Skills Review

Research and Planning
Through conducting thorough research and planning into the genre of film we wanted to produce a film opening for we learnt many useful skills. by using the internet we identified the conventions of a Psychological Thriller and used this information to structure and plan our own psychological thriller opening. We also analysed the opening of many psychological thrillers to identify how many characters are usually included within the first 2 minutes and of what gender. We established a suitable target audience and planned our opening, having to overcome problems we faced. For example we had 3 female characters, usually there is at least one male character usually playing the antagonist, we worked around this to create a female antagonist.
To track all of our research and planning we posted it all on to our individual blogs, displaying it in different formats to make the blogs seem more appealing and interactive. For example some of our posts were in text, in slideshows, displayed as graphs and we even embedded some videos. I think this allowed me to get used to how to use blogger to display my work, which I believe will also help me track my work through in the A2 Advanced Portfolio.

Digital Technology
When producing the film opening we had to familiarize ourselves with the technology provided such as the cameras and editing machines. Throughout the AS part of the media course I gained basic knowledge in how to use the different camera buttons e.g record, pause, stop, play and zoom. After this we would also upload all of our footage onto the editing machines, another skill I had picked up doing this through the use of a media card or a cable, depending on the camera we were using. I also learnt how to use the editing machines to edit together footage, picking up more skills each lesson. Such as cropping of cutting footage and putting it together. Furthermore I also learnt how to use the software on the editing machines to add in different transitions that led one piece of footage to the next, e.g using a swipe or dissolve.

Using conventions from real media texts
Through the time we had spent on our research and planning we identified the key conventions of a psychological thriller opening and were then easily able to apply this to our own film opening. We took into account different aspects of mise-en-scene so that the audience would be able to identify the genre of our film opening without us having to make this clear through speech.


Post Production
From using the editing machines I have learnt to upload and transfer the footage I have recorded from the camera to the machine. Also, I have learnt basic editing skills from using the Adobe Premiere Pro such as how to crop and put together footage. Another thing I have picked up on is how you can change the brightness or lighting if it needs to be adjusted on the footage from the software. Editing is an area where I have developed basic skills, but would like to develop more skills in more depth for the A2 media course, to allow me to come out with the best possible music video I can produce.

Creativity