Preliminary Evaluation

1. What new skills, techniques and knowledge have you learnt from producing the preliminary activity?

I have learnt how to use a video camera and set up a tripod for filming from this activity, this helped me by being able to help film parts of the preliminary task so that i could get the footage that i wanted specifically for my trailer. I also gained the knowledge of how to get smooth panning, taking, and tilt shots through use of tripod, this helped considerably to fit the brief of shot types called for. Through the use of the tripod me and my group were able to get a range of shot types including these smooth moving shots which were kinder on the eyes than shaking handheld shots.

through the editing of the trailer i also learnt a lot about how to use iMovie, i became confident with the software and found it easy to use, adding effects to clips of film and audio. it was very interesting to learn first hand about the software and i explored different ways to add to my movie trailer. i feel one of the aspects i found most interesting was messing with the opacity of the video clips, this added an interesting effect to the film when it was layered over another piece of film, i enjoyed the creepy effect that it gave to the images and chose to use it in my trailer when ever the victim was visible, this made her seem ghostly and jarring to the viewer.

2. How did you work with other people in your production team?  What role did you play in the production? Would you have done anything differently?

Although my group was put together through chance, after the initial awkwardness of talking to new people i believe that i grew to work confidently with them, i believe i played more of a role of a form of a director, although i also helped my group out through filming a few scenes, for the majority of the process i brought together our actors and arranged the time and place for filming which fit around the needs of my group and actors, i was flexible and we were able to get all of our filming done in the same day. i also directed the actors and camera operative to where the script, shot list and storyboard called for. if i could have changed anything about the production, i would have tried to take more of a leadership role in the group earlier on as the majority of the planning was in very short notice for some of my actors. i would also have made sure that my actors had more time to practise for their scenes as some of the voices in the scenes felt heavily acted out. if i had planned forward for my group i could have given my actors more time ahead of the filming and been able to fully explore all of the places that we needed to film in.

3. What parts of the process did you find most challenging?  How did you overcome this?

I personally found planning for my group the most challenging. as somebody who normally is lead by other people and is very timid around new people for a long time the immediate time frame between meeting my group and trying to figure out a fully developed plan which could fit to them and the script which i wrote from a group members shot list was overwhelming for me at first. organising myself enough for my group was a difficult task for me but through the other two members not being overly eager to fill the role i was jumped at the role in a last ditch effort to pull my group through this task. i over came this through contacting my group members out of school and asking some friends who i knew had finished college and were likely to be free.

4. How successful was your final product?  Did it meet your expectations?  What are its strengths? What would you do to improve it if you were to do it again? Does it effectively make use of narrative, genre and representation?

I feel like my product could have been better through many different aspect i feel like there were parts which were successful for example I'm proud to say that I chose appropriate scenes out of the mass we filmed, I feel like this gave me the edge on my editing as i had more choice to get the perfect impression out of the film which should be mystery or an intimidating atmosphere to the trailer. another thing i see as a strength is the inclusion of most if not all of the shot types asked for us in the brief, while some were difficult to include into the trailer, like the extreme zoom shot where I recognise there were some issues, although we found sticking to the script was quite difficult when put into real life situations. other shots i found much easier to include for example the low angle shot of the blood on the tree, i felt the shot was very effective for the horror genre as the connotations of low angle shots create an alarming scene, which intimidates the audience. i also feel like while there are areas in the sound i could have improved as the actors voices were filmed in the park, but i feel the ambient music i used from the i movie sound library fitted well with my edited product.