Looking back to your Preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?

Our final assignment was to go and film an opening title sequence. We decided to use a variety of techniques to creat something that attracted a certain audience. Although we are amature film makers we will use our skills and abilities to make something that could compete with other low budget films. From our preliminary task to our final piece we have learnt many things.

The preliminary piece composed of two shots, it should have been more but with our final piece we got as many shots as we could to help us with editing.
As we had two cameras we could get two different types of quality; an iPod with low quality and a full HD video camera. The idea of our preliminary piece was to make it bad so we could improve for the final piece. We did not use tripods in our preliminary, but this is probably not noticeable as the cameras had anti wobble; however we eliminated this completely  in our final piece by using a tripod.

Although the actors in our sequence were meant to be a level drama students their skills at improve were poor and we could have done better with our directing skills. However this wasn’t a problem as with editing we imposed vocals and changed the position of the person. In our actual film we acted our selves; this eliminated any problems of not knowing what to do. With the extra actor it was simple what we wanted to do and she acted better than our preliminary actors.
The acting in our final piece was a bit armature with some giggling but we edited this and made it part of our work. This added the final piece to make it better than before editing.

The lighting in our preliminary wasn’t very good as it goes from light to dark then back to light again. We used the same location in our actual piece and were able to control the lighting better. Most of the lighting was again done in editing. We used a different software for our actually piece and this had effects that were good for our lighting,

The sound in our prelim was added afterwards. This was because the actors didn’t say much. It also gave me a chance to play around with video editing software (Vegas pro) and the sound editing (wavepad). The idea of adding sound in post production is how the professionals do it and helps eliminate any background noise. Super enhancing the sound also enables us to add anything we like, the prelim includes actual Steven Fry’s voice from qi and canned applauses. This is something again we used in our final piece. If we were to make it again though we would add more dialect as we feel this would help introduce more of the film.

There has been great improvements from our preliminary task, to our final piece. With better software and hardware we were able to make a better sequence.

How are social groups represented in your media product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

For this section I did an interview to find out what my audience thought of my media. Below is a copy of the interview.

Interview date: Saturday 28^th April 2012
Interviewee: Mel McKenzie
Interviewer: Connor McKenzie

Question: Was the genre clear to our opening title sequence?
Answer: It was a very complicated sequence. Making it slightly difficult to understand, but I feel the rest of the sequence would open up the next lot of hints into what is happening. The genre must be a thriller/action.

Question: Was it easy to understand who the main characters are?
Answer: I could see there were three different people. One was a lawyer the other a tramp maybe something to do with the war. And the third person was the assistant at the law firm who is having an affair with the guy in the suit, but she also has something to do with the other character.

Question: if you could change anything about the piece what would It be?
Answer: I would add more dialect. To introduce the characters what their names are etc. Add more detail so the audience understands who is who.

Question: Would you recommend this film to friends and why?
Answer: I would if the changes were made because this looks as though it has potential to be a really good piece of media.

Question: What did you think of the titles?
Answer: The titles were really good, however the word ‘split’ should have been in a different colour and should have been more central. But I understand due to time constraints and the complexity that this couldn’t be changed so as it is it works really well.

Question: out of 10 what would you rate this? 10 being really good and 1 being not so good.
Answer: about 7/8 because there is a lot that can be done but it is good because of the complications with actors and editing etc.

After being told what we could change we did change a few things. For example we did use a candle and mirror but this had no significant relevance to our media so we changed it to the two different people in the mirror, this represents the two different sides of frank. Our media piece also had a really weak ending. We changed this and added an extra bit which made a lot of difference. The knife from the beginning was in the draw at his work, this starts to make the audience wonder what is going on.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Any media product uses a variety of features to establish a list of things that give the audience information about the film. Real media products look at characterisation, setting, genre and narrative to give visual style and even ideology.

Our media piece uses different techniques to get information across. To start with we needed to establish who the characters are. Our opening sequence doesn’t use a lot of dialogue but this is something that we could have included to tell the audience who the characters are. Just by looking at the characters you can see they look very similar,  this is something that shows the person is the same. We have used costume and location as a key part of establishing ideology, the antagonist is outside and in the cold and we have used light and dark to show this as well, while the protagonist is inside and a lot brighter.

The print screens below show the different ways in which we have represented the different characters and tried to make it look as though it is as real as possible to a real media piece.

 

Our next picture shows the two different locations of the protagonist and the antagonist. One is very dark and gloomy and the other is very bright.

Who is your distributor?

Our film is a low budget independent British film using British actors and the British film distributor Film four, we did plan to use fox search light as well but due to complications we didn’t. If we had used fox search light we would have been able to generate more sales revenue and therefore made a greater profit. A film distributor distributes films on many formats. This will range from DVD formatted to digital download, each with their pros and cons.

I have chosen to distribute my film with Film 4 for a number of reasons. I will explain these further on later. But as I am using Film 4 as to distribute my movie I have credited it in my opening titles. This is because the way in which a Film distributor works means they need crediting for their work, this means their ident goes in at the start of the movie.

Film distribution is a key part to the film and the company i have chosen specialises in low budget films. Film 4 helps distribute low budge English movies as it is part of the channel 4 cooperation. I have chosen to use film four because I have used British actors and the distributor should be relevant to the movie, genre and spec.
Film 4 has distributed many films before, such as Slumdog Millionaire, which made a gross profit of $3377 million.

So how will our film be distributed?
The UK film industry is for ever increasing to compete with those films produced by the American producers, such as Disney and Universal. England as a country has a wide spectrum of completion for the film industry. There is Vertigo films who made films such as ‘Monsters’ and ‘Horrid Henry’; and then there is Film 4 who I am using. Film 4 broke box office records with Slumdog Millionaire, other British film distributors include DNA films who are famous for 28 days later and Ardmand Animation the producers of ‘Wallace and Gromit’ just to name a few.

The picture on the left shows how films are distributed.
The first few sections are for the producers they get the rights to film a story, this may also include patients and security of the films so nobody can copy the idea. Then they must develop a script or screen play, this may be done by a single writer or many, then they must cast the parts they have set. Once the film casting and story is together they can film it then edit and end up with a final piece.
However the producers must then work with the distributors to get the film out to audiences this is where the distribution comes in. Firstly they develop the release strategy, for ‘Monsters’, ‘Vertigo’ films made an infection zone across social networking sites. Secondly they must have it shown to an exhibition to decide whether it is good or not. Thirdly the distributor sets about marketing the film, this is actually making the infection zone. Finally they must print the disc then include a British Board of Film classification and deliver it to cinemas.
Once the film has finished in cinemas, and the products life cycle is low they boost sales by distribute films is suited to the style of film I have produced. I also feel that they would be the best companies to maximise profits as they have made vast anount of profits themselves with other films.

 

Who would the audience for my media product be?

The genre of a film and the target audience are closely linked together. This means by looking at the genre we can define who the audience would be. An important factor in deciding the audience would be the certificate given to the film by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) this is a company who have to watch the film and give it a grading of suitability for the audience. If a film contains explicit graphic imagery that isn’t suitable for children the film may be given certification 18. They are the people who decide whether your child is responsible enough to view the film or not.

Films are classified into several categories which are shown in the image below.

We would recon our film to be a 15. This means only people who are older than 15 can view the film at the cinema or buy/rent it on DVD. However when it comes to downloads it is harder to control age restrictions.

The type of people who view our film we found out from our questionnaires. The questions asked: define the genres they liked, their age and gender. It also asked questions about if they suffered from mental health illnesses or knows anyone who has. This was a very important question because we didn’t want to offend anyone, and our film touches a sensitive area. The questionnaire we done (in a previous post) were posted through random people’s letter boxes around the neighbourhood; we then collected them back up and found that: 16-20year olds like horror thrillers so do 21-30 year olds before 16 people like family films, 41-50 enjoy drama’s and over 50’s prefer real life stories. 31-40 like a variety of films but mostly they found documentary films were the best films based on romance, we feel this is because when most people divorces happen and people suffer mid life crisis so they can relate to the film more. With the results we made charts and graphs (also shown previously) .

In conclusion we found that our target audience was 16-30 years old this would classify under young adults. The kind of things we should include is tension and on the edge gripping action. But the fact that this film is specific to mental health it can also be targeted at people who do not know about mental health can learn about the kind of things they have to experience every day. Also the people who do and are affected by mental health can relate to the story. This gives us a broad spectrum and should help maximise sales.  

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

Through out the making of my media I have used many different technologies from which I have learnt a lot.

During the research section I learnt how to use different software’s, via the internet and using gray scale gorilla’s blog to learn how to make 3D CGI section of my media.

I also used the internet to look at other opening title sequences, a website called the art of the title sequence. The internet wasn’t the only source I used, I also used DVD’s this meant I could watch a film and analyse it and generate ideas for my own media opening title sequence.

Throughout my whole media I used cameras. These were to take pictures of our location, and film images for our final piece. I had to learn how to add files onto different software’s. With my camera I am able to film and take images with it in full HD.  

Once we had filmed the videos, we had to use different editing software to our prelim. This means we had to learn how to use two editing software’s. The skills I learnt included cutting clips and putting different effects and transitions; in both software’s. As a review I prefer to use Sony Vegas Pro HD 11 than Final cut pro x because I understand how to use a windows computer more than an apple Mac.
For the sound in my preliminary I used wave pad sound editor but for my final piece I used the sound section of the Final Cut pro x. I added the sound after, I used a mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. This is something that the professionals do with their post production editing.

Split Openning titles

This is our final opening title sequence.

Location Report

We decided to film in 3 separate locations. Each location is to do with the three parts of our opening title sequence.
Auditorium
Office 
Vigo Woods -Bunker
Vigo Woods -Track
Home -Living room

The pictures above show the locations of our media. Wjen we filmed each scene we had to look for health and safety problems.

The first part of our sequence was filmed at school in the auditorium, this meant we were under strict supervision of the teacher. This reduced any problems we may have come across. The only thing that we could see being a problem was the candle this was a naked flame so we had to be cautious. The second risk would have been if the mirror had fallen over and smashed, this would have caused us a big problem, because we would have alot of small shards to clean up. So again we were cautious when handling the mirror, as this was a key issue to begin with of the smashing of the mirror.

The next scene was set in Miss Reids office. There wasn’t many hassards in her office because she uses it daily. We just had to be sensible and cautious.

The final part of our media sequence was filmed in Vigo Woods. This was on a RAF camp

First Scene First Draft (no sound)

WE made the first scene and then added it into our final scene this is the first draft of the first scene. We did change it and you will see this later on.