Here is a rating out of 10 of the skills I have developed over the course of this project!
Codes and Conventions:
Being a lover of horror/thriller movies myself, I have picked up a lot of codes and conventions of the genre. However, I learned many things from the research and classwork that we were set. For example, I learned the credit structure- which was something that I never really noticed before having to learn about the different positions and jobs. Furthermore, the amount of research that the whole class put in to learning about the conventions of this sub-genre (quick jump cuts, playing with shadows, closeups) and analysing its audiences (YouGov) has really helped me understand the thriller genre enough to create an opening sequence.
Planning & Organisation
Planning and organisation was something we did really well on in this project overall. From the start, Shir and I planned out what we were going to do- location surveys, storyboard, filming, buying props. We experienced a small delay as we often changed the plot- making some of the planning that we had previously done irrelevant (some location surveys were more suitable for another story). When we finally decided on a plot, everything else went really smoothly- we finished the storyboard very early on- so we were able to gather all the things we needed. Towards the filming day- almost everything was sorted (actors, set)- making us very efficient in filming.
Camera Work
Leaning about the conventions of thriller really helped us with the types of shots we would use. However, we didn't put in as much thought as we could have done on the different types of shots and instead focused on the overall picture- I think this is something that I could really improve on for the next project. I was in charge of filming, which from this project, has really helped me understand more on how to operate a camera and we got to experiment with different types of shots, seeing which looked better.
Visual Effects
We decided from the beginning not to use a lot of visual effects in our opening, so unlike some of our classmates who did spy/action (which required a lot more visual effects), we made ours look simple, elegant and authentic; focusing more on the type of fonts we used and how it would appear- and relied on our plot and camera work. This also made me notice more of the credits in movies, Shir and I went to see The Boy and really liked the style of font they used in the credit, so we went back and changed how ours was, which made it look more like a storybook- which suited our opening a lot better than the previous (modern) one. Also, I did learn a lot from doing a mini project where I worked with 2 other people to create a very short film of the thriller genre. In this project, we decided to do a mirror trick which required us to use After Effects to cut out the reflection and reverse it.
Editing
Our edit was very simple and minimalistic and we mainly relied on the content. This made editing quite pleasant compared to some of the other groups. We did experience some problems such as the music not being long enough, forcing us to have to replay some of the parts which didn't turn out really good and sounded choppy. We also reordered the events (changed from how the storyboard was originally drawn) which was kind of a challenge as we had to make the new order make sense and use this to build up the tension.
Creative Confidence
The creative aspect of our project was very messy at the beginning. We had many ideas and parts that we wanted to incorporate into the opening, this means that we changed from plot to plot for quite a while before deciding on the one we used. The research that I put into this project has really helped me improve on organising my ideas and also made me understand more of this genre. I think we were able to do well in the creative aspect and in making our opening stand out and unique.
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