AS Overview

'And So It Happened...'

Below is our AS op-ening sequence, from the planning, research and production of carrying out this project, it allowed me to expand my overall knowledge of media and apply the skills I learnt to create my own piece. 

Synopsis
For our opening sequence, we focused on a horror/mystery genre, our storyline focuses on a female reporter who is investigating an abandoned warehouse. The sequence is a flashback on her experience as she uncovers suspicious and supernatural evidence of missing children over many years, along with the paranoid sense that she is being watched b an unknown, eerie prescene during her time in the warehouse.

Areas of Success

• Effective planning and time management, by planning our time well it meant we were able to keep on track and meet each deadline for our rough edit, sound edit and then our final piece, this was helpful as it meant that we were able to finish our sequence on time and therefore have time left over to go back over our sequence and make any finishing touches.
• Using initiative when using sound, we mainly did this by making our own sound effects and props so that our opening sequence was original and aspects fitted what we wanted to achieve, this helped us to have higher independence and control over our opening sequence meaning that we had to have an understanding in each area of planning, production and editing which helped to further our knowledge as we were practising skills we had learnt.
• Good knowledge and understanding of the editing software, this meant that we were able to edit our opening sequence accurately, by using Serif Movie Plus X6 we became increasingly familiar with the tools on the programme which allowed us to look at small sections at a time to ensure that the clips flowed together and that the sound matched the relevant objects and mood. 
• Completed lots of research meaning I had a more in depth understanding of the horror/mystery genre and the audience we tried to address, this meant that when we went to film our sequence we had a detailed understanding of how to film our character to make her relatable and also to give an abandoned and dark sense to our location. Becuase of this I feel that the darkness within our opening sequence helps to heighten the horror genre and that our soundtrack further shows this, by having sounds overlapping at the end it gives a strong sense that something is getting closer to our main character, also giving a sense of mystery. 

Areas for Improvement 

• We would need to use better quality equipment, by having a tripod and a higher quality camera it would have meant that some of our clips would have been steadier, giving us more control over camera movements and would also help our clips to flow more neatly as they would all be steady  
• Also we felt we could completed more preparation with our props, we had a full list of props we wanted to include but we had difficulty finding some of them and didn't use others. If we were to film again we would need to spend longer finding props and setting them up in our location as I felt our location could have looked better to set the dark and creepy tone. As well as this, we also needed to be prepared with batteries and memory storage as the camera ran out fairly quickly, if we did this then it would mean we would have more time for filming.
• I also think, although our camera shots and angles varied to make the film seem more intense and interesting, we could have changed our storyline in order to make it more action filled in the 2 minutes. If we did this then it would have meant our audience would be more interested and more would happen in the lead up to our character finding the book.
• Finally,  aspects of sound could be improved, we spent a large amount of time on sounds and the sound effects and soundtrack fitted well with the action and the atmosphere being created. But some sound effects such as the footsteps weren't checked as often as our other aspects of sounds, meaning some of the footsteps were out of sync. If we had more time we could have been more precise with each sound which would make our opening sequence seem more accurate and therefore more effective. 

Audience Feedback

A range of different ages watched our opening sequence, as we rated our sequence as a 12 ages from around 14 to around 60 watched the sequence. From this feedback was given which suggested that the storyline was easy to follow and was compelling so an audience would want to watch  the whole thing. Also the sound effects meant that our opening sequence felt eerie and gave a tense atmosphere to draw the audience in, this also meant the genre of our opening sequence was recognisable. However, it was still suggested that some of the sound effects such as the footsteps which we had already realised was an issue, could have been more precise. This audience feedback was effective in showing strengths of our piece and to see whether an audience is interested and wanted to watch what we had made.