In My group’s media product we followed many conventions of real media products. We succeeded in creating a huge sense of enigma, which was one of our aims. Some of the main strengths included: a simple story, good use of credits, and good match on action. There are a few things we could have improved to further please the audience to encourage good feedback via word or mouth.
Weaknesses reported in peer feedback included: reflection of torch on poster, and not making enough out of the Shack sequence and needed more shots of the ‘missing wall’. Its this type of feedback that we really need to pay attention to, so we can improve our next product.
I know that as a group we have all learnt a lot in the last year. My jobs have mainly fallen under filming, lighting and sound. The areas I learnt the most in were editing in final cut pro and using garage band to create a soundtrack. In final cut I learned how to crop scenes, change the brightness and color tint of scenes and how to enter transitions and text. The programme made it all pretty easy to be honest, even if it wasn’t as simple as iplayer, which we used for our preliminary.
I had never really used garage band before and although it seemed a bit complicated, using the loops provided I quickly got the hang of it. I tried to make a soundtrack however it failed to capture the right mood so we decided to use some simple dark ambient sounds instead throughout. I thought this was quite effective. I also thought some of our Foley sounds were pretty good and they were actually quite good fun to go out and find. I learned most of what I needed to know about filming in the preliminary exercise so it was quite easy this time round. I’m very happy with our framing and angles; looking back I just wish we hadn’t got as many long shots and a few more close-ups.
One of the roles I didn’t do such a great job with was lighting. Because ours was outdoors I chose a jack and I chose a powerful torch instead of proper lighting. The problem was the torch didn’t light the room but instead only the spot I was pointing it. This made it really difficult to get lighting right and we had to try all sorts of angles. It all looks quite good until the final retreating shots where it is easy to see the dot of light by the actor jolting about, as there was no stand to keep the torch steady. We couldn’t make our mind up if it looks poor or like flickering candle light. But personally, as the light was my job at that time, I don’t like it at all. Unfortunately we couldn’t all find the time to go and re shoot.
While creating our media product I feel I have learnt a lot. I have improved gradually using the technology and programmes provided while also improving my skills of organization and working with a group. I mainly found I had to involve myself more in areas of the project such as the blog. To start of with I was very laid back. I did what I was told and would take part in discussing the story line but not really do anything off of my own accord. This changed when I realized how little time we had left and I didn’t want to let down the people in my group. I’m happy I learnt to take more of an active interest this time round and actually had much more of an input.
Compared to the preliminary exercise, I also found that location scouting was a lot more difficult. I learnt that not everything goes your way no matter how hard you persevere. A good example of this is trying to get a platform at the station in
I found I was also more time-efficient than previously although filming and our editing time was not as well thought out as it could have been. These areas lacked good planning but most areas were well thought out such as the storyboard and the research of the blog.
Technology wise I think I learnt the most. I wasn’t confident at all with any of the software in the preliminary and I was just getting used to the cameras but now im really pleased with the shots I gathered. On average our peer feedback for the camera categories all scored a two on average. I also had to pretty much teach myself how to use garage band and final cut (with a little help from Ross). I didn’t really master final cut pro, but I can do the basics and really took off with garage band. Both I could barely use during preliminary.
Overall it was a great learning experience and I really enjoyed working with other people. I will take these skills with me to use in the future which will really help me next year too make my A level product even better. I hope to learn even more about using final cut pro next year and also get a keener eye for lighting. We didn’t use a huge amount of lighting in either of our products, which is why I would like to experiment with it in the future.
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