Question 6

Question 6 – ‘What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Initially, I used Youtube to research various different thriller openings we knew we could model our own thriller opening with including Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs, which we would later use to emulate editing and shot techniques so as to make our thriller opening appear as realistic as possible and in line with typical thriller conventions. 

 Artofthetitle.com was another helpful resource that allowed me to view various thriller openings and to understand how different genres of film utilised camera shots and editing techniques differently e.g. Action film opening often had faster paced shot changes and superimposed text to appeal to its target audience of choice. 

IMDB served as a helpful database that gave me greater awareness of what type of person enjoys each genre and what type of actors are often involved in mystery and psychological thriller films, as well as what gender. 

When searching for the correct demographics that would most suitably fit our product, BBFC.co.uk was incredibly useful, and served as a great tool for answering question 2 of this evaluation also. We were able to determine our chosen demographic age, gender and occupation/employment status which narrowed down our audience focus, meaning we could do a better job of catering to the wants and needs of those who are likely to want to watch a mystery/psychological thriller. BBFC.co.uk also allowed us to make a decision on which age rating our thriller would fit into, which we eventually decided on as 12. 

Poll Everywhere was a website which helped us determine which font type we should use for our superimposed titles in our final production, and this is a resource we could use in the future as a way of finding out which fonts, idents and soundtracks would be better suited for a specific genre.

I also looked at other real production companies including Lionsgate and Paramount Pictures to gain a greater understanding on the role of a production company in a film and which real life Production Company would be suitable for us to use for our thriller, which we decided on as being New Line Cinema. 

Viewing various Production Companies also meant we could study their idents and logos, which proved helpful for when we constructed our own company ident for our own Production Company named Spotlight Productions.

 Additionally my knowledge of how to use editing software certainly improved and advanced from my Preliminary task. For my Preliminary Task, I had used the editing program ‘iMovie’ for iPad which was relatively basic and easy to use, however you could go into no great detail when editing either video or sound, as well as merging the two together, i.e. merging diegetic and non-diegetic sound or synchronous and asynchronous sound. 

To create a one minute sound clip, a montage of voices which was an overlay of the instrumental soundtrack, I decided to use Sony Vegas. Despite having been relatively new to the program, I began to learn various processes including splitting sound and placing certain sounds above each other.
 My one major struggle using this program came when trying to figure out how to increase and decrease the speed and tempo of sound clips; however I eventually learned how to achieve this. Another part of media I learned from using and experiencing Sony Vegas was how to differentiate between sound and video files, and which type of file worked best with other programs. I had been trying to create my file as a .Veg file, however realised that this file type was not compatible with the sound editing program ‘Audacity’ that I was trying to transfer my clip to. I eventually learned that .mp3 and .mp4 are the best audio files to use when uploading sound files to different programs.

For the first time I had the experience of setting up and using advanced and technical camera equipment, including a Canon 1100D. 

Setting up tripods was also a crucial skill, as it enabled us to have steadier camera footage, as opposed to handheld footage. Tripods are useful for capturing long and establishing shots, something which I hadn’t used in my preliminary task. Editing wise, the detail in which we corrected and altered our final production’s video footage was of a far greater extent and detail than when I edited my preliminary video, which took about an hour. In this exercise I also learned about framing and what to focus on and specifically include in each individual shot, as well as to include a greater variation of shot types to keep the audience entertained. An example of how I advanced my knowledge of framing was from an over the shoulder shot that appears in the final cut video. We made sure to keep both characters in view at all times, but with the antagonist looming largely in the bottom left foreground, with the smaller figure of the protagonist In the background towards the centre of the shot. There were no problems with the weather when filming our thriller, and it in fact enhanced our shooting somewhat, with certain scenes benefitting from the lower sun due to it being early in the morning, which we made sure we captured and used in our final production video. Having not used many presentation website beforehand, using website such as Go Animate and Powtoon has given me a greater and wider range of interactive media options when creating and displaying work in an appealing style and manner.