Job Roles

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

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

Since we did our preliminary task, we have developed a lot through the two tasks. There were many strengths and weaknesses within our preliminary task but it is evident since that these weaknesses have been overcome and we have continued to enforce our strengths onto the project to make it even more successful than the last task.

One problem that we had in our preliminary was the quality of our footage. We switched between filming with an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 6 and there is significant difference between the two devices’ camera quality. On the top of these two screenshots is a picture of what the footage of the iPhone 6 quality was like. The iPhone 6 is evidently in a much better quality than that of the iPhone 5’s on the bottom. The iPhone 6 films in a 1080p footage which means pretty much every detail placed into the shot is in crisp detail. However the iPhone 5’s footage seems to appear fuzzier than the iPhone 5’s. It is still a good detail but it is evidently worse than that of the iPhone 5. To overcome this issue, we filmed with Canon DLR cameras instead of our phones. We filmed on a Canon E0S 100D and a E0S 1100D. Both cameras have very similar qualities and so the differences between the two camera’s shots are completely unnoticeable. The quality of the cameras is also significantly better than that of the iPhones.   

Another problem we found was editing the actual project itself. Initially we began using the Apple Macs to edit our preliminary and we used a program called iMovie. However, it was quite a confusing program for us to work with and we weren’t sure about what we were doing with the program. We struggled to figure out how to place in our clips and how to cut them properly to the right sizings. We also struggled to figure out how the layers work and how to save our project on a separate project to ones that were being used by other students. So we decided that we would instead use a program called Sony Vegas Pro 13 as we had a member in our group who had extensive knowledge of how to use the program and they taught the rest of the group how to use it. We overcame this problem in our final edit by going straight to editing with Sony Vegas Pro 13 and we were able to get to editing straight away and get it all done quickly. 

We’ve developed on many skills during the time filming and editing our final piece. One thing we have improved on significantly is the quality of our piece. We edited the piece so that it is fast paced in order to create the suspense and action which is a convention of a thriller movie. We did this by keeping each clip short instead of lengthy like they were in our preliminary. We found that when we kept our thriller clip’s longer, suspense or excitement didn’t build up within the piece and it also meant that our thriller came up to over 4 minutes which was too long for the requirements and meant that it slowly started to become boring. So by shortening each clip, we found that the whole thriller itself seemed to be at a quicker pace which caused more suspense and made it exciting to watch. Our thriller was cut down to 1 minute 29 seconds which we felt was long enough to include all of the enigmas and ideas we wanted to set up within the opening sequence but also short enough to be able to keep the pacing quick.  

We developed especially well on our continuity. We had an issue within our preliminary that we didn't notice until it was fully completed that we had an error with our costumes. In one clip, it is obvious that our second actor is wearing her glasses. However when the cut changes over to her shoulder the glasses are clearly on top of her head.  

So when we created our final product, we made sure that our actor's costumes stayed exactly the same throughout it and if any changes to the costume or makeup were made it was shown. For example, there is a part of our preliminary where we wanted our victim to appear dirty after falling over in the mud and so we showed a clip of her rubbing dirt onto her face. This allowed us to change the costume when needed to in our product without obstructing any of the continuity.

From our preliminary we developed on the soundtrack greatly. When we did our preliminary task, we found that a suspenseful, non-lyrical audio soundtrack worked best when trying to create a thriller-esque opening that was suspenseful. So when we created our final piece, we developed on this skill by using a non lyrical backing track to accompany our piece. Instead of lyrics, we used audio clips of past interviews with families who's children had gone missing. We did this because we thought it would add a sense of intense realism to our piece. As the audio continues, the amount of time 'missing' is mentioned begins to happen more frequently. So the audio is supposed to help cause a build up in suspense to the point where our victim is captured and fade out after she has captured. It creates the idea that these where perhaps past voices of other people who'd been captured in the past and the voices go quiet when our victim is captured because she is just another victim who's been captured and won't be found again. This worked a lot better than the soundtrack of our preliminary task which was just a low, suspenseful sound continuing through the piece and didn't create much of a build up to the apex.  

Previously in our preliminary task we had a few issues with match on action. We found that a couple of clips seemed to jump slightly and we hadn't completely matched all of the actions up between shots. So when we created our thriller, we spent a lot of time focusing on making sure that everything matched up correctly with each clip change. An example of where we had a match on action error was during the segment of the preliminary where our actor opened and walked through the door in the corridor. We found that her hand was slightly out of place during the few cuts we made whilst she opened the door and walked through it and so the shots didn't match up completely to create a smooth sequence of our actor passing through the door.  It was slightly difficult to match up these clips however because we'd used a mid-shot of our actor walking up to the door, a close up of her hand on the door and another mid-shot of her walking through it. Because we used different angles we forgot to make sure that the placement of thee hand matched up in every camera angle.

So we developed on this skill and made sure that all of our clips matched up when we created our thriller. One specific point where we did this was when our victim passes through some tree branches. We asked our actor to freeze as we changed the camera positioning to create a new shot and then in the editing process we made sure that all the clips were matching perfectly to create a smoothly running sequence. We cut the clip as she was still moving through the trees as we cut to the other clip and then returned to the first clip and showed her still continuing to move through the tree. There is a slight jump here, but it still works smoothly and isn't entirely noticeable when actually watching the sequence.  

In our preliminary we struggled with the 180 rule and broke it at one point. During our shot reverse-shot, we first established that Actor A was on the right and Actor B was on the left. However when we cut across to Actor B's shoulder to film an over the shoulder shot from them, we showed Actor A on the left and Actor B on the right. We should've shown a transition with the camera that moves Actor B on to the right sight of the screen instead of suddenly changing it between cuts because by doing it how we did, it can be disorientating or confusing for the audience.  

We feel that we successfully used the 180 rule in our piece and that it wasn't broken within our piece. If we needed to change the angles of our actors we also made sure that there was a visible change between the placing of our actors. There weren't many areas within our piece that required us to change the positioning of our 180 line since our actor was mainly walking through a sequence and we panned the camera with the movement, but there is evidence that we were obeying the 180 line rule. For example in the beginning of our opening, we started filming from the right side of our victim and made sure it continued to stay on that side of the victim for the next few shots. 

We also included a sequence where our victim moves from point A to point B through a shot and show her moving from the right over left of our screen. 

When we started production on our product, we had to go through extensive amounts of planning to make sure that everything was sorted and fully thought through so that we could create our product effectively and make sure that it is of the highest quality possible. The stages of our planning included:  

⦁ Thriller ideas: here we looked at other thrillers that could inspire ours. We evaluated what was good about three different thrillers and how it could inspire our own thriller's genre and storyline.  

⦁ Timeline: we recorded what titles we wanted to appear on the screen and at what time. We made any comments on specific transitions that we wanted on these and noted down the names of the job titles and the crew's member associated with that job. 

⦁ Schedule: this was our plan for what areas of the production we wanted to work on at different points of the week. So for example Wednesday we scheduled the deadline for the completion of our story board and shot list and Saturday we scheduled filming.  

⦁ Shotlist: we planned what shots we wanted at specific sequences within our product so that specific effects were created by using certain shots on a certain scene as opposed to other shots.  

⦁ Mise-en-scene: we planned out what kind of characters would be in our piece and what they might look like. We planned out the type of lighting we wanted to use in our piece and the makeup and costumes we wanted to use as well as the props characters would use. We also planned out our ideal location and setting and why it would be fitting to our thriller.  

⦁ Risk Assessment: we assessed the risks that are posed to us during the filming process that could cause danger to our actors. For example, we recorded a risk of tripping because of the amounts of over ground roots or rocks that could be scattered around the forest that could cause our cast or crew to fall over.  

⦁ Company ident and titles: we planned out how we wanted our ident to look and the titles and fonts we wanted to use in our product. This was so that we could make sure that our company comes across as professional and the fonts suited the actual product itself.  

⦁ Storyboard: the storyboard is a rough plan of what we wanted going on within different segments of the opening and what kind of shots we wanted. They included a small drawing of the kind of composition we wanted. It is like a picture run through of our whole opening.  

⦁ Consent Forms: we had to make sure these were filled in before we did any form of filming. These allowed us the permission to use the young actor in our piece and provided information to the parent as to what their child would be involved in and if we'll have permission to publically share pictures and videos of their child for educational purposes. It also allowed us permission to also film within our desired location.  

⦁ Concept: we planned out the rough idea of the storyline and genre we wanted for our thriller. We could easily expand and change our ideas by keeping it as a concept. 

⦁ Target audience: by deciding who we wanted to target our thriller to, we were able to expand on our piece even more and make sure that our piece would be completely suitable to our target audience and attract the correct audience. 

⦁ Sound: we planned out the various ideas we had for sound in our thriller and why we wanted certain sounds. It allowed us to brainstorm what sort of audio would be required to cause certain effects within our piece.  

⦁ Font: like our titles, we thought that planning the type of font was very important because if the font did not fit the genre of our piece, it would take away suspense from our piece.  

⦁ Audition reel: we filmed a selection of potential actors in our audition reel and evaluated what we liked about each one and what we didn't like. This allowed us to pick who we thought was the best to act in our product because we felt acting plays an important role in making a thriller engaging.  

⦁ Location scouting: we visited potential filming locations and evaluated them. This allowed us to find the weaknesses and differences of different kinds of locations and find the perfect location to film our opening within.   

I think that our thriller is very successful. I really enjoy it and I think it fulfils the conventions and expectations of a standard thriller. I think that our thriller easily creates a lot of suspense and has an emotional impact on our audience, which was evident when we filmed our vox pop reactions to our opening. I think that our thriller evidently shows the different strengths that our team members brought to the project. 

One thing that we like about our thriller is the title of our product. We wanted just a simple handwritten font to appear as the title of our product but we decided that it would be most effective to animate it rather than having it just simply fade in and out. When we edited our title, we used various different masking frames to make it appear as if the title was being written onto the piece. We practiced writing out the word 'missing' to see how it would look if it was being written onto a piece of paper. This allowed us to know how to mask through the fonts to make it look as if it was realistically being written onto the screen.  

Another thing that we liked about our piece was the visual effects. We liked the effect that we used on the trees to create the hallucinated, distorted effects.  We felt this was a really effective visual effect and made the POV that much more immersive because it showed what the state of the child was in and what she could see. It allowed us to show that she felt trapped within the forest and that she was surrounded by the trees. It also created a sense of claustrophobia because it showed entrapment and shows that there was no way out of the forest.  

There are a couple of things that I think could use some improvement in our piece. One thing is that we showed at the beginning of our product was our antagonist placing gloves onto his hand whilst he is in his garage. However when we cut to the other sequence where the victim has left his hideout and is now going to go after the victim he no longer has gloves which defeats the object of having to keep his handprints off what he touches so that he cannot be caught. So there is a small costume error in our piece that could easily be fixed by retaking a couple of shots with the gloves visibly on the antagonist.  

Another thing that I think could be improved upon in our product is costume. Because the weather had been so cold, we had to make a short notice costume change so that our actors were wearing appropriate clothing for the weather and not freeze with the weather. However on our antagonist, the choice of coat took away a sense of intimidation that his previous, very dark clothing gave him. He also wore a backpack that looked like a regular schoolboy backpack and so it created the sense that instead of some insane kidnapper was chasing our victim it was actually her older brother. His costume is too casual for the character he was intended to represent and so he does not seem as intimidating or as scary as he did earlier on in the piece.  

Our thriller was edited very differently to how it was when we filmed our final product. In our final product's timeline, it is obvious that each clip is very short. We did this so that a fast pace was created in our piece. It allowed us to fit in all of the action and enigmas wanted to be set up whilst still being able to maintain a fast and exciting pace. It is also obvious that there are numerous more components to our piece then there was to our preliminary. Our final product features one layer for the border which is the black bars that are on top and at the bottom of the screen of our final product. We did this to make it appear more like a movie quality since most high definition movies have these borders. We had 6 layers for the titles so that we could place numerous texts onto the screen at one point instead of restricting it to one layer and having all the texts come on one after each other or all fade in as a block. We had another two layers for our title and two layers to create the blinking, hallucinating tree effects for the POV Shots. On the final layer we placed our audio so it was separate from all of the movie clips and our clips were on a layer together. 

However for our preliminary, we only used two layers. It is obvious here that our preliminary's clips are a lot longer than the ones in our final product. This didn't help to build suspense in the preliminary and our preliminary seemed to drag on. So this was clear development in our editing techniques when it came to the clips themselves because we learnt that short, quick clips caused more suspense and action then it would do if the clips were long and dragged on like they did in our preliminary task. We also only had two layers which was because we chose not to use titles and a border. When we didn't use titles and the border, it gave across the impression that our preliminary was unfinished. The border and titles give a sense of professionalism and completion to our piece because they add a more movie-esque appeal to them.  

We also found when we filmed our preliminary that there were some clips that could've been refilmed or not even included. For example we used all of our clips in our piece including this shot. However when we completed it, we found that the shot was awkward and seemed unnecessary in our piece. 

So when we filmed on our final product we developed on our camerawork and took the time to film extra shots. By doing this, it meant that we had a lot of options as to what clips we could add to our piece. When we finished our piece, we found that we had a lot of clips that were unused but we decided that they weren't needed in our piece. We decided this because we made sure that when our actors did an action, for example when our antagonist placed on his gloves, we filmed it a number of times at changing angles so that we could decide which one worked the best within our piece.  

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

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

 In our piece we have learnt a lot about different technologies and how to use them whilst creating our final product. We used a wide variety of programming including Sony Vegas Pro and Audacity and technologies such as Digital DSLR cameras and how to use them effectively. When filming our piece, we decided to film with two DSLR cameras. We used the Canon E0S 100D and the Canon E0S 1100D because they had a similar quality of footage and they had special settings that allowed us to film different sequences in the best quality footage. Each DSLR camera is equipped with a grid that allows us to film using the rule of thrids. The rule of thrids helps us to have the best composition within a single shot and enables us to keep the main focus of the sequence in the center of the shot. So whilst filming we kept the grid setting on so that all of our shots could be filmed effectively. This worked really well when we did longshots or close up shots because it meant if a specific detail needed to be picked out amongst the shot which contained a lot of other objects like trees or props, we could keep it centered so that it was obvious it was the main subject of the shot. We also played around with the composition of the shot as well. In this shot, for example, our young girl character is in the lower segments of the composition and our antagonist is in the higher segments. This makes her appear smaller and therefore more vulnerable compared to the antagonist and creates a sense of danger for her because it appears as if she is being overpowered by the antagonist. This shot also works with the golden mean because the victim of the shot is at the lower segment of the shot, the middle focus point is the small space between the two characters and the highest focus point is where our antagonist is situated.


When filming our shots, we made use of accessories for our cameras to enhance our clips. For example we used a tripod. The tripod is a three legged stand for cameras where the camera is screwed ontop of it and a small lever sticks out so that the camera can move from side to side and up and down. This allows for the shot to be filmed without any camera shakes and makes the camera shots and shakes remain still or move smoothly. We also had lanyards on our cameras which also help to steady the camera. These help slightly to steady the camera, however it may still cause the camera to shake a little and isn't as effective as using a tripod.

 Our cameras had multiple lenses which also greatly enhanced our filming. We had a lense that allowed us to film close up and zoom in to things that are close up, it filmed -insert zoom radius-. Then we also had a lense that filmed longshots and allowed us to zoom into things that are really far away, it filmed -insert zoom radius-. This meant that when we wanted to shoot a particular shot and the subject was quite far from the camera, we could zoom into the subject without the quality of the camera deteriorating or becoming out of focus. One member of our team did have trouble getting the lense to focus, however another member was able to teach them how to autofocus the camera's lense and manually focus the camera lense.

The location that we filmed in brought a lot of factors into our shooting as well. Within our piece we used natural lighting from the sun that came through the trees. This allowed for a natrual low-key lighting but also made sure that everything in the shot was stil completely visible. There was a slight issue that we had where some shots seemed significantly brighter than the other shots and it didn't help for the continuity because the lighting changed frequently between shot depending on how much light was being let through in different parts of the woods. To tackle this issue we placed 'levels' onto our piece so that the lighting within the project was balanced out. This also enhanced the low-key lighting within every shot and made it look more mysterious whilst still keeping a sense of realistic lighting.

The weather was really sunny on filming day and this was really good because it meant that we had a lot of natural lighting. However the one issue we did have was that it was incredibly cold which meant that our costumes had to be changed at the last minute to be able to adapt to the weather and keep our actors warm during filming. However this meant that the costume of our antagonist was covered up and the colour coat that he wore took away the mystery and the intimidation that his original costume brought.

In the end we decided that we were going to use Sony Vegas Pro 13 to edit our final product like we had done to our preliminary. We found out from doing the preliminary task that we were unsure of how to use the program effectively to create our product and that it was too confusing and would be too time consuming for us to take out the time to learn how to work through the program. Since one of our members had extensive knowledge in how to use Sony Vegas Pro 13, we decided it'd be best to use this program because we'd be able to easily get a product edited together quickly and effectively whilst also having access to more professional editing effects. Because our team member had more knowledge of how to use the advanced effects and the harder to navigate features of the program so that we would have the upper hand compared to others who were using iMovie's more basic features. We also were planning to use Adobe After Effects CS6 if it were needed when creating our ident because the member of the team also had knowledge in how to use it because whilst Sony Vegas is advanced, After Effects gives more of a professional edge when tackling things such as idents and typography. But the outcome of our Sony Vegas attempt of the ident came out better than we thought and so we didn't need After Effects in the end. 

To import our footage, all we needed to do was click and drag all of our clips into Sony Vegas and it would all be stored into the Project Media tab. The Project Media tab enables the clips that we want to use to be stored into the program without being kept on the timeline or needing to be imported again and again onto the project timeline. We sorted through the clips by using the Trimmer tab which plays the clips that are placed inside and we cut out the segments of clips that we wanted and created 'subclips' which are smaller clips created from the original clips. When we had all the footage we wanted ready to be put together, we drag and dropped the footage into the timeline and began piecing it together and editing the end or start of the clips so that there were no continuity errors. 

We planned the structure of our clips to create an almost dual narrative. The beginning shows the antagonist piecing together the moodboard of his victim and the victim walking past the screen as if she is just walking home from after school. This was to create the idea that the girl had no idea that this person was stalking her and that she doesn't know as of yet what is about to happen to her. Then we show him following her and we focus the narrative on the chase. We kept the clips short so that the whole sequence is fast paced. This was to create suspense and put the audience into an 'edge of the seat' state. In a few places we showed P.O.V shots of the victim looking at the trees, these clips make it seem like there is no way out of the forest because she is just completely surrounded by trees. 

We only used one type of transition within our piece and that was fade into/out to black. We used it at the start to make it look like the audience are entering the middle of the action. It slowly brings them into the hideout of our antagonist and throws them straight into what he is up to. We then later used multiple short fade to blacks when we use the point of view shots and make the child look like she is hallucinating. This was sdone to make it seem like we are looking through her eyes and that the short fades to black are her blinking and trying to adjust her vision so that she can find a safe way out. Then towards the end we make a quick cut to black after she is caught to make it seem like she has blacked out and slowly fade in from back to a shot of a missing poster and the title of our film is drawn onto the screen. Then it all begins to fade to black again and the title of the text fades out delayed compared to the background. This was to make it seem like this incident is now over and life is about to return back to normal because no one is aware that this girl has been caught and abducted and life proceeds on because no one else knows of what has happened. 

We wanted the footage within our piece to remain as raw as possible. Raw footage is the term used to refer to footage that has not been edited or tampered with too drastically and next to no visual effects have been added to it. However, there were two visual effects that we used within our piece.

The first visual effect was levels. The levels effect the brightness and contrast within a piece and this effect works especially well for making shadows seem darker than they actually are. Because we had so much natural light coming in and it changed depending on how many trees were surrounding our actors, we added levels to help balance out the brightness so that the brightness levels don't jump dramatically between each shot. By adding these levels, our piece seemed a lot more continuous visually and we didn't loose our low-key lighting within the piece. 

Another visual effect we used was to create the hazed, hallucinating style shot of the trees. To create this effect we started off with the basic tree clips and placed them onto the main clip layers. Then we copied the clip and placed it above the original on a layer above. We then opened the pan/crop feature on the clip and we manually zoomed into the clip ever so slightly and then closed the window. We went over to the main layer effects and features and lowered the opacity to a percentage that made the clip appear almost ghostly but wasn't too faded to make an effect on the original clip and make it obvious. 

Our company ident was relitively easy to create. We placed the company ident prototype into the project and we used it as a reference. To create the animated final piece we took the following steps:

1. We placed a white solid colour into the project and masked a small square segment of it. We then created a negative mask within the small square so that it'd cut out further of the shape and create the desired spotlight shape silhouette that we wanted. 
2. After this was complete, we then typed out the text and worked on the typography side so we could move and place the shapes beside the text so that it would not obscure the text. We animated the text so that they slowly moved towards each other and placed a line between the two words to divide them. 
3. When creating the line we followed the same procedure as when we created the square however we decided to add a feather to the edges of the lines to make them look like they fade into the background. Then we added a linear transition so that it faded in slowly. This would look more professional as to rather just appearing and disappearing onto the screen.
4. When the typography was complete we then placed the shape beside the text and we used the pan/crop feature to move the camera. We created a key frame at the beginning and then one at the end of the clip but changed the positioning of the camera so that throughout the clip it made it seem like the spotlight was swinging down.
5. Finally, we used linear transitions on all the factors of the ident and changed the positioning of each one depending on how they faded in.

Overall we thought that our final product when attempting to create the ident like this was most effective and that the ident did not to be edited or changed because it is just what we wanted. So we decided not to take futher action in attempting to create it again in Adobe After Effects. 

When creating our titles within our opening, we decided to use two different fonts. We used a standard looking font when putting the job titles but chose to write the names of the cast members in the same, handwritten, scratched-in looking font that we chose for the title. This idea was inspired by the Se7en opening sequence where the names of the cast and crew were written in a similar font as if the antagonist of the film had written them in himself. By doing this we created a more emmersive opening and kept the intended idea that there had been multiple children in the past that had gone missing or had been stalked by this person. We kept our titles in the lower corner segments of the screen as much as we could without it becoming repetitive because then it does not obscure the action that is taking place within the sequence. We did not put any special effects onto the text, just kept with a simple fade in and fade out with each one.

To edit our audio we used a proffesional audio editing software called Audacity. We used audacity to piece together the pieces of our audio on multiple different layers to create a montage of missing case voices. Audacity allows the user to create multiple audio levels and have better access to effects within the program. The effects are also audio specific as well and we found it'd be better to edit the audio in Audacity instead of Sony Vegas so that we wouldn't be confused between what was audio effects and visual effects. When we edited the footage, we wanted to keep the main focus of the audio to mention the children that had gone missing. We did this by picking the segments of the audio that actually featured the word 'missing', featured the day that the child went missing or the child's name. This was to add a sense of realism to our piece and point out the fact that this is something that happens regularly and that it happens without us even noticing.

We placed an effect called 'reverb' onto our audio. This gave the pieces of audio a distorted sound as if they were echoing. We wanted to do this to make them seem like memories and that perhaps the antagonist has had other victims in the past and that these are perhaps memories going through his head. They fitted much better than a song that featured lyrics we found because a song with lyrics seemed to take away the suspense. But we found by using audio clips such as these it really added a suspenseful atmosphere to the product and made it seem even more realistic.

After completing ordering the clips and audio into something we were happy with, we then exported the media. In Sony Vegas, we rendered our project into a 1080p Internet HD Media MP4. Our team member who had experience in using Sony Vegas chose this because they found that rendering in MP4 allowed for the best possible footage quality rather than rendering it into a WMV file where the quality of the footage may not be as good as it seems in the project. Then in audacity, we exported the file as an MP3 which is the standard audio file format that allows for the best quality. We had to be wary of what we exported our audio as because Sony Vegas does not accept every single file type so we decided MP3 was the best option because it also meant that it could be placed into Sony Vegas. We then placed the audio with our final piece and rendered the whole product again so that we now had a full product with completed audio to accompany it. 

Sony Vegas and Audacity were not the only technologies that contributed to our final piece. We used a variety of other programs and online websites in order to complete it successfully. 

One program that we used was Adobe Photoshop CS6 to create the prototype company ident. We created it very similarly to how we did when we created it within Sony Vegas. We started by typing out the text that we wanted on our ident and then used the shape tool to place a line between the two words to make it seem more professional. We then created a square shape that was the same size as the space between the top of the first word and the bottom of the second word so that they looked in proportion to one another. Since it was our unofficial ident, we searched for spotlight pictures online and we turned it into a silhouette on the square and edited it to look like it was cutting out a piece of the square. The overall outcome of the prototype ident looked like this and we took notes about how we wanted to animate it when it came to the final piece. 

We chose to upload our products onto Youtube because we thought this was an easy to access website and it is also the most popular choice when it comes to video viewing. There are similar sites such as Vimeo on the internet but we felt that Youtube was the better choice because it was everyone's most popular choice and more people would be able to find and view our product. Youtube also provide embedding codes and share codes so that our product can easily be shared among the internet and social networking websites.

When researching other thriller openings we used a website called Art of the Title which features some of the best movie and tv show openings of all time. The openings that are featured on the website are usually very unique, well made and very engaging and fun to watch. Such openings included on the website consist of Doctor Who, Pacific Rim and the odd Simpsons couch gag. As for thriller movies or thriller shows, openings such as Orphan Black and Se7en are featured on the website. With each opening there is also a description accompanying them which are usually of how the openings were created and why specific things were used and so forth.

Whilst creating our thriller, we had to consider the age rating of it. To be able to establish what kind of rating our thriller might have we used two different websites. We used the BBFC first, which is the company that decides on film classification and the rating that the film needs and why. We researched similar thrillers to ours such as Man on Fire and Taken and we looked at what their rating was and why they were given that rating. Similarly, we searched thrillers on a film database site called IMDB and we looked at the same kind of thrillers and we looked at the parental adivorsy segment and the ratings to see why films were given the ratings that they were. IMDB however, gives a more in depth analysis compared to BBFC. However this is mainly because the BBFC seems to avoid spoiling the movie by naming specific names.

When looking for our font, we decided on the style of font that we wanted for our titles and then we searched through the database and collected a selection of similar handwritten fonts and created a poll to decide which we would use in our piece. These were the fonts that we decided on in the end. 

We were stuck for choice when picking our final font to use or our official piece so we decided to create a public poll and we asked members of our class to answer it with which font they liked the best.  We used a website called polleverywhere which allows you to create a poll and share it online or with other people to be answered. People could either text in their answer or answer it online and we wrote the web address of our poll out for our class to visit and they voted on our fonts. The results of our poll were as follows:

The outcome of our results showed that PW Scratchy was the font that people liked the most and it was the most popular out of the other options. We decided to use the PW Scratchy font because it was the winner of our poll and also we felt that it would be most appropriate and fitting to our aim for the titles and plot. It is also a lot more practical then our other favourite font in the selections, 99% LineScratch, because we found with this font it could be clearly seen over anything we applied it to whereas 99% LineScratch was too thin and faint to apply to anything and be seen clearly. 

When it came to presenting our planning and research, we used vaiours presentation sites such as prezzi, powtoon and scribd. The most popular websites that I used to present my data was Blogger itself, Scribd and Padlet.

I felt Blogger was the easiest to use. When creating a new post I can create a document as if I was writing into a Microsoft Word document and I could post it directly to my blog and link it back in. When I want to create a new post, all I need to do is click at the top of the page when logged into my blog and write the title of my work in then type of the notes or date that I had recorded onto a word document into the blank document. I have access to basic word editing too such as being able to make my text bold, italics and underlined. It also had basic features such as bulletpoints so I could easily divide up key bits of information into smaller segments of easy-to-refer-to bulletpoints. The only issue I have with using blogger is that sometimes it can be hard to upload images into my document and to be able to organise it into the document correctly. However it still works effectively. When I have finished the document I can post it straight to my blog and I can begin linking it in my blog directory pages. 

Scribd was also an incredibly useful program. Before uploading to Scribd I would write out all my data into a Word document or Powerpoint presentation. Then when I had completed this I would save the file and log into my Scribd and upload the file onto there. Scribd allows me to upload a whole file full of data and be able embed the whole document onto my blog without having to worry about rearranging the images or screenshots. It also meant that I could post a whole powerpoint presentation onto my blog. The only issue I had with Scribd is that sometimes if I had uploaded a Word document the images within the document would overlap or move out of their place after they had been embeded onto my blog and this meant that it could sometimes be hard to read or images where not where they should be when referred to. 

Finally, Padlet was a good program for me to use if I was struggling with Scribd. Padlet allows me to break up my word document and seperate each of my segments into different boxes. I found this most useful if I was writing about such things as Mise-en-scene because it meant I could seperate each aspect of Mise-en-scene into different boxes and write about them and keep it seperate from the other different segments. Like Scribd however, I had a lot of issues when it came to uploading images. I found that I was unsure how to place an image into the middle of my text where I needed it and would be forced to place it at the bottom of the writing segment. This wasn't good because it meant that the reader would have to scroll up and down to the image to see what I was reffering to in the text.

Overall I thought that using blogger was the most effective way of recording my information because it meant that my information could be organised easily. I could move the images about more efficiently than I could in the other programs and I did not have to worry about and issues such as overlapping images.