Evaluation Question 7

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

When filming our preliminary task, we did not know much about planning or researching about our task, in order to to make it a successful product. However, when it came to our final product, we knew that we had to do a lot more planning and researching to appeal to our audience. This was because we had to conform to a certain genre, meaning everything we did had to be planned in detail.

Looking back on our preliminary task, it was obvious that we had a problem with consistency, as our footage did not flow nicely and this inevitably effected the standard of our filming. We were unaware of how to use the editing software correctly in order to cut at the right times, so that everything made sense to our audience. We also had no theme or genre to our preliminary task, which meant that it lacked purpose and didn't exactly make sense to our audience. This was something that we wanted to change, and so we did this for our final product.

During our planning stages, we decided to research other crime thrillers that we wanted ours to be similar to. To do this, we used the software media platform called 'YouTube'. On this, we looked up various crime thriller openings and came across 'The Call' and 'Taken'. We found these very helpful when putting together our storyboard, as we knew we wanted to have a similar plot to theirs, whilst still bringing aspects of uniqueness to it. Additionally, we used another software platform called 'Google', which helped me research the existing crime thrillers and also statistics on what our audience takes an interest in when it comes to crime thrillers. Researching our target audience was useful too, as we was able to manipulate the findings to include things that they would appeal to (such as costume, phones/props etc), to attract the right individual's.

I used various websites and found that 'The Call' and 'Taken' were very successful movies and the audience seemed to take a liking to the crime aspect of it. From looking at these thrillers, we knew that we needed intense non-diegetic sound, close-up shots to show the victims fear, point-of-view shots to make the audience feel as if they are the character themselves, and more. We also discovered that transition shots and special effects was not relevant to this genre, so as a result, we avoided including them. To look into this further, I googled statistics on what the most popular thriller genre is, and every website said that it was the crime thriller genre. This is because crime is kept quite hidden from the population, so to see it reenacted on television and in movies intrigues the audience. Furthermore, my group and I also googled what type of themes the crime genre often creates, and how.

From researching this, we knew what kind of camera-shots, angles, sounds, mise-en-scene and more to employ that the audience would want to see, in order for it to be a successful crime thriller. This enabled us to be a part of major production companies, and also have a chance to make our own merchandise, due to our carefully planned out props.

Unlike in our preliminary task, we wanted to make a storyboard for our final product. We felt that this was a good way to keep everything structured and organised, so that it was clear what our task was when we began to film. This avoided any confusion and enabled us to clearly show our ideas to the class during our initial ideas presentation. This particular aspect of our planning was very useful, as then we were able to get feedback from people who were part of our target audience. Some of the feedback was negative, so in order to improve, we made a comprise and changed some of our scenes in order to make our thriller realistic. Making it realistic was important to us, as crime is something that occurs everyday, so we couldn't make up a scenario that didn't seem like it would happen in real life.

We definitely feel that our specific shot types have improved since our preliminary task. During the first task, we only employed three specific camera shots which were: shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180 degree rule. However, during our final product, we were able to adopt close-up's, mid-shots, long-shots, extreme long shots, point-of-view shots, panning shots, high angle and low angle shots. This inevitably proved that we were able to use a variety of skills in order to make our thriller look to a professional standard, as our shots were more advanced. On the other hand, due to our antagonist and protagonist never making face-to-face contact during our final product, it did mean that we were unable to make use of the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot-reverse-shot. This was because there were never two individuals in the room at the same time. Looking back now, my group and I should of more thoroughly thought through the storyboard and planning of our crime thriller, in order to employ more techniques to acquire a higher grade.

After using all of the basic equipment and software during our foundation portfolio, I definitely feel more confident with it. I now understand how to use each feature of the camera's, iMac's, tripods and software's, as I used them all thoroughly throughout the year, and learned from my mistakes. Therefore I will be able to take this knowledge with me when I start my advanced portfolio.

I definitely feel that our end product was very successful in fulfilling the task-to create a thriller opening, as we carefully applied every single aspect, theme and stereotype of the crime genre that we possibly could. We were very successful at addressing our audience, knowing that they would be interested in the crime genre too, due to our extensive research and planning. Looking at other crime thrillers that we got inspiration from, I definitely feel that we did a good job at replicating it to a good standard, so that it looked like a realistic and successful product that interested the audience and put out the right kind of message that we was trying to create. After receiving a lot of positive feedback, and re-filming to get everything to a good standard, our target audience was able to agree that it is a successful final product, that reflected the crime thriller genre really well.