Sunday 8 January 2012
Question 6 - Looking back at my prelim task, what have I learnt in the progression from that to the final product?
Looking back at our prelim I was not disappointed one bit, I thought as a group we worked hard and efficiently to the time we had. We did have a few slip ups and the project was not immaculate but I feel we executed the project well under the conditions and time we had.
The bad elements in the prelim exercise where it was not as fluent as we wanted, also another problem we faced out footage cut out early on one of the shots due to battery drainage this only led us to trying to continue the next shot of the conversation from the second word which meant it was quite obvious in the final piece, apart from that the prelim exercise was a success.
During the prelim exercise all of our members in the group where not very knowledgeable on different types of camera shots so most of the shots where based on our little knowledge and improvisation. Throughout the course we have had the time to study into many areas and in this process it releases tips and studying into famous films gives you an idea of what an effective shot consists of. Since the prelim we only knew 50% of making a good bit of footage and that was the filming, soon in between we have been introduced into editing software which supplies many professional tools to enhance your footage and give it the finishing touches.
I have took a lot from this course and it really has given me an insight of what its like to be directing a film and some of the stages your left in charge with to create a successful project. It has gave me the confidence to work with different variety of software and the confidence to really explain why I like a film that has been published into the big wide world, I feel I have learnt the basics to filming and planning and now I can understand relate to very well known films.
Now i can proudly present our groups film opening 'Hidden'
Question 5 - What have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
We editing on final cut pro X the latest final cut product, this took time as I was in charge of the edit I had to watch tutorials and become familiar with the software, this took a while and put me behind a little. The only problems I do recall is my teacher not being able to comment feedback on my blogs, this was soon recovered by changing the settings.
We come across many different types of software and websites to support us in different sectors of our production process, I will list these below:
-Editing process: Final Cut Pro X, Adobe After Effects, Live Type, FlixPress, Convert Format
-Blogging process: Voki, Side Share, YouTube, Blogger, Voice thread
-Publishing process: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
We did realise that a lot of media products have inspirations that they follow but plant there different twist and ideas and develop on them and ours was greatly inspired upon famous films within the genre we were producing and without this it would not have been effective. A lot of time was put into the planning to ensure the filming went smoothly not to mention the story line and Mise en scene to make it out own and to give our own touch.
Question 4 - How did I attract/address my audiences?
We wanted to keep our film very modernized and connect with the modern day society and create a message based around problems we have to this day. We connect with our audience through it being believable towards what we experience through media or what we see on the news which appeal to a wide variety of the public.
We took a risk in which we chose a very different genre in the act to be unique. We had to play with a smaller target audience however I feel all crime fiction and detective films were popular within the later years so by our group agreeing to keep it modernized I feel we may break into other audiences and attract them with what our story line offered.
We did spend a lot of time discovering what makes crime fiction good and what makes it bad and by this feedback we built upon the positives creating an environment where we were trying to please a wide variety of audiences. The codes we had researched from Barthes ideas really helped us excel and expand upon all the positives of crime fiction/detective films and transfer that to our film.
Most of the comments we received were positive however a frequent concern was that we may be breeching terms of copywright with us using the 20th century fox institutional logo but we were asked to do this to represent our evidence for institutional logo research. People liked the voice over we added in the slow motion interrogation scene as it cause a lot of suspense also the way we transferred our video footage to a standard phone to get the audience to feel like they are part of the scene because they are viewing on what is being filmed however this was a complete mistake, on the day of filming the kidnapping scene we found out that our actor Laura had only limited time for filming so we had to rush on with the set and make sure we had the shots planned forgetting we were filming in the wrong format for a low lighting environment.
Question 3 - What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?
- DreamWorks: I had a problem with the history and specialties in their genre. This company are known for cartoon/animations to please the younger youth of today. They have published films such as; Shrek, Kung Fu Panda which are very famous films but not in the audience we are aiming our film at.
- Paramount: The company produces films more to our targeted age group creating such films as; Paranormal Activity and Hugo. The company has a high factor of professionalism and produces very high standard quality films. I have good reason to debate to use this to distribute our film as most of the concepts match ours.
- Universal: This company also targets our age ranging. Universal is well known however has published the likes of; cowboys and aliens, tower heist which I feel are not as well known as some of the films other companies are producing so on this note I will not be using this company to distribute our film due to it not having such a bit following or popularity the other companies have to offer.
- 20th Century Fox: One of the most famous institutional companies around this this day. Supplies great entertainment to a range of different genres that have become very successful. This company offers huge publicity, an audience in our targeted age range and have specialties in our genre. This was the official on we all agreed to have due to the amount it was offering and how much our film had in common with some of the films the company has distributed.
- Because we had my knowledge in a software called cinema 4d I was able to create a basic institutional logo of my own. It was no where near a top standard however I thought it necessary to show off the fact we could make our own animated company logo. Below I will publish the animated clip I had created and also my static logo design I also created for our group in Photoshop CS5.
- List of resources I used to find out my institutional logo information:
Our group used a combination of both our own and 20th century fox institutional logo as we found the need to share our skills but to also show that we had researched into different companies and pick the one that suited our genre and target audience. We also feel using just our company logo none of the viewers would have had the feel of professionalism from when they first see the institutional logo as it’s the first film under our group name whereas using 20th century fox the viewer instantly knows just by the population of the company what genre it will be based around, its rating of film and what audience it will be targeted for.
Question 2 - How does my media product represent particular social groups?
-‘9’: He’s name is yet unknown in the opening as we never reveal his actual identification. This feeds of a sign of mystery and enigma to the audience as even in the camera frames we kept the light dark or his face covered, we never actually let the audience see his facial features. This character was a main aspect to our production as he is the whole reason why the film is intense and allows to build tension within our viewers. He always acts to a calm level and never seems to feel guilt or bother to why he is committing such crime to an innocent girl. It lets us miss lead our audience to why he is doing what he done?
-Laura: She is 18 years of age and is a student and a near by college, a very tender personality and is very sweet, innocent young lady. She is very confident, sociable and outgoing however she has many fears and panics in threatening situations. We wanted this character to pull on the audiences heart strings when she was kidnapped by a dangerous and feared man for no apparent reason, by this we create a connection with out audience as they may feel as if she was caught in a crime she had never deserved to have been placed in.
-Detective Lewis Court: He had many years of experience with cases to such relevance and had a very good name for himself in the detective world, being known as one of the best around. He had struck upon this case as he is asked to solve it, he comes across very indecisive and nervous leading the audience to feel he is struggling. We made his words and actions vast and powerful to symbolize his anger towards ‘9’ at this point we aimed to put the audience in discomfort for the life of Laura and to make them question if ‘9’ would be proven guilty and for Lewis to find the where abouts of Laura.
In our production in does occur we stereotype. With Laura we made her play the innocent student that falls into a crime we shouldn’t have however you cant be mislead, we never reveal she is innocent… in fact there could may well have been a good reason to why ‘9’ kidnapped her but because we used the stereotype and play on it the minority of our audience will follow by first site when she is brought into the sequence.
Our group put hard thought into where we could position our audience throughout the production. Most of what we achieved was on purpose and planned to break our audience down to some that may fall for the stereotypes or the more opinionated that will try and work out a solution. Our Mise en scene helped us position our audience also, for example when we use dark lighting in the camera shot for ‘9’, to symbolize he is the villain in the sequence, or how we place props like run down machinery and a dirty environment to indicate she’s hidden somewhere where no one would look or expect to find her. On the interview scene when we placed a voice over of ‘9’ we supplies a dark, mysterious piano piece playing, all was in order to create a sign of evilness and draw audiences to different conclusions and leave an impression of what the character is like.
Our representation on the characters were both positive and negative and this was to create a fine line of confusion. We needed to liven up our story line to keep the audience interacted and searching for hidden clues in our shots. In crime fiction, the opening of the film typically gives nothing away as the outcome of the film is to feel involved and create your own ideas. We had to remember that after creating our opening, could we have stepped back and if asked, create a whole film of the opening we had just created?
Our group was deeply inspired with a great range of films however our definite concept was to make our film as unique as possible, to try and create a sense of new, to offer a new experience for our viewers. We did grab ideas and tips from other very famous films however we never found the need to copy we let ourselves run of with the idea and make it our own to give it a different feel. It is hard to make a film unique as a great range of ideas and story lines have been created in the past but to make it as unique as we could possibly take our film was always our intension.
Different range of camera shots helped out technically to create mood and representation within our characters. We felt the need to place the camera in various different positions to let the audience question the characters authority. For example; in the kidnapping scene we used a high camera angle as if ‘9’ was looking down onto Laura, I feel this symbolized a great deal of power and it showed how venerable Laura was. We always placed low lighting onto ‘9’ to symbolize his unknown identity and this placed a good mystery for the film to build into.
Below is some pictures i took of my sister for evidence into different types of camera angles:
Above is a picture of me labelling out main character and explaining why we chose his costume and what we purposely done to build him as a character
Question 1 - In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- After long and hard discussions with the group crime fiction/thriller became a popular idea with my group and we then started to ask ourselves what makes a crime fiction so popular to modern day viewers. Soon after we found a local focused group and they gave us an amazing set of feedback in which we could develop upon, the most common reasons was because the genre is known for its exceeding amount of tension and builds throughout however negative comments were also took into consideration being that the genre is far to predictable.
- After knowing this we then starting to place our eyes into certain aspects we would have to include in our film opening. These include:
-A disruption order by an event
-Recognition/disorder occurred
-An attempt to repair
Enigma code that would question the audienceRoland Barthes was a very intelligent man in the media industry and he was the man I found to supply the best codes to creating a mystery film I followed his codes and they were as follows:
-Enigma Code: We used a mystery character in our opening where we didn’t reveal much identity and when filming him caught him in low lighting to resemble he was keeping low.
-Proairetic Code: This relates to the kidnapping scene and Laura lunges forward to bite ‘9’s ear and you will find our opening scene in the opening ‘9’ has a plaster on his ear to cause the audience to question.
-Semantic Code: We successfully breach this code as we reveal the bite was to a certain part of the body, the ear.
-His three codes had helped our group create a solid story line and create an effective mystery genre.
- Then we included in our planning what audiences we were trying to interact with based on social class/grade and overall we thought due to some violence discrepancy we came to a decision group C2 would best match. These are jobs such as; plumbers, electricians and other blue collar professionals simply down to pure fact it has a slightly violent outline and would attract this audience far better then students or lawyers clearly down to the features in our film and what job roles consist of.
- now look at films that would inspire me like ‘taken’ for example, it was not the genre my film was based around however I examined into purposely placed objects in the camera frame that does not appeal at the time of viewing, once my eyes looked at the bigger picture I found many things that are cleverly put/placed purposely to create an environment.
- Shortly after I then looked into very well known films around our genre to see if I could pick up on any common techniques I could transform into our piece.
- Sherlock Holmes: The most well known detective film ever made therefore this was a high study point for me as I questioned what made this film so popular? It had a very low lighting on Sherlock, a high intensity in parts and illustration and I thought this was highly effective towards the opening sequence instantly giving you drama to keep watching the film.
The time I took to look into other successful films to generate ideas of and study why they became so popular was a massive help towards ranging and expanding upon my ideas to make them sound and look more professional. I looked at the range of different genres because in some way the filming shots and techniques were almost the same, I feel the edit was different however I could still take hints from other movies that inspired my media and interact with there style also.
- Originally our film was crime fiction and we were certain our story board would create this mood the genre can produce however after shooting the first location, the kidnapping scene we had come up with the idea that it was starting to look like a thriller, this was maybe due to us shooting the violent scene first but it did strike up in production meeting. I personally was not worried at this stage as we were sticking to the story board well and if we produce what we had planned it had no interruption of other genres. Now that the video is uploaded on the world wide web I genuinely do feel it has a cross bread of thriller/crime fiction, I had a look at the definitions and our final product seemed to be sitting on the fence in between both. This was not a great deal as we could simply just add that it turned out to be a crime fiction/thriller on the other hand I also think could our planning may have slipped slightly, did we push the boat out on expanding out ideas to an extent where we forgot about genre.
Below I will provide an embed code of a voice thread I produced to explain why I chose the selected 9 key shots from our opening sequence.
Presentation failture
I published my presentation through slideshare however this programme has not uploaded any of my embedded codes or video links to i will do this through blogger and upload each slide seperately
Monday 2 January 2012
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