1A) SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Creativity:

How creative were you at AS?

Motion

-       We did not use motion to create our ident as we did at A2 – we drew it on a piece of A4 paper and scanned it into the Mac, then we put the images together on Final Cut Pro and transformed it into a moving ident.

-       We also did not use Motion for our graphics, which resulted in our graphics being far more simple in our AS coursework than our A2 coursework. In AS, our graphics are simply white text appearing on a black background, where as in A2, our graphics are text fading in on a video of candles, which we took close-up, and slowed down to 50% using Motion.

Camera

-       Our camera framing was less tight and close in in our AS piece than our A2 piece. We filmed more panning shots because our main character is running through the city, so we used panning shots to follow her. We also used pan focus at the beginning of the film when ‘BRITTANY JOHNSTON’ and ‘LUKE FORRYAN’ appeared on the screen, which worked well to create a professional and upper budget feel. We used an extreme close up to show Ally’s shower, where we used influences from the iconic film ‘American Psycho’.

Narrative ideas

-       Our narrative idea in AS were less thought through and made clear. However, our narrative in our trailer was not extremely specific and obvious because of the genre of it. We chose to do a romance trailer, and when we researched other romance trailers such as ‘Dear John’ and ‘Like Crazy’, the narrative is not overly clear, nor is it the component that is stressed the most in the trailer. Instead, it is the lighting and the relationship between the characters that comes across the most.

-       In ‘Malice’, our AS film opening, the narrative was rather unclear and we found that it caused some confusion amongst our viewers when we asked for their feedback, whereas our A2 coursework was not questioned as much narrative-wise.

Location

-       Our location in our AS film was urban and modern and looked rather grey and desolate. This was because we used influences such as ‘Fishtank’ and ‘Shifty’ when considering how we wanted the look of our film to appear. Having said this, however, we did use some bright colours deliberately such as the bright yellow staircase to create some variation.

-       This contrasts to our A2 work, in which we used the beach and naturalistic locations such as grass. We also used inside a lot more than we did at AS, in which we used soft and warm lighting to indicate a romantic and calm mood.

Costume

-       For the costume planning of our AS work we looked at Google images of men’s suits for when we were considering what Jasper would wear to court, and the same for Ally. When Ally is running at the beginning, she is in simple running gear; we looked at influences such as the trailer for ‘Shame’ where the main character is running through the city.

-       At A2, we did far more research into our costumes because we looked at fashion and the clothes the main characters wore in other Romance trailers, and tried to somewhat combine replicating this with reflecting the age and stage of Grace and Isaac (our main characters) through what we chose for them to wear. For example, when Isaac is in a highflying job, we wanted him to look smart and successful whilst also retaining an era of quirkiness and individuality.

Editing

-       In our AS work, we did not pay as much attention to editing as we did in our A2. This was because we did not know how to use Final Cut Pro in the detail that we knew in year 13 after a year of using it. We used many more effects such as fade to colour and we added filters such as ‘Glow’ and ‘Hard light’. Also, for our graphics we used ‘zoom’ to make them seem more professional.