Esther Rowe

Over the scope of this unit I’ve come to understand the importance of the codes and conventions of a genre in appealing to an audience. Without codes and conventions, a film can easily be undefinable, leading to it having less appeal – the preliminary project is a key example of that. However for my preliminary I chose to make a romantic short film in order to let myself experiment more with filming, so I was able to access the codes and conventions. However it has been interesting to look at different genres, the thriller particularly.

I definatly think that there is a difference in the definition of the genre between my preliminary task and my piece now, as I have come to understand the importance of research in a genre.

Over the course I have taken on various work experience

placements in my spare time, one, working for an editing

company that makes human rights films on human trafficking

in India. This helped me to understand continuity editing and

other techniques a lot more, the difficulty of editing with sound

an also the ways to create a coherent narrative.

I also learnt a lot through private research, looking at video

bloggers such as Indy Mogul who give tutorials to amateur film

makers. I found this helped me to progress in terms of colour

correction as well as continuity editing and cutaways.

Throughout this project, by analysing film clips and the way

that industry professionals use their cameras I think that I

have come very far in my knowledge and use of

cinematography. In my piece I definatly explored a lot more

camera angles as well as camera movement that I had not

been used to before and this really shaped me as a film

maker. However it is a shame that the quality of the film

hinders the experience for the audience, who, unlike in the

H.D preliminary project, will miss out on various aspects of the

cinematography that I was extremely proud of in my creative

process.

I feel like I have improved drastically in the area of sound. In

my preliminary project I mainly used music in order to keep a

flow of the narrative however I really pushed myself in my

thriller to use dialogue as well as sound. Something that I

really loved doing was layering the sound, there is a moment

in scene 2 where Annabelle is in the bath and the dialogue

from scene 1 echoes around the shot. This involved a lot of

sound layering and sound editing in order to maker the voices

lower and give them an echoic resound. This was a time

consuming experience but I feel that I learnt a lot and I love

the product, this was all learnt through experimentation and

using my initiative.