however in doing this, it also led to some members of my group to perhaps be a little lazy and copy parts of my research in order to get theirs done, something that wouldn’t help them later on. My roles during the research and planning phase was to research the typical aspects of ‘hair and make-up’, ‘costume’, and ‘continuity editing’ in thriller genres. This turned out to be a little effective as some parts of the research were taken into account during our final piece, however some other parts weren’t as they were seen as not needed for what we wanted to achieve. 

Post Production: 

Post production turned out to be our ‘money-making’ capability as I believe it truly transformed our film from something average into something decent and of high quality. During this phase, I believe that I personally have learnt many important skills that will definitely help me achieve better for the oncoming year, skills such as adding filters to change the atmosphere of the scene, the distortion of sound (again to aid the thriller genre) and the use of titling. However, I believe in order to improve our group should record any dialogue using a separate device, such as a microphone, as it will help when it comes to the post production to prevent it sounding a little wooden, and more professional.

Using conventions from real media texts: 

From our research and planning, the conventions of the thriller genre that we used in our final piece included using props (such as the gun), low key lighting, to create an atmosphere for the audience to experience, and finally, costume. All of which helped the audience gain an overall understanding of our final production.

As well as all the conventions we did use in our final production, some conventions were left out, an example being the use of blood. We decided against this as it would open up a more horror type genre feel to it, and we didn’t want this, as the whole idea was to create a thriller genre.