What Went Well - Even Better If

I feel that the best part of our film was the way our group got along and listened to each others ideas and how we wanted the shot to look, every one in the group had a decision in the movie that made it look better than what it could have been. Another good thing was that taking 3 shots of each shot gave us an almost perfect shot because if there was any mistakes in one of the shots then we could correct them in the other two which made our film look very proffesional. Finally a good thing about our film and our group was the different ideas and techniques that we came up with and used, for instance the shot where i hand held the camera was a different approach to filming that we feel worked in our favour. I feel that our movie could have been even better if we got to stay in the first room we began filming in because what we had was very good footage and we had lots more room in that room, other than this i feel there were not major rooms for inprovements, obviously there was basic things we could have worked on like positioning of characters but that is the acting side rather than filming and editing

Reflections on editing

I feel that editing was one of the hardest parts of filming. We had problems importing our film because when we did we only got half of every shot, eventually when we did import the film it took a long time to get the shot we wanted because we shot 3 shots or every shot so we had to watch each one and see which one worked best, this took a long time but in the end it worked to our effect because now every thing that we filmed fits together very well. So allthough it was hard work i feel the editing worked well for us. The equipment that we used was iMovie on the mac. It isnt the most complicated of programmes so once we got used to it it became easier to edit. We used it by cutting out different shots that we wanted to use and got rid of the ones we didnt use, this was very basic editting so wasnt as hard as we first thought. In the end we didn't add any extra special effects to our film. Once we had cut every shot we had to every thing that we needed we felt that the film was fine how it was and that no other effects were required because we feel the room was dark enough so therefore didn't need to make it any darker than it was and we felt that because we used night mood everything looked pretty good on film so in the end editing wasn't as bad as we first thought and it worked rather well.

Reflections on filming

I think that filming went well, in my first group it didnt go so well for several reasons, i feel that there wasnt enough communication between the group so alot of misunderstandings happened so we didnt film what we needed to film in the time i was in the group. Also a problem was in the common room there was a lot of noise so was hard to concentrate and hear what we were saying. When i moved to Paul & Elise, filming went very well, we knew exactly what we wanted to do so it was made easier by that and we done lots of filming in the first lesson. But then in the second lesson we couldnt use the same room as the first lesson, this made things hard because we had to start a fresh and try to finish the whole of the filming in one lesson in case this trouble we had again, eventually we got to use the new classroom twice and filming went very well, we used lots of different techniques, including panning and one good thing we done was whilst i was looking for my attacker i hand held the camera so we could see the film from my sight, we feel this worked very well. We also feel that we followed the rules pretty well, a way me made sure of this is before we began filming the next shot we checked if we were on the right side for the 180 degree rule, this kept us within the rules. Another thing we done which was following the rules was waiting 5 seconds before we say "action" & "cut" so overall we done well with the filming task.

Reflection On Planning The Sequence

I was in 2 different groups so planning for me was different, at first i was put into a group with; Emma, Dannielle & Todd. It was pretty hard to plan in this group because we all had a different idea that we wanted to use and all of the ideas we used didnt fit in so we never had a set story board. For instance me and Emma wanted to have action in our film to make it more exciting and keep the audience gripped whereas Todd wanted to keep the film simple and short which we saw as boring. So in this group we saw planning as the hardest and because we took so long we never got to draw out the story board that we needed to do. However before we got put into the groups i did my own individual story board which i felt was a good idea because i had the idea of a man on the run from his killer, but during his flee to get away he had a flashback in which he see's his attacker so although he is scared and wants to get away from the killer he knows exactly who it is. In the end in the group with Emma, Dannielle and Todd we planned to video in the common room and use the kitchen area as a cafe. On the way to the cafe we could use the idea of getting through and door and the conversation was going to be between the waitress in the cafe and the customer. But at the end of that lesson i got moved into a group with Elise & Paul, they had allready planned their film so i had to just go into the group and begin filming. Their plan was to use the drama room and record the villain running into a room, hiding turning all the lights off and waiting on the victim to come find him. Then they were to have their conversation. So i never got to plan anything in my new group.

Evaluation; 1.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My film uses lots of tension by playing music throughout the whole of the opening sequence, this is similar to all thriller films because music is usually played throughout the title sequence, this is where my film is different however because my film doesn't have a title sequence the titles come over the shots that I have in the film. However something similar I do have to normal thrillers is a shot I have which is the beginning of the action in my film of a body laying in the snow, with blood around him showing he has been murdered, this is similar to the thriller Brick, the opening shot in this thriller is of a women laying down in a local river showing that she has been killed.

opening sequence

In our opening sequence we will need six characters. We need a victim that you see walking through a field ready to be attacked by the murderer, the murderer, a few faces of people who have been killed by the murderer before. Me and Nathan are the two people being filmed and having the main part of this film whilst Danielle is filming. We both have important roles as we have to act as people we are not used to. The other people who we are taking pictures of for the board in the police station are Danielle and 3 other people from our media class. These pictures will appear on the screen at the beginning of our thriller film.

My opening credits are inspired by the film Se7en, the opening credits in this film are world renowned for one of the best thriller opening sequences ever. I like the idea of the text not being on a blank screen and being on top of the film as it plays on because it is different and almost breaking conventions of thriller movies. My opening credits are very similar because i have still shots with text on top of them.

Here are some images of the Se7en opening sequence and of my opening sequence.

(Image 1,2,3 - My opening sequence.)

(Image 4-5-6 - Se7en opening sequence)

There is also a video of the Se7en opening sequence