FINISHED!

FINALLY FINISHED BLOGGING WOOOOOOH !

Finisheddd

DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I'VE FINISHED BLOGGING.  1 OUT BLESSSSS.!

Evaluation question 8: Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned from the progression from it to the full product?

Titles

What you're seeing below is the title for our preliminary film, it is exactly in the middle of a black screen with a faint red tint on the writing. This was created on Live Type by Cheri, as one of the first titles we made. At first we were more than satisfied with the title but then we eventually realised that the writing wasn't that readable. However the idea was to tilt it slightly to make the title very disorientated and may pass as connotations for the film.

Below this is the title for our Final thriller. It was downloaded it from a website called dafont.com. as a group we really liked the boldness of it and the fact that it stood out, It held some connotations of the film as we placed it next to the London eye that is a circular attraction. Referring to the name THE CYCLE that means rotation/circle.

Mise en scene

MISE EN SCENE

 

As this was our final film, we wanted to get the best locations involved, soooooooo we filmed at South bank for shots of the London Eye and shots of the Big Ben, here is where we spent most time filming and then at Elias' and Demi's houses to film the shots of me having a bad dream and then the 'helping with the shopping' shots. We also filmed the 'flashback' shots in a park near the college. The props we used were a flower, a map, fake blood,tesco bags etc. But below you can see some of the things we used as mise en scene down southbank, for example, the London Eye and Big ben but also the big crowds, the look-a-like haunted trees, the map which introduces me and demi, and the water/fence thing.

 

Evaluation question 7: What have you learned about technologies throughout the process of constructing this product?

Meanwhilst spending time researching, planning and filming i've probably learnt more about technology than i did in my 5 years of studying ICT in secondary school.

 

By using blogger i have learned how to successfully write posts, upload pictures, embed videos, change fonts, see how forward or behind you are, and just having fun on it in general.

 

We used some proper JVC cameras to record our footage, they were proffessional cameras probably worth more than a months rent which everyone had to agree that the quality of these cameras was impecible.  

Metaphorically, I've shook hands with Live type, Sound Track Pro, Quick Time, Handbreak as we had to use all of these programmes in order to push ourselves abit more to make our thriller opening the best it could be. 

EVALUATION: 6. Audience Feedback and Comments

POSITIVE

NEGATIVE

VIDEO COMMENTS 

EVALUATION QUESTION 8- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

PASSWORD : student

CAMERA 

When we first began using the camera we understood the basics of filming and we were able to get good shots for our first time. However I think a key strrength in my group is using the camera and using different shots anyway. However we did not take in consideration of the little things. In our preliminary (on the left) as you can see there are people in the background who were not apart of our scene as a matter of fact they were not meant to be there at all. The shot on the right however, looks much more professional, there are people in the background however, it is suitable for the storyline and the focus is on point. We also learnt the importance of eye level being 1/3 of the screen regardless of what shot it is, unless it has a particular significance. 

Editing

In our preliminary film, we tried to do a match cut of Elias closing the door, however if you notice Elias closes the door a few seconds after we begin recording. This could have been avoided through editing the clip so as soon as the audience see the door it is already being closed and not 'paused then closed'. For our final thriller opening we avoided this very well, we were able to embed clips onto each other to create a confusing and frustrating effect. As well as a black and white effect to signify the audience which scene was a flashback. We also used transition effects such as fade ins and fade outs. as well as jump cuts which directly takes us to a particular scene. 

Mise En Scene

As you can see in our preliminary we used a tesco bag to suffocate someone. As a group when we looked back on we realsied it was very unproffesional and we should have used something else like a black bag or a brown paper bag. In our final thriller we portrayed the importance of mise en scene because, it was the props and clothing that creates a 'spark' between the killer and victim. For example we see Demi's character drop her map and the killer instantly knows that this is his chance, likewise he notices my character playing with a flower and he can then ome up to me and speak about the 'amazing flower' which leads to further altercations. As we thought a tesco bag could still be used as a significant part of mise en scene we used it when Kudiwa's character dropped her shopping which also gave the killer reason to approach her. In order for the audience to identify the main character he wore roughly the same outfit throughout, this was usually dark coloured clothing which connotes, he is a very closed, dark, evil person. The females however wore very casual outfits which we learnt was important because, it makes our characters seem realistic. 

Production/distribution

In our preliminary, the beginning of our clip started off with the director. As important as the director is it is very crucial to put the ident for the production company first. This is something we did not do and, had we been apart of a large conglomerate and under a big production company such as 20th Century Fox there could have  been serious problems. Luckily we notice our errors and for our final thriler opening we made sure the ident for the production company was the first thing to appear. Through our research and planning we watched a documentary based on production companies and film openings called 'Watching'. Director Jean Jacques Beineix highlighted the importance of the risks when using 'instant arousal' in filming which is what we decided to do. By plunging your audience in with a huge shock in the beginning means you have to 'plunge' them in throughout the film. We added the sound track over the production company ident  so the audience could instantly feel drawn into the film, although some production companies dislike this, we done it anyway because we are apart of a small independent company. 

Titles 

Titles are also very key in thriller openings. We learnt the importance of the title sequence and the order it should go in and who to credit first, which is usually the production company and associates. Furthermore it is very important to have a particular font type that corresponds with your film genre. The titles of our film was in a thick serif font, which was not to fancy, and very plain which connote the simplicity in the killer as killers tend to be very straightforward and simple. 

Group work! 

A very big lesson I learnt by the end of this project was the importance of group work and participation. It is very crucial that everyone includes their ideas when creating such a big project like this. I got along very well with my group and we usually had the same types of ideas. When there were differences however, we worked around it and looked for other possibilities if someones idea did not fit, this usually resulted in us doing much more thinking and later creating a better idea than the one to begin with. Our communication skills were very good despite the very stressful lessons (last few days of editing especially!). However, we were very tolerant of one another which made us at ease to contribute our ideas and this was a key reason why we got along. As this project was group work we learnt that being organised was very essential, all our filming times were done according to each others schedules and it was important we were all on time to not disrupt peoples other plans. 

The most important thing we learnt was that planning and research is very essential and crucial when carrying out a task like this. Without planing and research we would have made various errors and not known the key conventions of a thriller opening which would mean we would not complete our task. 

OVERALL I REALLY ENJOYED THIS EXPERIENCE, ALL OUR SKILLS LEARNT WERE NOTICED BY OUR AUDIENCE WHICH IS AVAILABLE FOR YOU TO VIEW ON THE POST ABOVE WHICH IS AUDIENCE FEEDBACK ! 

FINISHED BLOGGING!

EVALUATION Question 8

Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learned in this progression to the full product...

PRELIM ENTITLED 'UNTITLED'

This was the first video we filmed after just learning about how to use the camera and how to use the programs FCP, SoundTrack Pro and Livetype.


TITLES.
In the prelim, the titles did NOT follow convention as we hadn't done the research. We had 'directed and produced by d.e.m.s. first and then had the title of the film at 23 seconds.

 

MISE EN SCENE


In our prelim, we decided to use such props as fake blood, vampire teeth, tesco bag and black and yellow tape. Even though it was our first time filming I think that all of the mise en scene worked well together.

Different shots GOOD & BAD

• the first shot looked good at first but I think that showing my college pass was a bright idea.
• the second and third shot look a little dark
• I really liked the 4th shot, but looking back I think there is too much space at the side
• the last shot is blocking Mariama's head.

FINAL FILM ENTITLED 'THE CYCLE'

TITLES


When we were editing the cycle we had done a lot of research and so we knew how to do the conventional title order and so we made sure it was done exactly right in our film opening.

MISE EN SCENE

As this was our final film, we wanted to have the best location.

We filmed at South bank for the London Eye and Big Ben shots, which is where we spent most time filming and then at Elias' and Demi's houses to film the nightmare shots and the shopping shots. We also filmed the 'flashback' shots in a park near the college. The props we used were a flower, a map, fake blood,tesco bags...

Evaluation question 4&5: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address you audience?

Media institution that might distribute our film and why?

Because we are using a low bugdet production company and candi studios we have to find some sort of advertising which will make the word abbout the film spread but not cost us alot of money or just away from mainstream all together.  Since advertisement plays a major role in the success of a product, we have this apply this to our ideas and make sure that we attract a good target audience. Obviously we are not expecting a film directed by steven spielberg but on the other hand we did have access to some good equipment and software which helped our opening look alrightttttt.!

We were thinking as a good way to publicise our opening we could upload the film onto Vimeo, Youtube,blogger, basically we wanted to release it virally because young people are spending most of their day on social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, PROFILE PIC etc LOL our target audience is mainly people my age and where i have more than a few friends on facebook i reckon i could get the opening a few hundred views in space of a few days. As producers we are willing to accept criticism from people because we're at that mature stage where we learn from our mistakes and move on.
This is what it would look like when you post your film on facebook :

youtube is already a worldwide website that people from other sides of the world can see your videos without you even publicising it to them as youtube has its own way of publicising its videos aswell.

This is where you would've caught me and all the other As and A2 students on tuesday lunchtime as we spent roughly 2 hours watching all of our thriller openings, some were funny, some were good, some were short, some where fresh, some didnt even make sense but i swear thats the whole point in openings, your not meant to give it away because that's what's keeping the audience there for another hour or 2.

Evaluation question 3: Who would be the audience for your media product?

A basic example of a target audience would be more of a female than males in her early 20's and is employed and enjoys going out for a nice day out with her husband or kids to the cinema on her days off. She has a addiction to shopping as soon as her wage comes through but she'll never be late to pay a bill.
She gets dragged into films quickly as she loves the new films that the media is bringing out, more likely to only go with a orange wednesday number just to save a bit of money, and shops at Primark as she is not disappointed with the quality and impressed by the price.

The target audience would mostly contain the following things in her side/handbag:

EVALUATION QUESTION 8- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

PRELIM first time filming with the techniques that we were taught

FINAL FILM after a 2week period of filming our opening sequence

(PASSWORD= Student)

TITLES

This is the title for our prelim film, it is directly in the middle on a black background with a faint red font. This was created on Live Type as one of the first titles we made. We loved it at the time then as we gradually learnt about titles and how they should be readable we realised that it wasn't such a good idea. However the way it is titled slightly is very disorientated and may pass as connotations for the film.

This is the title for our Final thriller. I downloaded it from a website called dafont.com. i really liked that it was bold and stood out, It held some connotations of the film as we placed it next to the London eye that is a circle attraction. Referring to the name THE CYCLE that means rotation/circle. This showed how i have progressed and learnt how to download different fonts that are much more suited to my thriller sequence.

MISE EN SCENE

Props used in these two images are a tesco carrier bag which was used as  a way to kill one of the characters, initial we thought this was a good idea but as we continued research we realised that it didn't look realistic and in a way was comical. Obviously it was suppose to be suspenseful and i didn't think that particular shot suited the genre. We also used a 'hazard' type to barricade the door to indicate that something dangerous is inside the room. This however was a good idea and kind of showed the audience that it may be a thriller.

We learnt for our final film that were had to think about mise en scene carefully and that they are used to create part of the actual storyline. In the first image you can see a girl holding a flower, looking deeply at the petals. In a way an innocent girl can be perceived and the flower is used to indicate her persona and what type of character she is. The other shot is of a woman carrying heavy shopping. The audience can already tell that she has been on a journey and it creates background idea about the character for instance, that she had to go food shopping for the household. This mise en scene was much better suited for the story we were trying to get across.

EDITING

The first shot with the two circles is from our prelim film. We can see that i used a cross dissolve transition which shows the same shot in two different  perspectives. One is from the killers and the other is from the victims, i thought this was a good example to use as it shows that we did try and use the information we learnt from films and audience perspective. The second image is from our final film  we decided to be much more challenging and creative as we incorporated two scenes into one using a transition called 'fade in' this allowed two scenes to merge together. It in a way introduces a new scene while one is finishing. This was useful as we were stuck for time and only had a 2 mins Maxim title sequence.

                                                            

LIGHTING
The first shot is from our prelim task, as you can see the shot of Sheri is extremely dark, allowing the audience not to see her face. This is very bad as facial expressions are often important to portray a successful piece of work. As the shot is also far away (long shot) we are even more at a disadvantage to see who she is. I brought this knowledge and mistake with me along to my final thriller as i remembered that lighting is important and it should be clear who characters are. The JVC cameras helped me with lighting issues (the GAIN button) increased the light tensity and made shots brighter if we didn't have any natural light at that particular shot.

CAMERA

These two shots are from my prelim film, They are actually really bad shots. One of the characters are practically cut out of the shot, this is bad as i later learnt that if this was shown on a big screen for example in the cinema it wouldn't fit in the frame and that part of the shot will be cut off. The second shot has allot of space at the side. Allowing the audience to be distracted and it doesn't look really professional. The over the shoulder shot should have been much more closer and really captured the three actors involved rather than getting the chairs, computer and bags in the background.

These two shots are taken from our Final film. These shots are much better and do fit the content more. They show that i have learnt skills and my progression has been clearly stated. The first shot is the over the shoulder shot and it is clear as to who is the victim. It is very close and it feels as if we are directly behind the guy looking at the young woman. The second shot i would describe as an extreme close up. We can see his eyebrows, one eye and nose. This really does capture his appearance slightly and get an idea of the actor. We would easily be able to identify him in the rest of the film. A variety of shots were used to really show off our skills and knowledge.

SOUND
Our sound in the Preliminary task was BORING it was just one consistent sound and had no excitement. We used the programme Sound Track Pro to add in a scream of when the killer suffocated the victim, even then it sounded rather fake and artificial. I then decided that for the final film we had to make sure that the soundtrack was very tense and suspenseful to create the mood. We ended up creating very unique and catching sound sequence from using the programme sound track pro. From all our audience feedback they all mention that our sound really did fit with our sequence, pace and titles, this allowed me to believe that it was an effective and successful piece

EXPERIENCES

During my time i have also learnt that team work is extremely important. My group consisted of 4 people, at times we had some difficulties were we didn't agree on particular ideas and decisions however we always tried to incorporate our ideas together. Meeting up to film in the mornings were hassle and there was always a group member late, but once we all were together we actively started participating and giving feedback on shots that we liked and didn't like so it was a productive filming experience. one thing that i liked about our group is that we always helped one another, constantly reminding each other about blogs that were due or planning that was needed. We usually allocated specific roles to our group members, for example Elias did soundtracks, Mariama and Myself done editing and Sheri focused on the titles and credits.

Being organised is sensual as you have to be very prepared to make sacrifices for example spend time filming out of college hours rather than going out with friends. We had to be on time when we were asked to collect equipment because of the simple reason that time slots were allocated and there are not enough cameras for every single group. This resulted in many people realising our responsibilities and recognising we had to work as a team in order to have a successful film at the end of the course.

I learnt that you had to be very careful with the equipment as they were very expensive and needed allot of care when handling. JVC camera, still cameras, memory cards, Tripod and flip cameras were the basics that i used throughout my filming process.
Overall my experience was great and i would do it all over again, i have some really nice memories and have learnt so much about technology and how to use Apple Mac computers.
There were a lot of differences between the two sequences, and in watching them, we could really see the differences and development in our editing and production techniques over time.My skills with editing have improved massively since the beginning of the course: initially, there were just lots of jump cuts and a various range of shots that didn't particularly flow together. Now i have learnt to use different techniques such as over layering shots and merging shots to create am overall effect that is more suspenseful for a physchological thriller.

Finally i have learnt that planning before you go our filming is very important as you have to organise who is bringing in particular props for that shooting day. Location for the setting, what time of day you are going to meet because when my group filmed at London Eye (Waterloo) we had decided to go in the morning as it is a tourist attraction so it often gets busy during the afternoon. You also have to do research so you know exactly what elements a thriller holds.

EVALUATION Question 7

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this products?

• blogger - Through using blogger, I have learnt to write posts, upload images and embed videos. I have used it to show all of the research for thrillers and to note updates and changes for our thriller.

• JVC digital cameras with memory cards. - Using these professional cameras have helped get the best shots and with the memory cards it makes it easier to upload to the computers. 

• Macs - Before doing media, I wasn't too sure on how to use Macs and how the programs worked, but after using them, it has helped with the planning/editing of the film.

• Final Cut Pro, Livetype, Soundtrack Pro, Quicktime, Handbrake. All of these programs have helped to edit and watch the FINAL film opening for "THE CYCLE". FCP to edit, Livetype for the titles, Soundtrack for the music, Quicktime to watch and handbrake to put the film to a mp4 so it an be uploaded to blogger for everyone to watch.

• Flip cameras. - The flip cameras were good for getting the audience feedback and they were also quite easy to use as they were small and simple. 

• Windows movie maker - I used Windows movie maker to make little clips of ideas of how the film would be. It helped to show others what the film would include..

• phones to film - Using phones to film the audience feedback and make little video blogs. 

ALL of these technologies worked together because without 1, something would not have gone the way it should have. i.e. if you were to use final cut pro without a mac it would NOT have worked..

EVALUATION Question 2

How does your media product represent social groups?


Our film represents social groups through the use of stereotypes.


We have a MALE that is the stalker and ALL of the FEMALES are the victims. 

shot where you can see Elias stalking - the male stereotype

Shot where I am dead, the female victim - female stereotype