1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For our film we used classic techniques of many thriller openings. People generally associate thriller films to guns, explosions, spies, fancy looking men in suits. Hanna for example is a great use of a non-typical thriller film. In the opening sequence we see the titles appear on the screen with the moving image behind, this also works as an establishing shot. We decided not to do this as we wanted the viewer to be surprised at the first moving image they see on screen. However, the sound overlays our production logo, this builds suspense and keeps the viewer on the edge of their seats.

We didn’t want to create just another thriller film, we decided to give it a twist. We did this with the use of characters. The main character Frasier. His character is always in the wrong place at the right time. We wanted viewers to emphasis with him and connect with his character. We decided not to use big guns, stalkers, drug dealers or any of the cliché instead we opted to create a psychological horror. The audience relates to the main character and that way the feel what he feels. This then create paranoia in the viewers mind. This type of thriller film

For our title we once again looked at Hanna. The film title is bold and very in your face. This is what we wanted for our film. The title to Hanna is “ HANNA “ written in bold text on a red background. The red makes the title really stand out, the red also is the colour of danger. This makes the viewer subconsciously think danger .The placement of the title took up most of the space on the screen making it very bold. For ours we wanted a classic film noir feel. For that type of effect we simply had our film in a large white font on a black back ground. We did this as black is a very mysterious colour.

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

I have never been good with technology. I have always just known the basic of computers and that is what I have always needed. In making this production I’ve learnt and gain a lot more experience. I have learnt to record film. I also learnt how to set the white balance on a camera. Learning the difference white balance can make on your recording, how setting the white balance can change the colour of the lighting and how much that actually affects the quality of the final product. Whilst editing I learnt how to cut pieces of film down. I learnt how to use Final Cut Pro on the Mac’s. I also learnt how to add titles and over lay the titles on moving image or even putting them on a blank screen and adding it to the video. I learnt how to add certain effects, like how to reverse a shot. I also learnt different ways to record sounds. For our production we use lapel microphones which connect to our phones. Overall I learnt that editing and using the camera and voice recording is a lot harder than it sounds. I have gained respect for people who do this professionally. I had many difficulties uploading the footage and finding which tools to use whilst editing. Synching sounds to the image proved difficult in timing the sound effects at the right time. With a lot of patience and a helpful hand we manged to overcome these issues. 

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back to our preliminary task I can say that we have definitely improved. Our preliminary task was lit by a single light in the college’s music room. We couldn’t work out the voice record at the time so we had to use the audio from the camera which meant we had all the back ground noises. Since then we learnt that using our own voice recorder’s where easier and we managed to improve our audio in our main task. In our prelim task we didn’t label our shots, this made it hard to edit as we had to go through all the clips to find the one we needed. We didn’t make this mistake in our main task. When filming our main film we made sure to create a sandwich with the video as we found we stopped filming too early in our prelim and made the editing feel jumpy and rushed. For the films themselves the prelim was rushed and didn’t have as much detail as the main film does. The characters didn’t have costume and the props where limited. We made sure that the characters in our film had the correct costume and appropriate makeup. We planned out the locations and casting to ensure we had everything we needed. We already had all the props we needed. We experimented more in our main task with more sound effects and editing. We used black out shots and reversed one shot. This made our film a lot more complex compared to our prelim. From all of this I’ve learnt that practicing does make perfect. The more you try and the more you experiment and play around and create new things the more inspiration you have in your film.