Paige Stephens completed a personal skills audit to assess the skills she acquired and how they contributed to creating her short film product. She used various digital equipment like cameras, microphones, and editing software like Final Cut and GarageBand. Research tasks helped her understand genres and conventions. Planning tasks such as storyboards and schedules helped ensure smooth production. While some conventions were followed, her ideas were also imaginative by making the film look surreal. Effects skills will be developed further for her next A2 project of a music video.

1. Personal Skills Audit Name: Paige Stephens
Skills acquired How did these skills contribute to the
creation of your product?
How will you develop these skills
during the A2 project?
Digital technology
- What
equipment/so
ftware
packages did
you use to
produce your
production?
 Panasonic Camera-hc-v100
 Hama Tripod
 Microphone
 Recorder
 Final cut
 Garage band
The use of this equipment helped me to create
the footage I had wanted and make the most of
the footage.
I Will keep using this equipment during
the year so that I don’t forget how to
operate it when I am filming my
production.
Post production
- What
software did
you use to
create your
production?
- Discuss
specific
features of
the software.
To edit the footage we used the final cut
programme. The skills that I acquired
from using this equipment were that I
discovered how to use the equipment
correctly and safely. I think that using
the final cut programme was the most
useful skill I have acquired as I think that
the editing process is the most important
of all the stages as it is the production of
the final product.
For the sound we used the garage band
programme to choose our ideal music
and sound effects that would create the
intended effect and atmosphere. We
also created our own sound effects by
using a microphone and recorder.
We also used a programme called live
The skills contributed to the creation of my
product as I used the different tools and effects
that are available on the final cut programme to
edit the footage and make it look like the short
film that I had imagined. I think that the vast
variety of tools helped me to change and
manipulate the footage and make it look
surreal and completely different.
I think the most important tool we used was the
cutting razor blade tool. This was because we
used it to cut our footage up and edit t in
smaller shots. This was useful as we could
delete any unwanted footage and edit any
smaller shots without changing the rest of the
footage.
We made some of the sounds ourselves so we
used garage band to edit the sounds and make
I will keep using the final cut and
garage band programmes to keep
myself familiar with the different tools
and effects so that I don’t loose any
skills that I had learnt last year. I will
also try to discover more relevant tools
and effects that I could develop to
make my production look more
professional and creative. I am still
going to use the cutting tool in final cut
as this will help me change and
improve the editing of my footage and
delete any unwanted footage.
I think if I needed text in my music
video I will try to use live type, as it was
really useful and there is a wide variety
of fonts to choose from.

2. type to create the text for pour opening
titles.
them sound the way we had wanted.
The live type programme allowed us to create
the best text and fonts that we wanted to
appear as our opening titles.
Research and
Planning
- What tasks
did you
complete
when
preparing to
film your
sequence?
- How did your
planning help
the smooth
progression
of your film?
 Opie task
 Opie task evaluation
 Camera shots
 Genre analysis
 History of the Horror genre
 History of the Action genre
 Opening sequence analysis of
the woman in black
 Opening titles
 Title sequence analysis of
Sweeny Todd
 Seven-frame analysis (taken)
 Creative opening sequences
 Sound screen shot
 Prelim task evaluation
 Thriller audience research
 Horror audience research
 Sound task evaluation
 Audience profile
 Institutional research
 Script
 Storyboard
 Animatic
 Shooting schedule
The creation of all these documents and tasks
had helped me to get to the final stage of my
product. All the research tasks helped me to
gain a better understanding of the industry and
the institutions of the genre of my product.
The planning tasks also allowed me to create
the basis of my product and make sure it would
look the way I wanted.
The production of these tasks also allowed me
to gain skills on other programmes such as
word, PowerPoint and allowing me to use
slideshare to embed my work onto my blog.
I think that the Opie task was really helpful as I
had not used Photoshop before and I gained
many skills from that task that I found useful
when creating the production company logo.
I think that these skills will be very helpful this
year as I have knowledge on how to use the
majority of tools on the programmes that I will
need to use this year for the production of my
final product (music video).
I will keep using the programme to
keep y mind refreshed so that when it
comes to the final production of my
product I will have the knowledge I
need to create it to the standard that I
want.
I will make sure that I complete all the
research and planning tasks before I
start on my production so that my idea
will be complete and I will then know
what I need to do.
I think that the research and planning
tasks are a big part of getting the idea
right and making sure that I will be able
to create the effects and editing
techniques that I intend to create. For
this reason I am going to make sure
that I complete all of these tasks in
detail so that I don’t make a huge
mistake when producing my final
product.

3.  Callsheet
 Risk Assessment
 Recce shots of Location
 Props and equipment list
 Character list
 Production company logo
 Opening title planning
Using conventions
of real media texts
- Which texts
did you
analyse?
- Did you take
any
inspiration
from the
conventions
found from
your
research?
 The woman in black
 Sweeny Todd
 Taken
 The lord of the rings
 World war Z
 Fast and furious 6
Analysing these texts was very useful when it
came to my final production of my short film as
I had gained an understanding of the
conventions of the genre and so I knew more
about what I needed to include in my final
product.
I used these texts to take inspiration from for
my final product as I found they were intriguing
and this is how I wanted my audience to feel. I
used some of the typical conventions from the
horror genre which I found more about when
completing the research tasks, but I also
changed the style to keep the audience
interested in something different. I found that
analysing these media texts allowed me to
take inspiration but still create the narrative
that I was hoping to create.
This year I will analyse texts of the
same genre of the music video I want
to create to gain a more detailed
understanding of the conventions of
that style of music video. I think that I
will choose to analyse more music
videos of similar genres to allow me to
broaden my understanding of the
camera work and thought beats that
are involved with that particular genre.

4. Creativity
- Were your ideas
for your portfolio
imaginative and
unique or did you
adhere to
conventions?
The idea was developed with my partner
and we decided on the theme and
narrative as we thought this was what a
stereotypical young girl would be afraid
of. For this reason our theme was
slightly psychological and we decided to
make it look more queer so we added
more effects to the different camera
shots to make it look completely surreal.
The effects that we used took time to get the
colours right for each camera shot. This was a
skill that I acquired when we were in the
process of creating the final product. We
practiced using these effects on our second
and third rough copy of the film.
I think that if I need to use these effects
to create a different atmosphere in my
music video this year I will already
have the skills and knowledge to do
this. However, I will need to make sure
that I test out the effects in a rough cut
so that I know exactly what to do and
how the effect will look.