Evaluation question 7: What have I learned about film making

This being my first year doing media studies (since I didn't take it for GCSE), I feel I have learned so much during the time working on this task.

• Learning to use Cameras: I have learned how to use cameras. The school owns a Canon 550D. I learned to do things like change the ISO and how to set up a camera for a time laps.
• Adobe Software: Before this year, the only Adobe software I had any experience with before was Photoshop. This year I have learned how to use After Effects and Premiere. In after effects we learned how to create our Ident and Premiere was learned various things from putting the pieces of footage in order and cutting them down to colour correction.
• Online Social Meda: In the modern age, people spend a lot of time on the internet, so when we were thinking about the distribution of our film we had to take online social media into consideration. Not only did I learn how important it is for distribution, but I also learned how to use new forms of social media such as Twitter which I hadn't used before. 
• Film Industry: I feel I have learned a lot this year simply about the film industry in general. For example, I learned about distribution companies (which before this year I wouldn't have known existed).
• Film Techniques: In the kinds of films we were making, all the groups said how they wanted to get a certain mood across. For us, it was suspense and so we had to learn how we were going to create suspense in our film. For example, we left unanswered questions. After the beginning of the film you don't know what happened to the girl that put her in hospital and you don't know what condition she is in either, she could be simply in a coma or she could be dead. Using this technique allowed us to create not only suspense but also intrigue so that our audience would want to continue watching. 
• Types of camera angles and shots: Before the beginning of this year, I didn't know that there was particularly more than one kind of shot. However, now I know about various different kinds of shots, from wide angel shots, to profile shots, to establishing shots. After learning about these kinds of shot we made great use of them in our film.
• Story boarding: This was something very simple that we learned, but it helped us to collect our thoughts together for our film and develop them.
• Capturing your target audience: We learned how if you can figure out who your target audience is, you can direct your advertising at their other interests and hobbies, making the advertising much more effective.