Evaluation : Question 3 - Skills Development

Codes and conventions:

Prior to this assignment I was not familiar with the codes and conventions of films at all, let alone thriller films. Thriller was never my favourite genre to watch as it is too scary for me, however after being given this task I began watching more thrillers as it would to give a rough idea of how the micro-elements conveyed the thrilling mood. Some thriller films that I watched were the Zodiac (2007), Mr. & Mrs Smith (2005), The Shallows (2016) and Inferno (2016), alongside these films I also watched the film Children of men (2006) a science fiction film. Watching thriller films and non-chiller films allowed me to compare the difference in the micro-elements and how the messages are conveyed to give the audience a certain emotion. 

Planning and organisation:

We began planning our film opening in December of 2016 which gave us 3 months to plan, film, edit, present our rough cut to the class and reflect back on the feedback received. The planning process took longer than we had anticipated as we researched on which film opening we liked best and how we could adapt ideas so it would be suitable for ours.  Our filming and location scouting process was done within 2 days which I thought was a very efficient use of our time. We were able to film in a short span of time as we had plan which shot we wanted to get and what to look for at the filming location before going to film.

Camerawork:

My camerawork has improved the most as I research on how to film particular shots which allowed me to experiment with the filming equipment we had at the time. 

Visual Effect:

I began this project without any idea of what visual effect meant as well as how to create them. I was personally taught the way on how to add the vignette by Eye as she learnt from a video on youtube. In the shot which our title is shown, the text was added using After Effects. I also used youtube to find tutorials to do this which allowed me to explore other tools on the application.

Editing:

I only had experience using iMovie which is a very basic application. Throughout creating this assignment I learnt how to edit simple things such as putting clips together as well as creating key-frames. Along this I also learnt how to colour correct which transformed the lighting and the mood of our opening.  We often worked on one laptop and discussed the choice of the lighting and the narrative structure of the clips.

Creative Confidence:

At first I had some difficulty coming up with ideas on how I wanted our outcome to look, however as I looked at examples of thriller openings and discussing with Claire and Eye we came up with an idea. Claire, enjoys the genre of thriller and horror which meant she was able to give us ideas of the what our psychological thriller is trying to convey. We each gave ideas of what we thought might work and whether we would be able to find the props. Some ideas were rejected and the rest made it to our final opening.