Evaluation of development of skills in AS

Skill area	Your evaluation of your own skills in this area – strengths, weaknesses, and things to work on. Be precise, giving examples or evidence  (eg on camera, discuss particular techniques such as focus pull)
Digital Technologies: how skilled are you in these areas? This includes your use of camera techniques, your use of blogger, your use of prezi (if you used it), the internet (used for research for example) final cut editing techniques, garageband, photoshop (if you used it), social networking (if you used it)	I think my use of camera techniques is something I need to work on. In my thriller opening, all of the shots we used were still shots from different distances, and we only used one focus pull, which was the very first shot. However, I believe my use of Final Cut Pro (the editing software) was much better. I was able to make dissolve transitions easily, using the software, to show a change of scene. For example, we used a dissolve to show the passing of time between the two characters going up the stairs to the loft. I think my use of Garageband (to get foleys) was quite good, but needs a little bit of improvement. Most of the foleys I found were found on Garageband, like the footsteps on gravel and the door closing, but next time I want to try and make my own foleys. My use of the internet was not too bad, but it also needs more improvement. I was able to use the websites that were recommended, but I didn’t find any other websites.
Creativity: In what ways did you try to be original? How successfully did you balance the use of standard conventions of thrillers with the aim to be different or original? Eg consider  techniques used, narrative, character, mood, sound, themes, titles etc Research and Planning: How thorough and effective was your research into real media texts? How actively did you use your findings to create your own ideas? How well did you record your findings? How individual was your research? What was your role in planning and what was effective or not so effective?	My thriller opening wasn't the most original idea ever. It involved Jake wanting to find and get revenge for his father. However, the way we portrayed the story was more original. Instead of the idea for revenge being on Jake's mind for a long time, we decided the memory of his father's death would be triggered by a prop (the gold clock). When he finds the gold clock, he stops and looks at the clock for a while, and we hear a foley of a gunshot, and we know he's remembering a traumatic experience. Kyle snaps him out of it by saying 'what's all this? I feel that the research wasn't so great. It wasn't very thorough and I didn't get as much inspiration and ideas as I hoped from it. Next time, I should put more time and thought into my research. The planning was better than the research. We made it clear who was doing what, and we knew what props and equipment we needed. I feel that next time, the storyboarding and anamatic need to be improved, because some of the sketches weren't very clear
Post production: This refers to the entire editing process (sound and vision). What specific skills have you individually developed in this area? What do you need to work on? How successfully did you work on sound and vision together?	I think the editing was the part of the production process. I was able to use Final Cut Pro with ease to trim and compile our camera shots into a sequence. I also managed to place foleys and titles into the sequence easily. Doing the footsteps on the gravel foley The only problems I had was transferring the shots from the camera to the PC and I had  a few problems with rendering foleys and a few shots, but they were easily fixed when I found out about a command that renders for you.
Using conventions from real media texts: Which specific conventions of the thriller genre did you choose to use in your product? How successfully did you use them? What were the reasons for not being able to use them?	The main convention we used in our thriller opening was the use of restricted narrative. The gold clock triggered memories of the death of Jake's father, and we hear a gunshot foley and some screaming. We decided not to use a flashback and show the viewer the actual murder. This leaves the audience asking 'what happened?', which gets answered as he Jake tells him that he never found out who killed my father.