Creative Critical Reflection: Preliminay Task 2

Question 1
How does your product USE or CHALLENGE conventions?
(Think sound, lighting, narrative structure, editing, camera work, symbolism, and iconography)

our production uses many thriller conventions to help convey a feeling of danger. At the beginning of the film, the baby sitter is washing the dishes and there is a deliberate focus on a knife. this gives the impression that something sinister may be going on. 
There is a low droning sound in the background to help drive this feeling. The sound is low and rumbling, giving a sense of unsteadiness and that things aren't as they seem, it makes the audience anticipate what is going to happen next.
The entire film is at night time this is another common thriller convention used as visibility is very low in the dark so we can play with the fear of the unknown. When the lights go out, it helps drive this as the lighter only provides minimal lighting so the audience is left wondering what is going to happen to the character.
We use guns because they help convey a sense of danger as they can easily kill. guns are very dangerous and they are usually used in dangerous situations and so is an easy way to convey danger 
We also use the thriller convention of a secluded area, this helps convey danger as there is no one to around to help and so the audience feels that, just like the characters, they are alone.

Question 2
How does your product engage with audiences?
(What effect does it have on audiences? What emotions do you evoke in audience members?) 

My product engages the audience by setting the scene in an ordinary house, this helps the audience relate to the situation happening and feel as though what's happening in the film can happen to them.
The film uses an innocent character, the little girl, to capture the audience's interest as they will wonder what's going to happen to her.
the dark setting is also engaging as the audience are put in the same position as the audience and are left wondering what may be around the corner.
the news presenter is also used to engage the audience as they are listening what he is saying and at one point a man walks past the window behind the babysitter this will not only engage the audience but it can also start the build-up of tension

Question 3
How have your PRODUCTION skills developed throughout the project? (pre-production, production, and post-production. What have you learned to do? 

This time I was tasked with lighting and camera. so most of the footage was up to me. I learned to leave space after action for editing and time after the cut as well just so that when it came to editing it would be much cleaner and easier to work with. since we were working at night for most of the shots it was hard to make the lighting look natural so it was a matter of jumping from lights to camera and trying to make the film look as natural as possible.
we had to take two filming sessions because our battery ran out on one of our cameras and we had no backups.  But this mistake won't happen again because it was really disheartening when we realized we had to come back, after working hard to get it done in one day.
I also learned that working with children is a bit more difficult than we thought because our actor was only 10 and she had a bedtime which meant that at night when we had to film we had to rush her senes a but before she went to bed.

Question 4
How did you integrate technologies into this project?
(Software, hardware and online)

we had to incorporate at least one after effect using adobe after effects. linking our After effects compositions was a little tricky and it took a while to get a hang of how the programme works and I followed a lot of tutorial s to get to where I was. however, in the end, the composition wouldn't load properly and so I had to go for a basic effect to meet the brief.
 I also became very good at using premiere pro and have become used to using the interface, such as applying effects to get the desired feel of the film. I tinted many of the shots so that they looked moodier. like the hallway scenes which came out really well.
I also learned about rendering videos on Adobe's rendering software which sped up the process of uploading the video onto youtube and giving good quality.