EVALUATION - AS Coursework Reflection

AS Coursework Reflection

We used the Internet to get ideas for the opening of our film; this was our main method of completing research. We also used the Internet to analyse film openings, the main sight we used was YouTube, we were able to access many films easily and we wrote up many reviews on our blog, for example Rebecca and Step Up. We were able to find out about different camera shots and editing styles with we wouldn’t off if we hadn’t done research on the Internet. When filming we used the schools equipment; camera and tripod, the tripod enabled us to keep the camera steady on the static shots to make our film look more professional and realistic as if this was a ‘real’ opening for a ‘real’ film. However some parts of our opening were filmed using handheld shots. We thought this would make the film look more realistic and give our film variety. We used the editing programme Ulead 7.0 in the post-production stage of our course work. This programme we used to edit our shots, make them short, turn them into stills etc and arrange them into the sequence we wanted. We were also able to add in a number of different effects to our work such as fade-to –black as a transition between slides and title sequences.

In our group we all looked at the openings of films from all different genres to get ideas and witness different styles of filming. We mainly used the Internet and the website YouTube, we also looked at iplayer and itv player so we could watch relevant murder mystery/ thriller programmes. We also looked at relevant articles in The Guardian newspaper. We used these different media forms to try and create a film opening that was new and original and we were able to use the research that we have done to our advantage.

We did do a lot of research and planning for our opening but in many ways we ‘over’ planned, if we had made our film a bit more simplistic I think it would look more effective and clean cut. We tried to include everything, but this is something we have learnt from and has therefore helped us as we are now planning our film trailer. The openings we did analyse could have been done in more detail and therefore we could have picked up more filming techniques, this is something we have also learnt from. The handheld camera parts of our opening could have been improved as it looked very amateur, we had the right idea but the execution was a little off.

We received a lot of helpful audience feedback which we have taken into account and now have a clear idea on how we can improve. We did use a good variety of different camera shots and movement but we failed to make them ‘flow’ and look as professional as they could. We are using a new editing programme this year so the problems we had using Ulead 7.0 will not be a problem any longer. One of the many problems we had with this programme was deleting the audio we didn’t want, this lowered the standard of our film but now that problem is no more.

Our product does use conventions from real media texts as we looked at and analysed many different films from different genres. When our plans became more focused we then focused on looking at horror films such as Secret Window and 28 Days Later, these helped us make our film as realistic as we knew how at the time.

Rach.