Steph's AS Media: Presentation

presentation

Audience feedback

Thankfully we had no negative feedback so far and people seemed to really enjoy our product, we displayed out product on facebook and the media blog to friends and class members. we posted our media product on the blog about a month ago and around 3 weeks on facebook, certain people who commented were infact media students and commented on the range of effects we used. 

Daniel Robson Carr :source - face book

 Daniel Robson-carr This is great.... the intro is quite mysterious... the strange camera angles are really effective, the out of focus look when the person is talking adds to that whole mystery thing, the sepia look on some shots are really good. giving snap shots of the clips are god leaves the audience wanting to watch more. the music really works. Gives it a whole personality and charcter to it.

Nathan Johnson : source - face book 

Nathan Johnston music and sound affects comploments the gray scale amazingly, like the clash of gray scale to coloure near the end, amazing peice of senari footage. 

Manny Varraich ( media student in year 12) - source - facebook

Its awesome. I think the colour works really well with the music and effects. Love to seee th rest of the film :-DD

Stephanie AS Media: Presentation

Written commentary

Written commentary

Our media product is around 3 minutes including titles and the logo. Our titles were planned to be all white but some showed up very poorly against certain clips, so we had a range of black and white, so the audience could see them clearly. Especially when we were watching them in front of the class on a big screen. A lot of the titles were supposed to be over the clip, but visibility was very poor so we used a fade from the clip to black and then used our titles, which really helped it to enhance it better.

Our logo, we had to include some sound affects over the top of the logo. Lucky, the people who produced our soundtrack already had a known logo and we had permission to be able to use that in our project thanks to Imogen’s brother. As the logo, was Fyreon, it seemed appropriate to include a fire image to make the logo seem more attractive.

Alex Lang, the second female actor, helped us with the voiceover, which was recorded on a basic audio recorded as some of the cameras were not available, but we think it fits in well.  We put this into our project because there was a lot of background noise and it gave the story a clearly plot. Alex Lang is the classical teenager in horror films for being in the age limited of 16-20 and having bright blonde hair. This also gives in to another stereotype of blonde people; it is also a physical trait often associated with "bimbos," attractive but unintelligent or uneducated women.

The Detective scene wasn’t added until the very end and was purely because of film didn’t make a lot of sense. Just using a small 30-40 second long interview with the detective really help use to build up the basic storyline for the audience to understand it better.  Also, adding this clip in, using a male lead, made the younger female characters looks even more vulnerable.

First clips from field to horse saddle, these clips were played with some of the detectives voiceover played to keep the audience having to listen and concentrate on the storyline. The Horse riding down the sand was a very long clip, so we used fade ins and fade outs to make the clip seem faster and have a better flow so the audience didn’t become bored.  We did however, want to reshoot some of this clip, but it was so hard to keep the continuity the same and the horse was becoming very agitated and wary of the camera.  Also, most horses are kept in countryside, which is also in the middle of nowhere, where people are more likely to go missing.

When Sam (the first actor) looks in the bushes, this is where our soundtrack beginnings to play into the movie, the killer seems to be able to get her very easily, suggesting teenagers are very vulnerable and to young really to be trusted by themselves. The social group it is generally based around youth, it is generally a negative connotations.

The clip were the murdered attacks Alex, it didn’t look very realistic so, we played this certain clip in slow motion. When Alex was in the bushes, a few of our shots we hand held, because the tripod could not balance in the woods, so we had to be careful to keep it steady and not shaky. I really like the ending of our film, with the music quietly playing the background and the victim’s phone ringing creates a really good vibe for the film. We then used a variation of zooms. 

Media commentary

Bloopers of our movie

1 - more detailed

1. How does your media project:

Use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I think our media project looks much more professional since we have added the studio logo and soundtrack. It creates a much more expert feel about the overall movie. We added in our own design of music and title credits, we also studied real movies to see how they set out there titles and the font, colour they used for there examples.  The titles really gave our movie a much more expertise experience. If the movie did not have titles, it would be hard to notice if it was a movie rather than just a clip.

The majority of media products are created in established and repeated ways. Film products are governed by certain predictable narrative features, what was very important is the dress and props in a film.

In ours, one of the actors is clearly riding a horse and we were considering not making the actor wear a hat because teenagers never really seem that concerned about safety. But for health and safety reasons it was necessary. The other actor “Alex”, however is wearing a much more casual dress sense which hopefully the audience will see as fitting in with their age range. 

Represent particular social groups?

It represents teenagers are being very vulnerable and weak, which is generally the stereotype from most films.

The interview at the beginning our film is a strong male lead, which shows males as being either stronger or more dominant. As he is more dominant and older, it makes the teenagers look more like children and they still need taking care off.

The social group it is generally based around youth, however, it is generally a negative connotation of teenagers being unintelligent and not really thinking about the consequences of danger – for example, going looking for a missing friends by themselves. 

However, the main characters being so young and vulnerable may restrict parents from wanting to watch in cause there child could end up in that situation.

Also, as it is to be rated at least a 15, the elderly may be put of it will include foul language and maybe gory scenes.

(SORRY about not being in order) - Question 3 more detailed

3. Who would be the audience for your media product?

It would mainly be aimed at a younger generation, as our film is likely to be a 15 or 18; it is likely to include foul language that older generation may not be fond off. This film generally gives of the impression that it is type of film you would go and see with a large group of friends, as it is a thriller/horror, that is one of the most popular choices of film worldwide and many teenagers have the same interests.

An advantage is that not a lot of horror films as targeted at specific genders so that would help us to keep a wider audience.Having a male starting of the movie, gave it more of an impression that is wasn’t just a movie for teenagers and had more of a adult theme.

we would of personalty rather or film was rated a 15, but to get the full experience of a horror movie, eg, gore and blood, the rating would have to be lifted and scary enough to be distributed by Ghosthouse Pictures. 

More detailed questions

5. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

From the experience of using just one camera to shoot, I have realised how hard it really is to produce a “real looking” film and also how important continuity really is. The camera’s we had also had quite poor audio filming, so we have to think more carefully than we first imagined and many of our cameras had to be closer to the audience to make the audio dialogue louder and clearer. The cameras however, did have good clear vision which helped us to shot from different distances. We were originally planning to shot a lot of ours in the dark, but when we got round to testing the camera, we realised there vision in the dark was quite poor.

I think if we were to shoot another movie, we would try and get another camera to stop basic mistakes such as continuity.

Another think to keep in mind is that you needed a tripod for almost any shot. We were planning to shot some of them handheld, to make it look more realistic, but the quality was incredibly poor.

Not only have we learn about camera technology, but also about editing software for example we used photo-shop premier. we might of known some of the basics e.g. how to important clips, but we then learnt much more about editing tools e.g. cutting, ripple delete. these are all helpful tools that will help us next year in A2 media. 

the only problems we had with the software were we were abit confused at the beginning how to use it and also it crashed regularly as there was around 20 in the same room using the same media server and  software. we over come this by leaving the software alone for example rendering our project threw lunch as it took much longer than expected.

group presenation

We have now completed our interview and our 10 minute group presenation. now all that is left is to complete an audio track over the top of our project and i have already posted the exam questions onto my blog. i will however, being making the answered much more detailed and relavant to the question. our final deadline in next friday and i am positive we will be fully prepared.

Basic Draft Answers

As media Studies – evaluation programme (22^nd March – 15^th April 2011)

1. How does your media project:

Use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I think our media project looks much more professional since we have added the studio logo and soundtrack. It creates a much more expert feel about the overall movie. We added in our own design of music and title credits, we also studied real movies to see how they set out there titles and the font, colour they used for there examples.  The titles really gave our movie a much more expertise experience. If the movie did not have titles, it would be hard to notice if it was a movie rather than just a clip.

Represent particular social groups?

It represents teenagers are being very vulnerable and weak, which is generally the stereotype from most films.

The interview at the beginning our film is a strong male lead, which shows males as being either stronger or more dominant. As he is more dominant and older, it makes the teenagers look more like children and they still need taking care off.

The social group it is generally based around youth, however, it is generally a negative connotation of teenagers being unintelligent and not really thinking about the consequences of danger – for example, going looking for a missing friends by themselves. 

However, the main characters being so young and vulnerable may restrict parents from wanting to watch in cause there child could end up in that situation.

Also, as it is to be rated at least a 15, the elderly may be put of it will include foul language and maybe gory scenes.

2. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

At first we thought a film institution such as Twisted pictures than specialises in horror films and there distribution would be suitable, but when we actually started filming, we realised our film didn’t contain that much gore and blood and was more of a thriller and shocker.

So we decided that a distributor such as “ghost house pictures” would be more suitable, with past films such as 30 days of night and the bogeyman. As these film distributors more scary thriller films rather than gory films such as “Twisted pictures”. The films that they have produced are more in common with ours compared to other distributers.

3. Who would be the audience for your media product?

It would mainly be aimed at a younger generation, as our film is likely to be a 15 or 18; it is likely to include foul language that older generation may not be fond off.  This film generally gives of the impression that it is type of film you would go and see with a large group of friends, as it is a thriller/horror, that is one of the most popular choices of film worldwide and many teenagers have the same interests.

An advantage is that not a lot of horror films as targeted at specific genders so that would help us to keep a wider audience.

Having a male starting of the movie, gave it more of an impression that is wasn’t just a movie for teenagers and had more of a adult theme.

4 how did you attract/address your audience?

We used very fast paced music to give the film more of a fast pace, as it was quite dull before we added the audio. The audio is also quite modern and as the general audience will be young it attracts the right audience. The soundtrack plays a large part in attracting the audience; our music would be played with sounds very structured to our certain film.

Our actors were of similar age to the target audience, so there should be a stronger connection between the to groups.

Our title and credits used very basic white font, this made it really stand out against the dark footage and with a very clear title, it is more likely that the audience would remember it.

5. What have you learnt about technology from the process of making your product?

From the experience of using just one camera to shoot, I have realised how hard it really is to produce a “real looking” film and also how important continuity really is. The camera’s we had also had quite poor audio filming, so we have to think more carefully than we first imagined and many of our cameras had to be closer to the audience to make the audio dialogue louder and clearer. The cameras however, did have good clear vision which helped us to shot from different distances. We were originally planning to shot a lot of ours in the dark, but when we got round to testing the camera, we realised there vision in the dark was quite poor.

I think if we were to shoot another movie, we would try and get another camera to stop basic mistakes such as continuity.

Another think to keep in mind is that you needed a tripod for almost any shot. We were planning to shot some of them handheld, to make it look more realistic, but the quality was incredibly poor.

6. Looking at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the process of making this product?

It takes a lot more time and effect than I first thought and struggled to get all of the shots needed in that time I imagined. Also, quite far into the process, I didn’t think planning was really that important until we got to filming and I realised how much preparation was really needed to make a realistic film that contained actors, dialogue, large range of shots etc. Now, when watching professional films I realise how much time it must take to complete all of the editing to perfection.

From this experience, at the beginning I was worried about using editing fade outs for example, as I thought it would look unprofessional, but after we tried a range of effects, certain ones fit in really well. In our movie, we have used a range of editing techniques before certain events to add to the drama and make the movie look more specialized.

Interview

We have just completed our media interview for our media project, which was 15 minutes and was recorded and then will be uploaded on the blog for viewing. we will now be planning for the group presentation to the rest of the class and make a very short PowerPoint with some key parts of our film and somes problems that we encouted.
we will pick appropriate parts of the movie to discuss and will last around 10 minutes.

Evalution

We are about half way threw completing our evaluation in as much detail as we need to get our target grade. In the last question we have included some detail about what we found easy and what problems we faced such as bad audio recording on the cameras and not clear in shooting in the dark. we aim to complete the evalaution this week and we will then have to do a presentation to the class and a podcast with our evalution answers in a interview.

Evalution

We have now completed the opening sequence and it is now uploaded to my blog. From now on we can't change anything in the clip as the deadline has passed. We are doing our evaluation and then loading our answers ontp the blog.
How does your media product:
a)use develop challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
brepresent particular social groups.
2. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
3. Who would be the audience for your media product?
4. How did you attract/address your audience?
5. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
6. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

we did actually start planning our evaluation, while we were finishing the movie, so we are already half way threw and in alot of detail. we have included in many of the answers alot of problems we have en counted and if we could do it again, what we would of done differently.

Deadline Deadline Deadline

Today, is the final deadline for our film and we are pleased with the final project now we have all of the shots, music and editing has turned out well after we got rid of a lot of problems.

However, we had issues with bad actors and them being unreliable, re shooting with the original actors was a problem to get them out of there schedules.
on the other hand, we had no problem shooting the new opening as we had a better actor and as the short beginning was shot it school is mad it much more accessible for everyone to meet at the time when all at school together.

From now to the end of the day, we plan to keep on retouching the editing and the logo to make sure it stills look proffesional. We have been having a few issues with the editing software as it keeps on crashing when we are trying to editing the software.

Evaluation

I have wrote a brief evaluation and plan to make it more proffesional after the deadline for our movie project. we have 7 questions to answer about our project and we should be able to answer these more clearly after we have the final project. our movie, is also in the target time or around 2-3 minutes even with our logo and titles put in.
we will have another update tomorrow as we have hit our final deadline and then will being with our evaluation.

Deadline this week

We are very happy with the way our media is turning out, now we have all the footage, music and the editing has become a better quality. As the deadline is tomorrow, we will now just be editing out small mistakes and we will also be letting other people watch it, so we do not miss any continous errors or other mistakes.
We are now positive that movie will be finished for tomorrow and we will add all of our titles on now we have the correct footage.
however, one problem we do have it that in one of the shots that is supposed to look very serious, you can see an item that is not meant to be there, but we have solved this be zooming into the frame a tiny bit, so it is unseen to the audience.

Music fitting in with the events

The editing is going really well, and it all seems to fit well together. we are being very specific about the music fitting into certain events so it fits in with the action. There is a very short piece of dialogue in the film, which we will have to lower the music for so the audience can hear it more clearly. However, we have also made some of the music louder so for example, there is on camera jerk, and with the music abit higher it is unnoticable.
the music does not come in until after the interview and title sequences. we already have the title font and colour so we will start this after we have finished editing the new footage we should be by today.

We have finally shot the rest of our footage and have already began editing the new footage. the interview helps to make our storyline more clear and give the audience a better understanding of what our film is about.
Mr Ward was the actor in our film, who surprisingly took the part very seriously which really helped us to build up the tension for the film.
the footage we shot yesterday and was about 30 seconds. this will be added in at the beginning of our movie.

We are now going to reshoot the rest of our movie today at 3rd lesson today which will take only around half an other to film. this is going to be added at the begginging of our film, to make the story make more sense.
the music will then after our new footage and this will take our movie to around 2.30 minutes. hopefully, when we have all of our new footage we will beggingin editing again and have our movie completly by tuesday. we will keep on the blogger over the weekend to say how our editing has gone and will hopefully be ready for the deadline of tuesday.

we still have footage to shoot which is planned to be shot on Tuesday and it has been put off till now because of weather conditions being different compared to our movie. until then we have been thinking about evaluation and title sequence. we have now put in our audio music and started out titles. 

Editing and Evaluation Program

we now have music for the beginning of our movie, which makes the movie seem a bit more realistic and fits well in with our movie. we still need to shoot some more for our movie, including an interview which will take around 30-45 minutes to shoot. we are waiting until we have finished all of the shooting until we start adding in our title sequence. we also are going to start thinking about out writing our evaluation. 

Towards the final deadline

we now have around 3 week left to film our media and after half term we now have many areas we need to improve on. we are also shooting some more footage of an interview at the beginning to make the story more clear to the audience. also, after editing, people who have never seen out work managed to spot out some errors, such as camera noise and bad edits at certain points in or movie. at this point, we are planning to shot furthur footage in the next week and continue editing in class hours and hours outside of class time if needed.

Rough Cut

  

Editing deadline for Friday

We have finally managed to sort out our audio problems, by using various sound affects from the media server. However, the first 10 to 15 seconds of our movie lacks a bit of continuity and realism, so by this Friday, we plan to use a voice over at the beginning, firstly to get rid of any future audio problems and also, gives a bit more information for the audience.

We have manged to get our logo into the opening of our movie, as the logo is called "FYRON" and has a fire logo, we were able to find suitable sound affects of fire burning, which has turned out really well.

More Footage and more editing

We also used a second camera to make sure we wouldn't have to go back and re shoot any of our footage, because the weather would be different and would also be hard to get our actors all back at same time.
The extra footage we have will also be very useful to add in because some areas of our movie lack continuity. Mainly the beginning of our film, we have decided to replace some of the footage we edited,as it didn't fit in with our film.
We decided to take two cameras as much of our film, we would need to be careful for continuity errors. We are now rendering our video, as we had some problems with the audio, we want to make our movie run more smoothly, so we can spot errors more easily.

Editing and problems

We now have a very rough copy of our movie, however, there is a few issues with the audio, as there is many background voices, which we do not want. so hopefully, we can add in some sound affects or turn down some of the audio. we did have all of the clip we want, and do not need to go back and re shoot. after we have sorted out the audio, we hope to be able to move on to the title sequence as we have already got the design and fault. our movie is around 2 minutes 13 seconds, yet it will be longer, as we need to add in our logo and production company information.

Clips from Media

Clips from our Media film

Starting Editing and Problems

We have now started to edit out media, we had a problem with the first edit, as we lost some footage and the software did not store it properly. however, we did manage to get the clips back and have editing about the first 30 seconds for out 2 minute opening. We also had alot of outtakes, so we had to take quite alot of time, just going threw with clips we are going to use and which are main important clips.

Title Sequence and Editing

As we had many weeks to research other horror films, we also decided to look at the different options for our title sequence. We are included people such as

• director and screenwriter
• director of photography
• names of the actors
• creator of the soundtrack

Also, we have found on piece of work on the main blog and we really like the font and style of the title sequence, which is quite useful because there's is also a horror. Before shooting we were also looking on the editing software and suitable fonts and we have found one which would look good with our movie and also different effects, for example we are using a basic fade in and out.

Shooting - final

Stephanie M

We finally finished our shooting today in Lanchester and will be uploading our footage soon to be editing. We got all of the footage we needed however, our first actor wasn’t as “talented” as our first. We did shoot a lot more footage that was needed just to keep our options open. As there is horse in our movie, we had to think carefully about continuity and that is why we had a range of cameras instead of just one. The weather was quite an advantage as it was very cloudy and misty making the setting look more realistic for horror opening to a movie. And we also had no problem shooting in our chosen area.

However, a problem that we did find was that, as we didn’t shoot our movie in the correct order from beginning to end, because our actors were only available at certain times of the day. And as we started shooting around 1, after a short period of time, the weather conditions became a problem.

We will soon be uploading some footage and starting our rough edit. 

Shooting

We are finally fully prepared to go out and shoot our opening to our movie. We are now past 1 week into shooting time, but it took us to this point, to get all of the materials eg camera, tripod, actors, props and the same time. We will be shooting at around 3 to 4, and as we are shooting a horror opening, it will be useful as if becomes more dark, however, we will be relying slightly on our editing software to put a tint onto our clips to make it look darker. After tomorrow, we will both have a blog to say how it went :)

Shooting and Credits

We are planning to shoot this Saturday in the morning and all of our actors are prepare to be there. We have also being planning in more detail,  our movie credits. Our actors will appear first like in most films and then directors, producer etc.

(actors)
Samantha Minto

Alex Lang

Directed and produced

Steph Martin and Imogen Moore

Audio soundtrack

Daniel Robson Carr

Director of photography

Imogen Moore

Request for information

1 - Title of the movie - The Unknown
Genre - Horror
2 - Name of your studio/ distribution company - Fyreon
3 - Credits you intend to use -
Samantha Minto - Actor and horse owner
Daniel Robson-Carr - Music
Steph Martin - (camera and editing)
Immy Moore - (camera and editing)
Leanne Renwick - Actor
4 - A brief synopsis of your opening sequence - (Horror) - Teenager after school, is out in the countryside, after "the the incident", her friend soon follows after her to find what has happen.

Safety Assessment

As there are horses in our opening, we have to make sure that it is safe for the rider and the horse. we are shooting in a field which is owned by the owner of the horse, who clearly knows the area. also all of the field is enclosed, so if there was a accident, the horse would not come to further harm. The rider clearly would be wearing all of the correct rider gear, such as Hard hat, riding boots, gloves, body protector etc, and there will also be 5 of us overall, so if any accident occured, there would be a lot of people and nearby stables to help.


we have chosen, to use the countryside and a horse in our opening, as alot of our horror film research is in the country for example

• Eden lake
• Halloween
• severance

we have also included a horse as it will make the scene feel more fast paced when we use cross cutting at the beginning and realistic as many people do sports in there day to day lifestyle

Characters and Script

Actor 1 and 2 (both female)
Immy and Steph   - Editing and Shooing


as the film is only a short opening, it will not include alot of dialogue


 -
(First opening - cut shot between river and horses for around 25 seconds)
(Focuses in on actor 1 )
After the extreme long shots, many high angles are used to look down on the characters to make them look vulnerable as it is a horror film
-character drops her bag and gets of the horse-
-is then dragged into a near by bush and her bag is left and so is the horse
--then character 2 returns the next day (this is clear as the weather and time of day would have change and sees the bag left never a bush--
- the character would then call out the first characters name repetitively 
-as she then sees her bag, she walks over to help find her friend ( at this point we would use a high angle shot, with the help of the tripod-


First week of shooting


Needed:
Immy Moore and Stephanie Martin for shooting
Actor 1: needed on saturday to meet at meadowsfield for 2 hours at 11:00
Actor 2: needed on sunday early in the morning at 6am for shooting, yet only needed for 1 hour
Transport for both days in by car for everyone and return

8 Pictures from our storyboard

This a basic outline of our storyboard. the red crosses on some of the storyboard is to show you where our camera is going to be placed. Very soon we will be going to the site where we are going to be filming out film and get some real pictures.Steph

Deciding on our final storyboard and ideas

We are now starting to choose our certain actors and settings. Compare to last week, we have changed out location dramatically and are going to shot it in the countryside compare to shooting in the city.
there are many advantages of this such as

• less people ( to get in the way of shooting)
• calmer environment
• the country side when it is dark looks very scary and deserted
• very realistic
• not a lot of visable traffic (looks more organised)

also as we are shooting a horror film, lots of very successful horrors that we are basing ours on are shot in the countryside.

• Cabin Fever
• Severance
• The Hills have eyes
• The Cottage
• Eden Lake

however as the countryside is further away from the city where most of our actors would live its helps to set a better environment, also in our opening clip, is going to be of our two actors horse riding, with is easily accessible in the countryside.

Steph.