Roles

Past experience has proved that Becka and I work well as a team, from studying AS media together and creating a film opening we’d learned that we were successful as a team. Becka and I worked together to create a film trailer, film poster and a film magazine, all media products would have a large workload and therefore the effort and participation needed to be equally shared, because of this we had set roles that both of us would fulfil. Being in a group with only 2 members has its benefits and meant that Becka and I was able to share, combine and exchange ideas and skills in order to achieve the most successful outcome.

We take very similar subjects however Becka benefits greater from taking A-level English, this meant she was effectively able to generate suggestions on what the script should consist of, this skill guided us through creating a successful narrative for our film trailer as she was able to express ideas that we should include and list why they’d have a greater impact and reaction from our audience.

Becka and I are both moderately skilled in Photoshop as we both study this subject as a part of our A-levels, from day-to-day experience it means that we have a greater knowledge on how the programme works and overall would generate a better image to fit on our magazine, poster and billing block. I believe Photoshop can make an ordinary image look much more professional than any internet editor would, having the experience and skill in the programme put Becka and I at an advantage because we were able to enhance the image, overlay items and essentially create all three media products effectively. I had decided to take the role of creating the billing block and magazine cover, whilst Becka contributed and successfully made the film poster, by sharing the workload it enabled us to create the products with ease without consuming too much time, however even though we had our set roles we’d still help each other complete each product by tampering with the Photoshop tools or giving feedback, this allowed us to progress our knowledge and improve our overall product. Assigning different roles was beneficial as it meant our products were completed in a shorter amount of time, and once they were completed we could either adapt them further after receiving feedback or work on something else.

Creating the billing block wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be, by reviewing internet sources I was able to find a template which suited our film and that actually looked professional; I feel I’ve effectively produced a good billing block.

I had to volunteer to be the main actress of the film trailer because the original casting member was unable to do so; this gave Becka the immediate opportunity to get involved with the filming meaning she had a major job to capture good and effective shots for our film trailer. I believe Becka did a good job in capturing different angles and shots in order to create an engaging and interesting trailer, we needed to ensure the camera angles were in focus for greater professionalism, ensuring that each character was within the shot without the cutting heads or vital props or mise-en-scene out. I partook in some of the filming, the scenes where I wasn’t present (such as the park scene) is where I had filmed as I wanted to share the workload with fellow team member, Becka. When looking back onto the filming produce Becka and I didn’t film to the best of our ability on many of the shots taken, luckily we took plenty of different shots and had redone scenes multiple times. Several shots and scenes weren’t framed properly so parts were cut off however we re framed from using the shots that weren’t worthy, in order to redress the error we had made we should have re-filmed some shots, but we had left this too late when we were unable to use the same actors and actresses in good timing.

Filming the trailer was one of the most important tasks that needed to be completed; a lot of successful shots were captured however there was also a lot of scenes that could have been improved if we’d had taken multiple days with more time to get them. The more use of the camera the more familiarity with the tools, also a lot more retakes could have been shot, an example of a shot that didn’t fit the frame but still exists in our trailer is the one of the youngest actress on the rocking object; when filming I should have followed her movement, instead the top of her head cuts from the shot. This didn’t do us justice because the framing was off key, our trailer would have looked more professional if I’d have followed the movement instead of keeping the camera still.          

The editing of the film was my job, I decided to take on this role because of the experienced I’d gained from last year’s project that I’d constructed together, using iMovie. I was a lot quicker to make adjustments to the shots and trailer for this reason and it consumed less time if I was becoming more familiar with the software. Last year I really come to grips with the advanced software, especially iMovie, so this year I felt I could push my knowledge and experiment with new and developed tools. We used iMovie to construct and combine our trailer, although it is the most simple editing programme compared to Final Cut I found it a lot simpler to use because of the advanced knowledge I’d regained, it also gave me greater options to adapt my film that Final Cut did not. I believe that taking on the editing role was a very tough process as it involved a lot of technicalities and faults that computers always do, however we resolved these issues by organising our work more appropriately, this had a great impact on the outcome because we had finished our trailer within good timing. Becka in-putted her opinion throughout as she had a good judgement, she ultimately told me everything that should be included, what not to include, how we could improve our work and what transitions are most appropriate. 
I believe Becka and I had worked extremely well to develop the best outcome that we could with the footage we created, we have ultimately put in a good effort to achieve and feel this is demonstrated by the media products we've produced.