EVALUATION - Evaluation of my previous blog

Analysing my previous blog,

http://www.benjleighstapevans.blogspot.com/

For our AS coursework, we borrowed ideas from many different places to create our final piece. To help us along in this process, we analysed various openings from different films to develop our ideas and create a more professional look. By doing this, we had a good understanding of the techniques used such as using various different camera angles/shots to create different effects. For example, in our media piece, ‘Eudemonia’, we created various effects to give a general sense of what had been happening to the girl. The still camera shots and the handheld shots are an example of this. After looking at the film ‘Psycho’, we chose to place the film in black and white, as I believe it helped us to represent that we were going for a Psychological Thriller approach.

It’s by analysing other media texts that we were able to develop our films. YouTube was a viable place for doing so, and didn’t require us having to purchase any films to be able to analyse them. Along the way, we also evaluated our own piece, weighing up the good points and the bad. I feel this process aided us a lot, as we continued to improve our own skills for any following films that we created. Not only did we analyse our own films, but we had other people do so too. I found this was beneficial, as it led to a more critical approach and was not so biased. It’s easy for me and my previous blog members to evaluate our own work, however we may have been a little unfair on our approach and not been critical enough.

Along the way, we have posted various details about the work we are producing such as music ideas, photographs for the location and the scripts that we had planned on using. I found this to be a good idea, as it allowed us to stay on track and focus on the task at hand. As we continued to post more, I had found the group all knew what we were doing, and we weren’t unsure about anything. Furthermore, by posting any relevant ideas, it allowed us to mind map various concepts which had helped us create our media pieces.

Despite feeling that we did a good job with our blog overall, I do believe we could have done more to it. An example of this would have been more research on the Internet. We analysed films and took into account our own opinions, however we could have seen what the general publics’ thoughts were. If we had done this, I believe we may well have been able to construct even better pieces of work. In doing so, we could have avoided any problems or issues that other people may not have liked quite so much. Over the course of this year, I will be doing this, to help us gain a better understanding and perhaps create a better piece of work.

Being part of this blog, I hope I can amend any previous mistakes and report on research, ideas and any analyses. With any luck, I’ll continue to improve as we post more on the blog.

-Dale