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

Before beginning Media Studies, I didn’t know anything about how to effectively record, film and edit. By learning to use a variety of shot types, including: shot-reverse-shot, match-on-action, long shot, mid shot, close-up...etc, and using editing skills to my advantage, such as: changing and making transitions, cropping and ordering sound/video clips...etc, I have successfully produced a Preliminary Video and Final Thriller Opening, using all the skills I have learned.

High and Low Angle Shot types were used in our Thriller Opening. The Low Angle Shots were looking up towards myself, to show my character (the Detective) as powerful and ‘in-control’. Where-as the Low Angle were aimed down at Lewis’ character (the Convict) to show that he is restrained and unable to move, this of-course is done to stay true to the storyline.

Transitions were added in certain places to keep a continuous flow through-out the Opening, therefore building up tension while events took place in the actual Thriller. We specifically used black-to-black or black-to-white fade-out transitions because we believed they looked simple, but effective and not too elaborate as others we felt that this would draw the audience’s attention away from the actual Opening, and more onto the effects and transitions that we used.

We used a black-and-white filter on our whole Thriller Opening, as we thought that it looks more like an old Mafia type film. This is to also give the audience something to think about while watching, as in Mafia films; there is often blood due to gun wounds and such, where the editors will add a black-and-white filter to take the bloods harsh red colouring away.

This is something similar to what we did in our Thriller. Although there is no actual blood shown, however a trigger nearly is pulled and a gun is potentially fired, resulting in a lot of blood which the audience would be exposed to. The black-and-white filter gets rid of this problem, where the audience may become uninterested in the film because they either do not enjoy blood and gore, or they simply have not found to pretend blood to seem real.

We used a tri-pod during our Thriller Opening to keep the camera steady, so that we could effectively film our different scenes. Without it we couldn’t have successfully acquired the shots that we did; as it steadied the camera and allowed us to controllably adjust shots to be suit what we needed. The tri-pod has many features on it which allow us to: alter the height of the camera, tilt the camera and pan with the camera at different speeds.

The tri-pod was possibly the most important piece of equipment that we used while making our Thriller.

iMovie was our main software aid. It served as our editing and construction tool for our Thriller; allowing us to crop, add effects and music soundtracks. We used it to actually piece together our Opening from just bits of camera footage we had taken; placing them in the correct order with different effects that enhanced the experience of watching our Thriller, and over-all conjured our final product.