1. Creativity
AS Production - Opening
Convey the psychological
thriller genre.
Convention of creating
suspense through the use of
tense background music and a
deep red font to connote fear,
darkness and tension similar to
that demonstrated in ‘Secret
Window’ and ‘Hannibal’.
We went against the
convention in terms of setting
and characters; in films such as
‘Cold Creek Manor’ and ‘The
Butterfly Effect’ storylines were
adult driven and based on
families whereas the storyline
for my production is based on
the psychological problems of a
high school student.
From my research, I found that
audiences want to be scared as
many pay to go and watch
horror/psychologically
challenging movies. However,
instead of creating another
story about an adult’s battle
with the world they live in, we
decided to appeal to a younger
audience by focusing on a
student in a high school with
typical high school features
such as the school, popular girl
and her association with
popular cliquesdemonstrated
this through Horatio writing an
article echoing Mia’s popularity
whilst looking at pictures of Mia
with friends.
We wanted to make a film that
left our target audience in
suspense and caused them to
question the motives of the
main character, Horatio. We
were successful in this as we
Digital Technologies
IMovie- Used IMovie to edit our
film. Used various tools such as
the titling tool, audio tool,
lighting tool.
Youtube- Used to research 6 of
my films and highlight codes and
conventions.
PowerPoint- display my research
on Slideshare and refer back to it
when developing my product.
More attractive than a simple
blog post.
Blogger- create posts detailing
the stages of my productionresearch, planning, post
production.
Easier to cross-reference my
work and go from post to post
without any difficulty.
Embedded pictures, videos and
various documents and this
made it easier for me because I
could access all of my work
through one location rather than
going through various files on my
computer to find them thus
saving time.
-Web 2.0 technology (O’Reilly,
2004)
Research & Planning
Results of research and
planning.
2/6 films used red titling
developed convention.
Used Codes & Conventions
Post Production-
red titling developed
convention.
6/6 films use diegetic and
non-diegetic sound in the
opening 2 minutes.
Use of diegetic sound and nondiegetic developed
convention.
Edited using Imovie titling tool.
Also used blurring tool to blur
the title ‘Neurosis’ and make it
appear shaky to reflect the
main character’s mind.
6/6 films featured mature
characters and the film was
shown from their point of
view.
6/6 appeared to use Todorov’s
narrative theory of
equilibrium in the first 2
minutes.
Went against convention by
focusing story on a teenage
character.
3/6 films used dark lighting
from the offset (The Secret
Window, Hannibal and The
Butterfly Effect)
Studied ‘Secret Window’ and
‘Memento’ titles and found
that all the titles were 1 or 2
seconds apart however ‘Secret
Window’ was more erratic
titles were spaced 2 seconds
apart in the beginning but 1114 seconds towards the end.
We used Todorov’s narrative
theory of apparent equilibrium,
disruption to the equilibrium
however we only used the first
2 stages as it was the opening 2
minutes of the film.
Also used Levi-Strauss’s ‘binary
opposites’ theory dark
(Horatio) and light (Mia).
Debunked convention by using
two types of light. Used bright
light when Mia was on screen
and used dark lighting when
Horatio was on screen.
Used convention however
spaced the title 6 seconds apart
to follow the music and what
was on screen.
Editing using Imovie audio tool
to include non-diegetic sound.
Used footage from our camera,
imported into IMovie. Hannah
edited the clips and put them in
order to start off with Horatio’s
following Mia.
Hannah used the lighting tool
on IMovie to adjust the lighting
on the footage to make the
beginning lighter and Horatio’s
scene in the computer room
darker.
Used the titling tool to create
the font of the titles and space
them apart.
Uploaded edits of our film on
Facebook to get feedback.
Feedback enabled us to make
further adjustments e.g. make
lighting darker (both AS and
A2).
2. Creativity
Digital Technologies
Research & Planning
Used Codes & Conventions
Post Production
A2 Digipak
For our digipak, my group and I
wanted to create a product that
conveyed the image of the
band as well as what their
interests are. I was unable to
find a digipak of any indie band
therefore I had to make do with
album covers of bands such as
‘Razorlight’, ‘Franz Ferdinand’
and ‘Snow Patrol’. From my
research, I found that the band
members were featured on the
front cover of the album
therefore we did the same for
our digipak-I took a picture of
the band together to feature
them on the front cover. We
also included pictures of the
band having fun and playing
their instruments to emphasise
their dedication to song writing
and playing music like in The
Kooks album where there are
images of the band playing their
instruments. My group and I
developed in creativity as we
used Adobe Photoshop for the
first time in many years to
create a product that we did
not create in our Foundation
Portfolio.
Creating a digipak allowed me
to develop my skills on Adobe
and it also allowed to me to
channel my creativity which
resulted in the creation of
vibrant and aesthetically
pleasing digipak.
Developed creatively as I used
a professional camera for the
first time.
3/3 used a contrasting colour
scheme.
Slightly developed convention.
Used black and white against
blue. E.g. band jumping in the
air, band members are in colour
whereas the background is in
black and white.
Used colour enhancer tools on
Adobe to create this contrast.
Used the colour palette to select
colours.
Canon SLR professional
Camera:
Borrowed from media teacher.
Allowed me to adjust the
lighting on the camera to create
a visually pleasing photo. Also
used the zoom on the camera
to zoom in on members and
adjusted the lens for a more
professional outcome of the
photo. Professional camera
allowed me to produce clear
pictures in contrast to a normal
digital camera that is only
suitable for everyday activitiesnot photo shoots.
Dafont:
Used Dafont to find a cool, edgy
font. Narrowed font list down
to 4 fonts and went with our
gut instinct and chose ‘planet
estyle’. Dafont allowed us to
use more bolder fonts than the
ones available to us on the
MACs as they were very simple
and not edgy enough for an
indie band.
IPhoto- Used IPhoto on MAC to
upload the results from the
photoshoot. New technology
as I didn’t use IPhoto for our
Foundation Portfolio as we had
no need for it.
Adobe Photoshop: Allowed me
to use various tools such as the
‘Blur’ tool, colour palette, text
tool and hue/saturation tools to
Used conven
3/3 used the same font on the
digipak.
3/3 used Logos, barcodes, band
introduction, readable font and
a copyright notice.
3/3 digipaks featured bands
that are wearing the same
clothes or wearing one part of
the colour scheme.
tion. We used ‘planet estyle’ on
the name of the band,
copyright notice and song name
and band introduction however
we used ‘hand of sean’ font
from dafont to make it look like
the band’s signature.
Used convention. Included an
introduction on the inside left
of the digipak, readable font, a
copyright notice on the band
and the record label’s logo on
the front.
Used convention. All of our
band members are wearing
blue- blue jeans, blue hoodies,
and blue scarf.
Embedded font into the
computer then added the font
into Adobe fonts to use it. Used
the colour palette to give the
font a colour that matches the
colour scheme of the digipak.
Used the ‘text’ tool to create
short message from the band.
Also used the colour palette to
select the colour blue to keep in
with our colour scheme.
Used the copy, paste and
positioning tools to position the
logos, copyright notice etc.
Used the ‘blur tool’ on the
background of one panel to make
it look more aesthetically
pleasing.
IPhoto- Used the black and white
tool to adjust the inside left of
the digipak. Used the black and
white tool give it an edgier effect
and then edited it further on
Adobe.
Uploaded the digipak onto
Facebook and asked for feedback
in order to aid us in postproduction. We found that our
target audience liked the overall