Development of skills AS-A2

Digital Technology:

In AS Media, the was a fair amount of time spent improving my skills with different digital technologies. I had used a camera before, but had not used it to produce something as advanced as an opening. Also, I was fairly familiar with Adobe's video editing software, however, the AS task helped me understand the post production much more thoroughly. This has helped me to capture my ideas when producing a film as it has allowed for me to edit pieces of footage together in a certain way to help portray the meaning. It also allowed me to be creative in the sense that I could manipulate a piece of footage to either visually enhance the clip or add an effect on it to degrade the quality or make it look like it is darker than it actually is. There are many benefits of digital technologies, such as allowing you to remove parts of clip that may have been there by mistake and enhance clips to add extra meaning.


Creativity:

During my AS coursework, I had to be creative within my group to help come up with the plot of our story and then how we would bring the story to life with the different camera angles we would use. When creating our storyline, we were influenced by the darkness and creepiness of 'The Black Swan' and the edginess of 'Seven(Se7en)'. Again, technology helped us to create the opening we imagined, due to the fact that we were able to manipulate shots to make them darker and in effect make them look creepier, also we looked at the pace when editing the clips together as to how that could add to the intensity of the opening.


Research & Planning:

If we had not conducted any research into the thriller genre, our final outcome would have been very different. By looking at the codes and conventions of the genre, we were able to gain an understanding of the elements that needed to go into our film to make it a thriller. This then enabled us to look even further into the codes and conventions of a psychological thriller - isolating our film as a psychological thriller. Also when planning our opening, we looked into the audience, which again helped us understand which elements we would need to include in our film to make it suitable for the chosen audience.
    Before making the film, we made numerous storyboards and animatics which helped bring our idea to life and give us a path to follow when it came to filming the footage. Also to help, we had a shot list which ensured that we had enough variety in our piece.


Post-Production:

The only part of our opening that was made entirely in post production was the title sequence. I used Adobe After Effects to create a set of titles that faded in through a smoke swirl. All of our footage was edited using Adobe Premiere Pro, helping us make clips darker, in effect, making the meaning of the opening darker. The music that we chose to play over our opening helped intensify the piece as the sharp pitch changes made the piece more edgy and tense. Also used was a recorded sound effect of a chair falling over, this extra bassy thud helped to over dramatise the hanging scene and made the chair fall with a real thud, something that the camera microphone could not portray.


Using Conventions from Real Media Texts:

We used media conventions in our opening to help the audience understand the genre of the film they are watching, and give them  sense of familiarity with the film. I feel we used to conventions successfully as our film followed the conventions of a thriller, however, we borrowed conventions from horror which helped us to combine the two allowing us to create a psychological thriller.