Question 6

When I produced this production, I learnt new and different techniques that will be useful in future productions. I can now frame shots effectively to create the atmosphere I want. I have learnt to use continuity editing properly and I also know how to get the audience to fell how I want them to feel, for example I composed a shot which makes the audience uneasy.

When filming we had made a massive improvement on our prelim. We used the tripod effectively to keep the shots steady; we made sure that the neck of the tripod was loose so that we could easily pan across when filming. We encountered a problem when trying to keep the tripod steady, the ground was very uneven but lucky the tripod we use made it easy to set the legs at different heights to keep the shot level. We also tried to stay away from hand held shots because it can most of the time be a little shake and unproffesional. They lighting was perfect on the day of filming, but if It wasn’t we could of used equipment to help us with the lighting. We learnt that if the lighting is too dark then a torch is very helpful because it doesn’t make the shot too bright to affect the thriller conventions but it gives enough like to get a clear shot. We wanted to follow the thriller convention of dull lighting to create a tensional and suspenseful effect. This gave the feeling that evil was lurking about.

I believe that I and my partners have improved our knowledge greatly. I know realise that close ups are very useful for filming objects and facial expressions, I makes the plot and what is happening much Clear to the audience. Extreme long/long shots are typically used to show the audience the location of the film.  I also have tried to use the rule of thirds in many shots this is because we used many close ups and wanted the audience to focus on the objects, like weaponry and the wanted poster so that the audience would recognise them later on in the film.

We had access to iMovie when we were creating our thriller. It comes with most Macs. It is very effective and surprisingly easy to use. I learnt a lot of things. One of the simple things I learnt was how to import footage from a SD card to the mac. I had to make a new event, an event is where footage is stored and up drag and drop the film files into the project from the event. I also learnt how to effectively edit the footage together. I also learnt how to add effects and transitions. The change the effect on the clip by going to clip options and going to the change effects/filter button. We chose to use the effect Vignette, because it fitted the thriller genre very well my darkening the outside of the clip making it feel grungy and dark.

I also used the software Photoshop. I used this to produce our company’s ident and the titles. I didn’t want to use the titles available in iMovie because they looked too stock in my opinion. Once we had finished on Photoshop we had to import them and overlay them on the footage. I learnt how to do this. But not all the iMovie’s we have access to have this feature. To do this you have to right click on the clip and click on picture on picture button.

 I also learnt how to import music and edit out the pieces of the soundtrack I didn’t want, this was done in garage band and then exported to iTunes.

We finally finished producing so we decided to export it using QuickTime and we made sure that the export quality was set to the highest. But when it finally went onto YouTube the quality decrease for some reason, which was a bit disappointing.

Technology had a big impact on our work, it enabled us to gather feedback and get our production out. We used YouTube to put your production on our blogs; this also was good because it has a comment section, so people could give their opinion. I should of used Facebook to get even more feedback from friends and family. So that we can improve for future productions.

If I was to do the production again I would of like to use a lot more shots, we could have had more shots of actual people and not only parts of their body. Also I wish I had made the production lead up to a key event in the opening. I wish we filmed more of the bridge that we filmed at and I would have used the location a lot better, to an advantage.