By Sorrel Grundy

I have used many different technologies to record coursework and upload it onto my blog.

For example I used video diaries to explain the concept behind our thriller film, who was going to be in it and where we were going to film. I used video diaries because it allowed me to fully explain ideas when I felt I couldn’t explain them as well though text.

I also used Prezi’s throughout the coursework, I used Prezi because it is a more interesting way of elaborating on our ideas and an easy way to link them to existing films.

Furthermore I uploaded film clips and screen shots from both existing films and my thriller both the rough cut and the final cut to help support my ideas and the intertextuality between my thriller and existing ones.

Similarly I used a scanner to scan in story boards I had draw for my thriller with explanations as to what would be happening in the shot and the shots I would use.

When completing my research the internet was crucial whenever I needed to find any information on existing films and TV shows. I consistently used I used YouTube for research how directors established the thriller genre in their films. Without the internet accessing a wide range of period and contemporary film sequences would have meant relying on DVD’s or recording films on TV and this would have narrowed my understanding. It would have also restricted the range of my research as I would not have access to many different media texts.

For my planning I used my mobile phone to take picture of the locations we use in our thriller.

I also used screen shots and clips of our thriller rough cut and final cut. A clip that was very helpful while to our planning was the scene in The Third Man when you first meet Harry Lime as it inspired us to add in a noir aspect to our thriller opening. Another clip which was very helpful was the opening of Life On Mars as it uses many of the themes that we use in our thriller for example time displacement and so we got inspiration from the way that they convey the character Sam’s confusion and bewilderment.

Both my Preliminary Task and my Thriller have been uploaded into YouTube which means that I can access a wider potential audience.

When collaborating with students in my group we used our mobile phones to keep in-touch when deciding when we were going to shoot and where we were going to shoot.

We also use social networking sites to arrange meetings before shooting and so that we could make a shooting schedule. We used Facebook to directly message each other as you can have group conversations which meant that everyone was involved and knew what was happening. This technology was efficient when using it to plan as the messages are instant which means you can have flowing conversations rather than stilted ones.

When shooting our thriller film we used a digital camera to film with, this allowed us to review the footage after we had shot it to see whether or not it was what we wanted. We used a cannon digital camera to shot our footage on as it is a well respected brand and so you can rely on the high quality of the equipment.

When editing the thriller opening we chose to use specific effects at certain points. Whenever there was a flashback we uses a black and white effect to make the footage black and white. We also used fade to black as a transition between the flashbacks and real time scenes.

We used additive dissolves in the cliff hanger so that it looks as thought the two male characters mould into each other. We also altered the colour in the real time scenes as it get closer to the cliff hanger to show that the atmosphere has changed.

When putting our soundtrack onto the thriller we had to upload it from a USB stick and then we place all of the potential soundtracks into Premiere so that we could try them all with the action and see which one worked best and created the atmosphere that we wanted. We used the razor tool to cut the soundtrack so that it fit with the action in the scene, we had to make sure that the crescendos were at the right point of action.

We used the title tool when adding out title and credits on top of the action of the thriller, for the title of the thriller we changed the colour of the writing for this we used the wide ranging colour wheel which is available on Premiere.