Thursday 22 March 2012

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the process of making our thriller, "From the Dark", I have learnt new things concerning technology and its link to our thriller. The main thing I have learnt is how to edit a film effectively into a clear but absorbing narrative. By using effects such as "dip to black" and "cross dissolve", we could change between shots of the boy, Jonathon, in the house, and the members of the enigmatic group outside the house or somewhere else in the house. This prevented any long, boring sections where only one character is being followed. Again, without our new experience and knowledge of thriller films, we would not have been able to efficiently create this effect. We managed to achieve this effect without affecting the narrative, creating a clear but gripping thriller. Our thriller is below - this contains evidence of these effects being used.


Furthermore, I have also learnt a great deal about sound. Before the construction of this thriller, I did not realise the huge importance of the sound choice in a thriller - I now know that the soundtrack can completely change the atmosphere - as the wife of Bernard Herrmann (American composer for motion pictures, who worked with Alfred Hitchcock in famous films such as the thriller Psycho) said, "The music tells the audience how to feel and what to think,". Because of this, we chose a soundtrack that had a heartbeat that changed as the situation of our thriller changed, which also had an eery background sound to help the tension and suspense increase.

http://www.freesound.org/people/hello_flowers/sounds/32424/ - Main soundtrack
http://www.freesound.org/people/steveygos93/sounds/91572/  - Non-diegetic gunshot sound

Also, I learnt a great deal when operating my media blog. While setting up and using the blog was quite straightforward, the main thing I learnt was linked to the different ways of presenting my work. Using a blog for my media studies coursework cause me to use things such as Prezi and how to embed Microsoft Word documents into a blog. Before this I had not even heard of some of these ways of presenting my work e.g. Prezi. By using a media blog, it has increased my knowledge of how to present my work and improved my ability to use things such as Prezi. My Prezi I made to display the target audience for our thriller, "From the Dark", is shown below.


4 comments:

  1. Could you please transfer your first 2 paragraphs re camera shots and angles to Question 7 (and in that question don't forget to explain that you've learned the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot - which in your film is where you cut from the boy to the mysterious man thus linking these two characters and suggesting the boy will become involved in the man's dark intentions.

    Lighting - did you use any effects re this. And re editing what about changing your film (if you used this effect) from colour to black and white on Premier Elements - upload an example of shot in colour and same shot in black and white.

    Instead explain about using the IMDB - an example please as to how this website helped you with research. And the same with Youtube, with an clip from a film which helped you with research.

    Amazon.co.uk if this site helped you define your target audience, for example if you buy such as such a DVD Amazon will offer consumers other films customers bought....

    School email system where tutors could contact you to communicate urgent information.

    At present strong Level 4.

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  2. Qu 6: With revisions your answer could be Level 4, at present strong level 3! Sorry for the mistake.

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    Replies
    1. Do you mean that I should keep these paragraphs here and comment on them in the next question, or remove them completely and put them in q7?

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  3. Remove them completely Will and transfer to Question 7.

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