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.

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.

Animatic

http://www.slideshare.net/jimmyoz123/anamatic

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.

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.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Theatrical evaluation of fate

http://www.slideshare.net/jamesoz12345/powerpoint-evalutation-of-fate-7551621

narrative structure

The narrative of a film is the plot in its five basic stages, exposition development, complication, climax and resolution. Using this format when creating our trailer will help to create continuity.
As we are creating a film trailer, are exposition is brief and only shows short clips of the Narrative structure, giving the basic idea of the plot. Whilst enticing viewers but not giving away the whole story.

Firstly we combined the exposition and development due to a limited time frame for our trailer, introducing are characters and setting in just one clip of them loading the car which develops onto a close up of a text showing a message about an illegal rave that night, not giving away to much information but a basic theory, for viewers to go on. The clips are neutral (a day to day stetting for the characters), this is created through natural lighting and mise-en-scene, for example everyday clothing, without any raised tones or unusual topics of speech, and day-to-day music.
As we are filming the trailer we have held back much of the development information, for example through representation of characters and there impact. As well as any characters conflicting with main character, as well as clues that something may disrupt the calm, or add to the upcoming complication.
The clip of two of the characters briefly insinuates the complication, affecting the lives of the characters but does not show if it is the main antagonist. However we have shown this as disruptive for the characters, using tone, language, body language and expression, as well as complimenting music. As we are producing only the trailer we do not show how the main character responds to the complication, only how they react. We have not shown this scene parallel to any others as the complication is not caused by anyone, but is the cause of the following events.
Dramatic tension is important to show in our trailer, without showing too much of the climax, we do not want to show the answers to the narrative story. However we do insinuate the presence of a killer through the filming of trap a small house and camera angles from the view of what could be the antagonist. We use still images to create psychologically disturbance and confusion.  Dramatic tension is at its height and we uncover the mystery of the story or have our questions about the film’s story answered.
As we are creating a trailer we do not want to include the resolution (ending of the film) re-establishing equilibrium and restoring the calm, but want to leave a cliff-hanger.  Normally the film would be left in a new calm instead of the chaos and drama that has existed throughout, this would be shown by music and mise-en-scene, associated with peace and safety.


Genres

There are many different genres we could of chose from, but we have decided to that a horror/thriller would be the best genre for us to use. Here are my thoughts on our chosen genres.

Thriller - This is one of our favorites this is because we personally think we would easily be able to connect with a mass audience around our own age when we create this trailer. We would be able to use the typical mise en scene and narrative but with our own twist and personality. We would be able to reach out to the modern audience which watch thrillers and with what is available to us we think we have the right base to create a great thriller trailer.

Horror - The horror genre is also a ideal genre for us to use in our trailer. This is because over the last year we have been taught many different camera angles and the use of computer editing. We would be able to use our own personal skills to be able to create great camera angles whilst filming and then use our editing skills to mix up the filming to create intense tension and atmosphere so the mass audience will be caught up in our trailer hopefully creating a big audience group.

Why we chose not to use they other genres.

Comedy - We chose not use this genre because we thought it would be increasingly difficult for amateur film producers, to write and create a comedy script. We would not be able to use the use of our editing skills to create tension and it will limit our creativity and we personally don't think we would be able to reach the top marks.

Sci-Fi - Sci-Fi would be rather difficult for a us. There are a few reasons, the main one would be that we do not have they technology or facilities to create such a genre, we are not trained in the use of csi (computer imagery), therefor we would not be able to create suitable images. Also I am more of a action/thriller producer therefor I personally would not know what a Sci-Fi enthusiast would be looking for in a Sci-Fi trailer, we would not be able to create they right mood which a enthusiast would be looking for in a trailer. 

Rom-com - A romantic comedy would also be very difficult to create. This is because it is one of those film which you can easily get wrong. I think it is another film which an amateur would struggle to create. I also think it would limit our editing skills which we have been taught over the year, as we want to be achieving those higher marks.

Action - I do like this genre. I think it would be easy to create a trailer with an action genre. So I have no real faults with this genre. As I have a connection with this genre I think we will able to integrate features from an action into our thriller/horror such as the use of many different camera angles and they use of using our editing skills to create tension and a high tempo atmosphere.

Setting

Our trailer is going to be filmed in several locations which are going to be relative to the plot and  the story line. This will hopefully tease those watching the trailer by giving information about the narrative but not giving away the key details, other than the victim and locations. It is important that you don’t give away the narrative and the villain as it will ruin the mystery of the film and will not attract as many views.

The three locations we will be using are, the victims house to create narrative. We fill introduce the victim in the location of his town and there will be a forest where there will be a chase were we introduce the villain and a insight of what the trailers plot.  

Music

We will be using music to help produce the tempo, to create an atmosphere and to concrete the narrative. The music will be created on a program called Garage Band which is on a IMac. We will make the music dark and fast to create the tempo and atmosphere, and most likely create a beat which represents the heart which will be slow like a person heart rate to begin with and at times in the trailer where we wish to up the tempo we will increase this beat as it may subconsciously increase they audiences heart rate and get adrenaline flowing.


Characters

There will be two actors in our trailer, character 1 will be playing the victim and character 2 will be playing the villain.   

Character 1 - Character one will be White british, with brown eyes and brown hair. Smartly dressed as we want the character to look well educated with a job which endures there education and dress style.  

Character 2 - Character two is a well tanned British. With a scruffy, intimidating look to back up there increasing psychotic back ground. We want this character to look mysterious so that the audience will not know who he is to easily.

 

Thursday 24 February 2011

magazine cover research

This is a recent magaziner cover for the well know film magazine empire. They have filled the page with different information which instantly draws the reader in and makes them want to read on.

Having a large pictrure of the main character of the harry potter films instantly aimes the product at the target marketr they are aiming for which is film enthusiasts of the target market ages range which with the Harry Potter films is all ages therefore giving the magazine the largest target market available.

A number of exclamatives are used such as MASSIVE to attract the audience and create some excitement on the cover so the reader cant wait to open the magazine and start reading.

WE will be basing our magazine cover on all of these key ideas and themes to make it as appealling to our target audience and well as having one of the main characters on the cover to set the scene on the magazine.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Poster analysis and development

Poster Research and development
I will research past film posters of a similar genre to create an idea of what themes ,colours and layouts we wish to use in our final poster.


-        The gloomy atmosphere in the back ground helps to establish genre and create a mysterious and frightening image for the audience. The character in the forground gives an ideal representation of modern hegemony of a horror villain with his grubby dark clothes and mask it is a frightening portrayal to the audience as he is unrelatable and therefore scary. His mask means that he has no identity and the audience will then accociate his mask with death and violence.  
-          The text is in red which give connotations of blood and death , key themes in any horror film.
-          The woods in the background give a brief indictation of the locations where the film is set . Since it is in the woods it will give the audience an idea of the narrative and they will have an idea of the typical themes. This is also accompanied by the text at the top “ welcome to crystal lake” which gives the audience more information about the narrative.
-          This poster is very similar to the first. Gloomy background , mysterious character is the foreground. The characters face in blacked out which again is scary to the audience as they do not know how to identify the victim. However from the body language and location of the character in the poster it is as if she is spying on the inhabitants and the title “the uninvited” which has been written on the window by the villain using a finger on the steamed up glass give a very creepy and mysterious message to the audience. Who is now associated the narrative with a very sick and twisted plot.

-          The poster lacks any colour which adds to the mystery and creates an ore of sadness with the narrative.





Our Film poster will be based on the key themes highlighted in these two posters. I believe the gloomy background and scary villain in the forground is an ideal combination and i wish to execute the same image to the same extent in our poster.

Monday 31 January 2011

Storyline plan

Storyline plan

1.     Flashing newspaper articles introducing the villain and by the content of the articles establishing genre.
2.     Introducing victim in his home getting ready for work.
3.     Victim gets into car.
4.     Camera cuts to villain running away from something in the woods. Mysterious to the audience.
5.     Victims car breaks down after taking a short cut through woods.
6.     Victim sees villain in rear view mirror and starts to panic.
7.     The villain then attacks victim.
8.     Trailer is constantly cutting to scenes of anger and media to build up tension.
The the title is put across the screen in bold.

Film Classification

Logo
Film Classification
Universal
All ages are permitted to watch,contains nothing unsuitable for children. Films under this category should not upset children under 4.
Example: The lion king
Parental Guidance
All agesare permitted to watch, but the film may contain scenes that are unsuitable for children under 8.
Example: School of rock.
12
Home media only since 2002. 12A-rated films are usually given a 12 certificate for the DVD or VHS version unless extra scenes have been added in which case they will be given a new certificate rating. Nobody under the age of 12 can view this.
15
 Nobody younger than 15 can rent or buy a 15-rated film, or watch a film in the cinema with this rating. This certificate may contain adult themes, hard drugs,  swear words, moderate-strong violence/sex references, non detailed sexual activity.
Example: Dodgeball
18
No one younger than 18 can rent or buy an 18-rated, or watch a film in the cinema with the same certificate. Films of the certificate usually allows hard drug use , there is no limit on swearing and most forms of violence and non detailed sexual activity is allowed.
Example: Sin City
Restricted 18
Only adults are permitted to watch films with the R18 certificate. Real sexual activity is shown and these types of films are available in sex shops. Films that the BBFC do not allow the 18 rating will fall into the R18 category.
Example: unknown
Symbol
Name

Wednesday 26 January 2011

Final evaluation

Howm did your research into genre contribute to your production work?
how did you research into audience contribute to your production work?
how did your research into institiutres and regulation ofn the medias influence your production work|?
what pre production planning techniques did you employ? where they effective and how did the help?
how have you used audience feedback to influence your production work while still in progress?
what digital technologies have you used in the planning , research , construction stages?