Evaluation Question 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the finished product?

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the finished product?

Over the course of a few months between editing the preliminary task and thriller, i have learnt quite a few things and improved in a lot of areas. I have learnt how to create suspense through editing by adapting the different time lengths as shots in the film.


                                                                      

                                                              
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When I was editing the preliminary task, i had basic skills like continuity editing as we can see in the GIF editing is continued when she walks through the door to the other side.


In this GIF below i used basic skills like shot/reverse shot whilst trying to maintain the 180 degree rule which was pretty straight forward. I did not know how to do much at this point in time.







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Now i am capable of creating what looks like a professional ident for my thriller which I was not all able to do, i did not even know what an ident was at the start of this course but now i am confident in creating one that I believe i could be of help to anyone who doesn't know how to create one. This  ident was simply created with Photoshop.





Now i can include titles to my film and make it look professional.





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I was also able to edit sound into my thriller which makes it even better. I could now adjust the sound levels, making sure that the diegetic sound can be heard over the soundtrack perfectly and also making sure that the soundtrack is not too loud that no other sounds can be picked up.









                    Beginning of preliminary task


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Final thriller


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As we can evidently see from the thriller there has been a lot of improvements like the camera shots angles, transition from colour to black and white, and also fade in and out.

When we were doing our preliminary task, we did not spend that much time preparing it, we just created storyboards with the images of the shots. this did not take much time filming it because we needed to get particular shots.

But with the thriller, our planning sheets were a lot such as:
Risk assessment
Treatment
Location
Animatic
Shooting schedule
Shot list 

We also spent a lot of time filming individual shots over and over again so we can get it perfectly right. We also used a microphone to capture the sounds properly. From the preliminary task I learned that every frame and shot counts as your are filming therefore learning from my mistakes then I managed to reduce those mistakes which was helpful as it was less time consuming that way. 

The risk assessment also helped us reduce the risk of getting hurt as we were filming, the planning sheets really made us organised unlike when we were doing the preliminary task where nothing was really in order.

The thriller has definitely helped me improve my editing skills more than anything else

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

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 

We incorporated a lot of different kinds of technologies in the construction of this thriller product in order to make it more creative. Some of the technologies used include:

This IMAC computer is where all the work that we had worked on since the start of the media course is on this computer so it was quite useful. I had never used an IMAC computer till i started this course so it was a bit difficult for me to adjust at first as it had different features to a regular computer. But as time went on i became more familiar with it. It was one of the high quality computers therefore it made it easier when it came to importing, exporting and publishing media as it was very fast and not time consuming at all. Which made the IMAC computers an effective piece of technology to use.

Premier Pro is what we used to edit our short films. I must say this was the hardest technology i found hard to get used to because i had never come across it before. when we did our very first filming which was camera techniques, I only knew the basic which was importing the footage into Premier Pro, making sure the scenes were cut so they made sense so my editing skills were very limited to say the least. I had no choice but to learn how to use premier since it was compulsory and necessary to edit any footage that was filmed and also its  the school's default editing software and we had to edit any footage. After using premier for six months now i have gained new skills like being able to edit by including soundtracks, transitions, fade in and outs, straight cuts, titles and so on. Premier was definitely a challenge for me but at the end it was worth because it is straightforward once you know what to do.

YouTube was another one of the technologies used. We used YouTube as a platform to present our work which was useful because other people doing the same course could learn a few things or two from the work we have produced. But the main reason why we used this platform was so that we could export our videos after editing onto YouTube so that it can be perfectly accessible to our teachers without complications and also so that we can embed the videos in to our blogs. It made absolute sense to use YouTube as it was a video sharing site so no arguments about that one. YouTube is the most easiest technological platform to use as it is so straightforward that i could teach someone else easily. In order to use YouTube you had to have a google account or create one if otherwise and post your own personal content and that was it. But even though i knew how to use YouTube in terms of creating an account, posting and searching on it that was where my knowledge reached. I did not know how to embed codes onto other sites so YouTube taught me how to do that.

Blogger is a publishing site which we used to write and publish about anything to do with our coursework such as research, planning, preliminary task, construction, thriller and so on. These were the labels that we made so that it would so much easier and less time consuming for our teachers to find our make but more importantly for the examiners to know how organised we are and also make it less time consuming for them as they have so many blogs to go through. Therefore they can asses our coursework properly along with our written exam.This was the very first thing introduced to us when our media course started and the very first post which was the welcome post was made. To be perfectly honest, I was not all that familiar with blogger but it was not anything hard to deal with. I found it very useful because you could insert images and videos from YouTube, which made the work very colourful and creative rather than just plain text. Just like YouTube, you have to have a google account to be able to use Blogger.

Lastly, the mini camcorder was a necessary piece of technology for media since we had to do a lot of filming. This is another equipment that I was not all familiar with as i had never used it before but just like most of the others mentioned above it was pretty straightforward. In order to operate it, all you had to do was open the side screen, press the "on button" then press the red button for it to start recording and when you want to cut or stop recording, just press the red button again and on the screen you will see in green "standby" written at the top ans that simply meant it had stopped recording. I gained a lot of skill on how to use this in comparison to my first time that now i know all the buttons and their respective functions, I know how to capture a variety of camera angles and movements and also how to safely place the camera securely on a tripod, which is key knowledge that everyone must know when it comes to cameras.

Evaluation Question 5) How did you attract/address your audience?

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluaton 5 from Alexandra Adjei

Evaluation Question 4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

4) Who would be the audience for your media product? 

Create your own user feedback survey

As you can see from the questionnaire above which i used survey monkey to create, I ask questions about the audience age to know necessarily who is watching my media product, and also, their ethnicity so that they can relate to my thriller especially if the majority is black since there is a black character(Damola) who is dressed up with a hood on and deals with drugs and this a stereotype that most black people are accused of on a daily basis so my viewers can relate to it. I gave this questionnaire to family and friends close to me.

 From the graph at the side, we can see that from ages 16-31 would go view our thriller but not so much those under 15 because this is a thriller that depicts a lot of violence and drug use as well which might not be pleasant thing to show children under age therefore it is completely understandable to receive this result. From the graph we can see that the highest age group that would view our thriller is 16-20 years old and this is mainly because it is relate-able. As we all know that teenagers are put in a very negative light more than any other age group and our thriller shows that negativity as there is drugs, violence and peer pressure involved in this thriller. Those at the ages of 31+ would view our thriller but not so many of them probably because it does not relate to them and their lives but the minority that would watch might watch it because it relates to their children.

What class would view your media product?

From the graph, we can see that the working class is at the top of the graph and this is because the film deals with the youth in London in which some of them work therefore it is more likely yo appeal to them as they can identify with some of the issues mentioned in the thriller such as ethnic minorities. However we can see that the Upper class is at the bottom of the graph and our thriller would definitely not attract them because they are the ones who are dominant therefore thy make the stereotypes. So i doubt that they would want to go and view a film that heavily criticises them.

Evaluation Question 3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation Question 2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

Evaluation Question 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

Audience feedback On Thriller

After the screening of our thriller and handing out the questionnaires, the class gave us feedback on what they liked about out thriller and what they thought we could improve. So it it was a mixture of compliments and criticism.

Many of them said that it was confusing at first as they did not know what was going on but that mystery wanted them to keep watching the film to know what is going to happen next. They liked that the thriller did not reveal everything at once. However some said they would have liked it if there was more dialogue included and also if the editing was past faced so that it has some elements of thriller conventions. But over all it was good feedback as were complimented on good cinematography and soundtrack.

Screening

We showed the class our thriller and as you can see there are questionnaires in front of them about the thriller that they have to fill in and tell us what they thought about our film.

NO ESCAPE

Analysis of rough cut

We were advised to create a rough cut of our thriller before the final cut. This was because it would help us a lot regarding the fact that if we got some good shots in the rough cut we could keep that for the final thriller and also correct any errors such as a messed up shot angles. The rough cut enables us to get more established shots. It gave us an opportunity to re-film.

In the rough cut, we had a few establishing shots in the classroom scene but we decided not to use that scene mainly because we did not think it was important to include a classroom scene therefore during re filming we included a outside scene replacing the classroom scene which turned up much better than the previous classroom scene we were going to use.

                                                                    


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In the opening of the rough cut, we had a close of a persons phone and it showed a message from their "drug dealer" and then we see that, that person is a student which is effective because a student should not be dealing with drugs whilst they are in school therefore the audience would be intrigued to know what happens next.

Audience feedback on rough cut

Damola Oyekanni
It was interesting but it could be longer. I enjoyed it because it created a suspenseful atmosphere and grabs the viewers attention.


Tyler Forde:

"I liked the rough cut because you can see clearly what is going on and what they're trying to show, i like the way they have used over the shoulder shots and not broken the 180 degree rule. I'd like the see the final outcome of the thriller because so far the rough cut has shown a lot of mystery, grabbing my attention, However to improve they could use a wider variety of shots"

Rough Cut

Editing 2

This is the editing i was doing where i was adjusting the sound and adding in titles. Making sure that the diegetic sounds can be heard over the sound track if it needs to. Also working on my ident.

Editing 1

This is the thriller that i was editing for the day . 

This is the process of looking at all the footage during the making of the film  then placing the footage in the right order of what they should be played in. During this process I also cut out what we do not need and are able to move the footage around and change the type of sounds that happen during this stage.

Filming 2

This post is about when we were filming our thriller. We filmed a classroom scene where there was a teacher teaching as you can see from the picture above. The picture below was Emily adjsting the camera and making sure the shot was good. I was standing at the back directing which way the angles were to be shot.

This was us reviewing our storyboard before filming so we know all the shots were in the right place so it will be less time consuming having to change errors whilst filming

Filming 1

This is my team and I filming our classroom scene. In the first photo is of the camerawoman(Emily) Filming and me next to her observing what she does and directing our this particular scene should be shot.

Production meeting 4

This was our meeting that took place, here you can see we are planning the rest of our  thriller.