The student learned a lot from getting feedback throughout the production process of their media thriller project. This feedback helped them identify areas for improvement and strengthen their final piece. Originally they planned to use flashes to show the female character acting in different ways, but ultimately changed this after reviewing their footage. Overall, the student feels they contributed a significant amount of time and effort, and that completing this project has improved their skills in planning, filming, editing, and understanding key film concepts compared to their earlier continuity task.

1. MEDIA THRILLER
EVALUATION
QUESTION 7

2. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel
that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full
product?
Throughout the production process, we got teacher feedback many times. Sometimes it was good and many times it was very
informative of what we could change. This was good because we were able to focus on the areas which we needed to improve. In
my opinion, all of the feedback we got was something that our group had fully picked up on, and therefore didn’t surprise us when
we were told about this fault. Through doing these improvements I felt that we were able to strengthen our final piece and meet the
codes and conventions of a horror thriller film.
From our storyboard, we felt that we wanted flashes – one being where the female was acting in a provocative way towards the
victim, and then another where she was killing him or looking as if she was going to kill him – but after filming and reviewing our
extract we felt that this concept no longer worked, and therefore we needed to change up the order of events. This then meant that
the audience could follow along more easily, and it was clear what was happening.
As part of my self progression, I feel that I have contributed a lot of my time and effort into the extract which we have achieved. I
feel that I have spent a lot of extra time on my own to help my group progress with the editing of our film even though most of the
time it was on my own, therefore meaning I had to make a lot of personal decisions which I felt would work within the extract. I have
continuously thought of ideas in which would help with editing, narrative and the entire sequence. During the planning stage, I also
felt that I had inputted a lot to my ideas of the group.
Since the preliminary task, we have lost a group member. This meant that we had to give ourselves different roles and
responsibilities, and had to make sure that these fit the correct people and we would still be able to think up the ideas ourselves.
We lost the group member whilst in the planning stage, and therefore we had to redo our storyboard as they had a hold of it, and
this put us back by a couple of weeks as we now all had to work on it together .
One idea which I helped to create was the production logo, with the
knife and Laa productions. I realised that weapons were heavily relied
on within the genre we were working on, and therefore decided that it
would make sense to have one of these weapons linked into our
production logo. One of our group members decided on the text
font, but as a group we decided red due to the connotations which the
colour brings.

3. I also inputted my ideas into the actual storyline. To the left
You can see two images, one where the antagonist looks
like she is going to kiss the male, except then she doesn’t.
as a group we discussed what kind of things we should put
in, but I thought of the idea of having contrasting shots in
order to engage the audience, and realise what kind of
women the female actually is.
During the planning stage, I didn’t realise how important it was to take part in this
type of distinct research . Now after taking part in the creation of a thriller opening I
realise the importance of creating a storyboard, and researching into past films.
I researched into the thriller horror genre in much detail, although I couldn’t quite
grasp why at the beginning. I realise now that all the films are similar, and therefore
important. Researching into the genre helped me to figure out the codes and
conventions which I needed to learn how to follow.
By storyboarding, I was able to understand how much detailed planning I needed to
go into so I knew exactly what I needed to film, how long for, where it was going to
go etc. The storyboard was going to help me with both filming, so our group knew
what we had to film and when, and also when we needed to edit which order each
shot fitted into.
During our planning process, we had to make an animatic. We drew a
storyboard, and then took pictures of each section of the storyboard with our digital
camera. After doing this, we were able to put the images into Premier Pro and
create them into a video sequence. At the time, I didn’t realise how important it was
to know exactly how long each shot was going to be, which I now realise after
filming is more important that it looks. We played around with the shots and the
transactions, so that we knew what they looked like when it came to editing our final
piece. I also found that our storyboard wasn’t created in enough detail, therefore we
found that we had to go back to it, and add more pieces in. We also didn’t stick to
the storyboard fully, meaning we changed some of the shots and had them in
different positions.

4. From the Continuity task which I originally conducted with 3 other
members of my group, I feel I have now progressed to being up to a
new level of understanding for planning, filming and also editing. As we
lost one member of the group since the continuity task, we all had to
redo roles so that we were confident with what we were doing and I
now feel confident doing each of the roles in which I didn’t before. I
now feel more confident using certain technologies, such as the
camera which I feel that I picked up more each time I used it, to being
able to understand the computer editing software and also the
importance of planning. I am more confident with the different types of
shots, although sometimes my group and I needed to discuss which
ones we felt would be most effective for the shot we are trying to
establish. I am also able to clearly understand the four key concepts
that create the film (camera, mise-en-scene, editing and sound). I
found that I am able to understand how these can be used to represent
the text which I want to be understood. This is an example of how we
used a zoom and cross dissolve to merge two shots together, and to
get into a different room, therefore establishing a new setting (mise-en-
scene). doing the continuity task, I didn’t realise the importance of shot
Whilst
differentiation, and also I relied on the actors to do the facial
expressions we wanted without explaining fully what we wanted. I now
understand that to get your point across, you now need to use different
shot types and have them in a sequence which audiences are able to
fully follow in a clear and understanding way. In our opening, we
established the different characters by introducing them at different
times, such as the victim at 0:33, and we saw the female from the
beginning, even though we were unable to classify her as the
antagonist at this point. By starting the beginning off in a mysterious
way, I felt that it was best for our audience as it kept them engaged
and they wanted to watch more.

5. The main problem which we faced during the filming process was being unable to take a continuous shot, and also the lighting differences.
As we filmed on different days, sometimes we were unable to get the lamps which we used throughout the opening. This made it difficult
and that’s why you can sometimes see a darker light within the film than other times. (see pictures below)Our aim at the beginning of the
task was to use flashes to show two different personalities of the women, however after reviewing this during the editing stage we saw that
it was muddled and didn’t make sense, and so we were unable to achieve what we wanted to achieve. In order to overcome both these
problems, we firstly changed the shots, shortening them so that you weren’t able to see the lighting difference so easily. Secondly, we
rearranged the shots in the editing stage so that it made sense and the audience could follow the storyline easily. We also decided to
change the fact which we didn’t want any speaking in, as we decided it was important to have something to indicate that the male was
innocent and didn’t do anything to harm the female.
Overall, I feel confident about our piece even though during the beginning stage I wasn’t sure how our idea was going to work out. I feel
confident that we were able to establish the main task, and were able to fulfil this. I feel that although we made mistakes during the
preliminary task (such as we didn’t establish the right shots, or we broke the 180 degree rule. the standard of both filming, camera angles
and original idea have both become apparent that they have improved since conducting the continuity task. This meant that we were able
to suit our audience a lot more than we were during the first task. This makes me believe that our film could challenge other films of the
same genre, and also bring around a new convention of the female being the killer, rather than the male.