Ev 3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

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At the beginning of this project I did not have much knowledge on codes and conventions that is why I scored myself a 2/10 . However after a few classes I learnt that ‘conventions are the generally accepted way of doing things. Conventions is what the audiences expect to see’  My initial idea for this project was to create a film with the sub genre of supernatural thriller. After deciding this I drew a mind map for the conventions from supernatural horror films like  “The Evil Dead” and “Cabin in the Woods” and decided that from these horror films audiences can expect to see death, jumpscares, an Isolated house, and a supernatural figure. Therefore I applied all these conventions to the the opening of my film. For example, the supernatural figure which is shown towards the end of the clip. I also learnt that codes are a system of signs that create meaning. There are two types; symbolic codes and technical codes. Symbolic codes include acting, props, and language. Since we are filming in Thailand we wanted to create an environment that would realistically portray Bangkok’s atmosphere. We achieved this through using symbolic codes. For example, we decided to film at a market, a bus and let the character wear thai uniform in order to create a believable representation of bangkok. While for technical codes, this includes sound, lighting, camera and editing which I experimented on using adobe premiere later on in the project. I explored how I used these conventions in my response to question 1.

I believe that there has been a small improvement for my planning and organisation skills. This is because I feel that I have been organised with the project from the beginning. However blogger has helped me improve my skills as it has allowed me keep track of my progress and plan and schedule future events. For example, the picture shows 2 occasions where I used blogger to create a plan for the filming day and list down all the due dates for each objective. For the filming day schedule I made sure to include an hour for traffic. This was because we were filming at 2 different locations and therefore we had to travel a lot. On the day we found that there was not much traffic and therefore we were on schedule and managed to finish filming at 4pm rather than 5pm. In addition, for the due date schedule I made sure  to set a task each week. I refered to this schedule and edited it quite often as some tasks were completed earlier than predicted. Overall, I was able to stick to the due dates and complete my coursework during the first week of february.

My Camera work skills have improved as well but like Planning and Organisation skills it has not improved that dramatically. This is because I already had a good understanding about Camerawork after taking an external photography lesson. However In class I learnt about other elements of cinematography like shaky cam, pan shots and did an analysis on different shot types. I did this for the film “Heat”. This helped improve my understanding for each shot type and realise the deeper meaning for it. For example, I learnt that a low angle shot makes the character look more dominant and give them power as their figure immediately appears more intimidating. In addition, to improve my camera skills further I watched a thai horror film called “Take me home” The opening of this scene shows a pan shot of picture frames and displays the credits beside it. I really liked this idea and decided to apply it to the opening scene of my film as well. The picture shows my own interpretation of the pan shot create in the movie. Also, for this project I made sure to include a variety of different shot types like for example, close ups, mid shot and tracking shots

Like my visual effects skills, my editing skills have improved dramatically as well. At the start of this project I only knew how to edit videos on Imovie, that is why I scored myself a 3. But later on in class we were introduced to a software called Adobe Premiere Pro. Like for after effects I also looked at several tutorials online on how to use premiere. Once i had the basic knowledge on how to use it I tried experimenting with premiere by creating a short clip on “psychological thriller”. From then I wanted to expand my knowledge and improve my skills and technique so I tried experimenting with green screen, creating layers and colour grading. For example the picture shows how I’ve colour graded each clip decreasing the temperature because I felt that this would create a cold, lonely and sad atmosphere. Also for the layers I did this because it helped reveal the two characters’ relationship.