Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Final evaluation of technological summary
what digital technologies have you used in the planning , research , construction stages?
In our production we used a wide range of technology from the simple scanning of the storyboard to the editing of the trailer on the MAC . We used school digital cameras and HD recorders for the production and anamatic to ensure that the diagetic sound and the picture was to the highest quality to really make the trailer feel professional.
The garageband application (http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/ )of the MAC helped to make sure that the non diagetic sound ( sounded added in in the editing stages ) was of the highest quality. And this the vast range of sounds and different melodies available it was ideal for us to create a dark and mysterious track for the trailer itself.
Using blogger itself to document all out findings and ongoing information has helped a great deal as it is easy to use and allows you to present all our information and work in our own unique styles.
To present our powerpoints and other information i decided to use slide share ( http://www.slideshare.net/ )as it was a great way to present our work and its user friendly. It also allowed us to show off our understanding of the theoretical side of the course via the theoretical evaluation of our production giving the reader an in depth analyasis of not only the production but all the other thought and ideas contributing to the final product.We also presented our animatic on slide share as it was user friendly and presented the pictures to a much higher quality than if we just saved and copied onto our blog.
We used youtube ( http://www.youtube.com/ ) to present our video as it is well known and easy for us to use and choose exactly how we wanted to present it . It also gave us the option to upload our work onto the internet safely and not have it bombarded by other media fernatics on an independant site . It also allowed us to bloke comments on our video by strangers or others just trying to offend.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Final evalution
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? In this slidehare link ( http://www.slideshare.net/jamesoz12345/evaluation-animatic )i have got two pictures of our characters along with too similar characters of existing films. We decided to dress both our main characters in a fashion that mad them easy for the audience to figure out their role in the narrative . Therefore the villain is dress in a scruffy manor with jeans and trainers making him quite intimidating and fitting the modern hegemony of a thug. The other character is dress very smartly making him look approachable and safe. Since the trailer is only two minutes we thought it was important to lay down the narrative as fast as possibe because we wanted to pack as much information into the two minutes and not have the audience still figuring out the basic narrative structure by the time the trailer is over. The comparisons shown on the slide share show how the same character types have been used before using all the same horror conventions such as intimidating villain and the geeky smart victim. The audience will have previous experiences of these character types creating a hegemony of what they should look like and that is what we wanted our characters to fit.
In this slide share (http://www.slideshare.net/jamesoz12345/mise-en-scene-shots-evaluation ) we are showing how we used mise en scene to show narrative using well well known conventions and narrative themes. The first shot that we used mise en scene to effect the audiences understanding of the narrative was the car breaking down. According to todorovs theory ( http://www.slideshare.net/jamesoz12345/todorovs-narrative-theory-7535293 ) the car breaking down would be " the disruption of the equilibrium by some action ". Therefore this shot means that this is the start of the important narrative where equilibrium has been disrupted and the villain is being put in vunerable situations. This was an important shot in the trailer due to the realism of the situation and the audience can related to the situation therefore making them uneasy as they come to the realisation that this same situation could happen to them. The second shot is of the mysterious criminal in the rear view mirror. This shot is a scary shot and is aimed to get the heart racing. Again the audience can relate to the situation as everyone is constantly looking in the rear view mirror when driving however never is there a indimidating villain behind you. This made this shot scary and unexpected and the mise en scene of the rear view mirror as a non scary item has suddenly been changed to a tool of viewing the murderer therefore challenge the hegemony of a rear view mirror and making the audience now scared of it. The final show is the close up for the villain hand drenched in blood. This perticular piece of mise en scene is the classic horror theme and we decided to use it because blood is an instant stimulant for moral panic and increases the expectation for violence. Which we thought was the perfect ending for our trailer as it makes the audience want to see more and therefore the trailer wil appeal to them.
How effective is the combination of your main product and anxillary texts?
Via our research such as the questionnaire we were able to create a plan for what we had to include into the trailer to make it attractive to the audience. The questionnaire gave us all the answers we needed to guide our ideas into attractive ones. Our animatic ( http://www.slideshare.net/jimmyoz123/anamatic ) helped us to see if the narrative we choose would suit the background meaning if we thought the woods would suit the mood and the vibe of the narrative. The narrative also helped us decide who would play what character , however right from the start it was very obvious as jack played the villain very well and suited all the characteristics that we wanted to portray. We already had an idea of the sound we wanted to use as the backing track before we actually sat down to compose it. We knew that it needed to be edgy and dark to suit the flow of the narrative. We had heard the same kind of music in other trailers of similar genre such as "The Strangers" and we wanted to re created that kind of vibe as best we could. Our poster and magazine combined really well as we had a constant continuity of colour and the narrative theme of the woods and mysterious storyline. the poster itself was alot darker than the magazine cover this was because we wanted to establish the genre strictly with the posterhowever interest the readers with a lighter and interesting picture giving away some of the narrative conventions such as the villain and the woods.
How did your research into genre contribute to your production work? Via our questionnaire we decided on the horror genre. The questionnaire gave us a detailed analysis of what our target audience really wanted to see. This mean't that we could pick the horror genre in confidence that there would be no problems with the audience.
How did your research into institutions and regulation of the medias influence your production work? Via the BBFC ( british board of film clasification http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ ) we were able to identify the key content guidelines of what our film could include and still fit the desired classification which for us was a 15. We analized our trailer and saw that there was infrequent swearing and some modernate gore so it was obvious our film was acceptable for the 15 classifiaction.
What pre production planning techniques did you employ? where they effective and how did the help? We did vast amount of pre production planning such as our questionnaires , the anamtic and the storyboard amounght others however these three were major contributors to our final production. The questionnaire allowed us a detailed outline of what our audience wanted and therefore we could have confidence in the content we used. The anamtic and storyboard allowed us to see in brief how the final production would lay out and if it would suit the narrative. The storyboard changed abit going into the final production however this was benefitial to the production as it mean't new ideas were constantly being put into action.
How have you used audience feedback to influence your production work while still in progress? All of the audience feedback played a huge part in establishing our final ideas as the questionnaire gave us the structural guidelines of what oue audience wanted. the audience feedback via the group feedback session was vitally important as it allowed an outside judgement on the trailer and what they thought should be changed to make it more appealling and more crisp as a production. These changes included shortening shots which we not key to the narrative and making the shots containing texts language simpler and shorter making it easier for the audience to read and therefore maintaining rythem and flow to the trailer. Along with this we also got third party friends to view the trailer and ask what they thought and they agreed with all the changes we made to make the trailer more audience friendly. They also commented on how we represented the villain and thought that the contant transition between the villain and the victim was really powerful and drew them into the story. They also helped us how to end the film and agreed that the sudeen climax was an effective tactic.
In this slide share (http://www.slideshare.net/jamesoz12345/mise-en-scene-shots-evaluation ) we are showing how we used mise en scene to show narrative using well well known conventions and narrative themes. The first shot that we used mise en scene to effect the audiences understanding of the narrative was the car breaking down. According to todorovs theory ( http://www.slideshare.net/jamesoz12345/todorovs-narrative-theory-7535293 ) the car breaking down would be " the disruption of the equilibrium by some action ". Therefore this shot means that this is the start of the important narrative where equilibrium has been disrupted and the villain is being put in vunerable situations. This was an important shot in the trailer due to the realism of the situation and the audience can related to the situation therefore making them uneasy as they come to the realisation that this same situation could happen to them. The second shot is of the mysterious criminal in the rear view mirror. This shot is a scary shot and is aimed to get the heart racing. Again the audience can relate to the situation as everyone is constantly looking in the rear view mirror when driving however never is there a indimidating villain behind you. This made this shot scary and unexpected and the mise en scene of the rear view mirror as a non scary item has suddenly been changed to a tool of viewing the murderer therefore challenge the hegemony of a rear view mirror and making the audience now scared of it. The final show is the close up for the villain hand drenched in blood. This perticular piece of mise en scene is the classic horror theme and we decided to use it because blood is an instant stimulant for moral panic and increases the expectation for violence. Which we thought was the perfect ending for our trailer as it makes the audience want to see more and therefore the trailer wil appeal to them.
How effective is the combination of your main product and anxillary texts?
Via our research such as the questionnaire we were able to create a plan for what we had to include into the trailer to make it attractive to the audience. The questionnaire gave us all the answers we needed to guide our ideas into attractive ones. Our animatic ( http://www.slideshare.net/jimmyoz123/anamatic ) helped us to see if the narrative we choose would suit the background meaning if we thought the woods would suit the mood and the vibe of the narrative. The narrative also helped us decide who would play what character , however right from the start it was very obvious as jack played the villain very well and suited all the characteristics that we wanted to portray. We already had an idea of the sound we wanted to use as the backing track before we actually sat down to compose it. We knew that it needed to be edgy and dark to suit the flow of the narrative. We had heard the same kind of music in other trailers of similar genre such as "The Strangers" and we wanted to re created that kind of vibe as best we could. Our poster and magazine combined really well as we had a constant continuity of colour and the narrative theme of the woods and mysterious storyline. the poster itself was alot darker than the magazine cover this was because we wanted to establish the genre strictly with the posterhowever interest the readers with a lighter and interesting picture giving away some of the narrative conventions such as the villain and the woods.
How did your research into genre contribute to your production work? Via our questionnaire we decided on the horror genre. The questionnaire gave us a detailed analysis of what our target audience really wanted to see. This mean't that we could pick the horror genre in confidence that there would be no problems with the audience.
How did your research into institutions and regulation of the medias influence your production work? Via the BBFC ( british board of film clasification http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ ) we were able to identify the key content guidelines of what our film could include and still fit the desired classification which for us was a 15. We analized our trailer and saw that there was infrequent swearing and some modernate gore so it was obvious our film was acceptable for the 15 classifiaction.
What pre production planning techniques did you employ? where they effective and how did the help? We did vast amount of pre production planning such as our questionnaires , the anamtic and the storyboard amounght others however these three were major contributors to our final production. The questionnaire allowed us a detailed outline of what our audience wanted and therefore we could have confidence in the content we used. The anamtic and storyboard allowed us to see in brief how the final production would lay out and if it would suit the narrative. The storyboard changed abit going into the final production however this was benefitial to the production as it mean't new ideas were constantly being put into action.
How have you used audience feedback to influence your production work while still in progress? All of the audience feedback played a huge part in establishing our final ideas as the questionnaire gave us the structural guidelines of what oue audience wanted. the audience feedback via the group feedback session was vitally important as it allowed an outside judgement on the trailer and what they thought should be changed to make it more appealling and more crisp as a production. These changes included shortening shots which we not key to the narrative and making the shots containing texts language simpler and shorter making it easier for the audience to read and therefore maintaining rythem and flow to the trailer. Along with this we also got third party friends to view the trailer and ask what they thought and they agreed with all the changes we made to make the trailer more audience friendly. They also commented on how we represented the villain and thought that the contant transition between the villain and the victim was really powerful and drew them into the story. They also helped us how to end the film and agreed that the sudeen climax was an effective tactic.
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Animatic analysis and development
With the results of our questionnaire we decided to change the storyline and plot slightly to make the trailer more appealling to the audience. Our first idea was to have an iconic 10 10 repeatedly appearing on documents left by a intimidating looking stalker. However this narrative didnt seem to fit the expectations of the audience as they wanted a more gripping and imidiate narrative and this did not suit our original ideas. Therefore we progressed onto the idea of having a more simplistic narrative at a much faster and gripping pace.
Therefore we still used the original characters however made the narrative completely different. After we established a final idea we decided that we should utilize the car as alot of people in our target market age range can relate to that as most drive and we also thought that we should base it in the woods as people have negative connotations of forests and its allows us to incorporate original narratives such as a murderer lose in the woods with a gory narrative which suits the modern hegemony thillers set in the forsts established by films such as friday the thirteenth and texas chainsaw masacre. Both based in large natural areas with no civilization.
We hope that this new narrative direction will appeal more to the audience.
Therefore we still used the original characters however made the narrative completely different. After we established a final idea we decided that we should utilize the car as alot of people in our target market age range can relate to that as most drive and we also thought that we should base it in the woods as people have negative connotations of forests and its allows us to incorporate original narratives such as a murderer lose in the woods with a gory narrative which suits the modern hegemony thillers set in the forsts established by films such as friday the thirteenth and texas chainsaw masacre. Both based in large natural areas with no civilization.
We hope that this new narrative direction will appeal more to the audience.
Friday, 18 March 2011
Questionnaire results
We had 20 people between the ages of 15-20 take our questionnaire to give us an idication of what would be the most popular genre to go for and what narratives to use etc.
45% choose comedy as their favorite genre as opposed to the 50 percent who chose horror. The other 5 percent was made up of all of the other genres.
This is what we hoped as we knew that this genre would allow us to use a wide variety of filming techniques and tension building tactics to employ through out the trailer. We could also attempt to challenge the modern hegemony of characters and narratives used in our trailer if we wished. It also allowed us freedom to use lots of different applications such as garageband to there full extent to make really edgy sinister music for the trailer.
Asking what social group they belonged to help us to establish the audience by more than just their age and gave us an insight into what would appeal to them in our production.
When we asked what music they listed to 55 percent said hip hop and the other main majority was rock at 40 percent. So we knew it was important to incorporate both aspects into the trailer and our soundtrack has a strong mix of both with the hip mhop drum beat and the edgy heavy melody.
45% choose comedy as their favorite genre as opposed to the 50 percent who chose horror. The other 5 percent was made up of all of the other genres.
This is what we hoped as we knew that this genre would allow us to use a wide variety of filming techniques and tension building tactics to employ through out the trailer. We could also attempt to challenge the modern hegemony of characters and narratives used in our trailer if we wished. It also allowed us freedom to use lots of different applications such as garageband to there full extent to make really edgy sinister music for the trailer.
Asking what social group they belonged to help us to establish the audience by more than just their age and gave us an insight into what would appeal to them in our production.
When we asked what music they listed to 55 percent said hip hop and the other main majority was rock at 40 percent. So we knew it was important to incorporate both aspects into the trailer and our soundtrack has a strong mix of both with the hip mhop drum beat and the edgy heavy melody.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Group feedback on trailer
In lesson we gathered everyone in the class around and everyone viewed eachothers trailers and gave feedback on what they liked , what to improve and how to make it more appealling.
The group came up with various points on are trailer that stood out to them and we are now in the process of correcting these imperfections.
The first was in one of the clips of the trailer , as the villain is running down a bank there is a vast amount of diagetic sound due to the wind which ruins the clips quality and therefore we need to get rid of it by taking all sound out of that small clip and filling it with non diagetic sounds such as the background music or modd music.
Some of the changes from clip to clip are too slow and lack continuity and some of the clips that contain text are either to quick to read a large texts before cutting to a narrative clip or they are to slow for only a small piece of text. This is an issue of paramount importance for us as we need to make sure we have flowing continuity in the trailer as it helps to build up tension and keeps the audience interested and focused instead of them getting annoyed by the editing errors.
The last issue that the group picked up on was the speed of the clips by the end of the trailer when we are really trying to make it as tension as possible leading up to the climax. We corrected this straight away in the session and after viewing it again saw an immediate improvement.
The group analysis was very productive and after taking in the feed back it has allowed us to set new gaols for our trailer to reach and has brought to view new techniques that we will be executing in order for our trailer to be at its best.
The group came up with various points on are trailer that stood out to them and we are now in the process of correcting these imperfections.
The first was in one of the clips of the trailer , as the villain is running down a bank there is a vast amount of diagetic sound due to the wind which ruins the clips quality and therefore we need to get rid of it by taking all sound out of that small clip and filling it with non diagetic sounds such as the background music or modd music.
Some of the changes from clip to clip are too slow and lack continuity and some of the clips that contain text are either to quick to read a large texts before cutting to a narrative clip or they are to slow for only a small piece of text. This is an issue of paramount importance for us as we need to make sure we have flowing continuity in the trailer as it helps to build up tension and keeps the audience interested and focused instead of them getting annoyed by the editing errors.
The last issue that the group picked up on was the speed of the clips by the end of the trailer when we are really trying to make it as tension as possible leading up to the climax. We corrected this straight away in the session and after viewing it again saw an immediate improvement.
The group analysis was very productive and after taking in the feed back it has allowed us to set new gaols for our trailer to reach and has brought to view new techniques that we will be executing in order for our trailer to be at its best.
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