Evaluation - Nigel

Digital Technologies: how skilled are you in these areas?

This includes your use of camera techniques, your use of blogger, your use of prezi (if you used it), the internet (used for research for example) final cut editing techniques, garageband, photoshop (if you used it), social networking (if you used it)

I believe that as a group we ended up with a product and coursework which showed lots of development in technology even from the start. I personally thought I learn a lot from the AS year, especially from the coursework and Thriller opening. We experimented a lot with camera techniques, trying to include as many as we possibly could. I used blogger as much as I could, although of course there was always more I could do, I will try and put as much possible onto the blog this year, working on my presentation and my goal is to make it more appealing to the eyes. I want to display all my work there, even things which may not be used eventually, but to show the stages clearly. We used tutorials on YouTube especially for the make up side of things in AS, but we could also do more research like this too, if we did, we may learn even more and improve our overall product and work by the end of the course. We used final cut and managed to edit and change our product to do greater things than originally planned, although, of course we planned to do some of what we did at the beginning and also couldn't do some of our plans also. 

Creativity:

In what ways did you try to be original? How successfully did you balance the use of standard conventions of thrillers with the aim to be different or original?

Eg consider  techniques used, narrative, character, mood, sound, themes, titles etc

 

We balanced out the conventions by creating our whole own story so we could also base newer mise en scene and conventions around this too, although of course we followed the typical conventions of a thriller. Like our setting, it is a thriller convention as it connotes death and even the forest because of the liminal setting, but we tried to be orignal with the narrative whilst including as many conventions as we could to suggest it was a thriller and get a reaction from the audience. We used younger characters to break the usual conventions and to help relate to older and younger audiences alike. 

Research and Planning:

How thorough and effective was your research into real media texts? How actively did you use your findings to create your own ideas? How well did you record your findings? How individual was your research? What was your role in planning and what was effective or not so effective?

 I think as a group we did very well at researching, as we went off as individuals to research, we branched off to get as much information as possible and return with our findings. We used a lot of what we researched in the final thing, getting ideas from several thrillers and getting an idea what conventions we wanted to actually use, which obviously helped us in creating our opening. Many things we didn't actually use, but in the end we used a fair bit of it, we shared most of the research work so we all could get an idea of it and get more information, I had to research in how we could  use these in the end to convey thriller conventions and choose the locations.

Post production:

This refers to the entire editing process (sound and vision).

What specific skills have you individually developed in this area?

What do you need to work on? How successfully did you work on sound and vision together?

I believe I developed my understanding of final cut pro and sound editing. We in the end used a lot of sound recorded from different devices, be that synchronous and synchronous, I think that something which helped in the editing process because the project could flow easier. I developed my understanding of how shots can flow and how continuity can be broken just simply in the editing process, even if all the shots have been story boarded and filmed to not do so, and how the continuity can be saved in the editing process too.  

Using conventions from real media texts:

Which specific conventions of the thriller genre did you choose to use in your product? How successfully did you use them? What were the reasons for not being able to use them 

We tried to use the sound conventions, costume, props, make up, narrative and editing. These are the ones that stand out to me as the conventions that we focused on to connote thriller and get a reaction from the audience. I think we tried to use them all and change them all to suit the genre but I believe those are the ones which stood out over the rest. Our plan for the costume of Geoff worked out very well, the props like the rose and police tape, the scar and the wound and the whole mysterious narrative, which made the opening successful in my eyes.