Evaluation!

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In the film it has typical things such as: titles, actors/actress’, narrative, storyboard and an institution.
The film has titles, which are normal to have in a film, there are around an average number of titles like used in many film introductions.
The actress isn’t really normal, because you don’t normally get eleven year old killers who push people off cliffs, I think that this challenges conventions of film because films aren’t usually made like this because people might find it hard to understand what is going on and why there is an eleven year old killer.
The narrative could possibly challenge conventions, because it is a weird one, having a killer/psycho child isn’t normal and it is hard to get to grips with, because it isn’t that realistic, because eleven year old children don’t go around pushing people off cliffs. It could work, because we have made it, and it is easy to understand because we have had feed back of parts that are not understood and edited that so it is easier to get to grips with.
I think that the film could give a message out saying how it is totally unrealistic that an eleven year old would kill.
In the research we decided that the child would have a background of being badly treated, so this could give off the message that you shouldn’t treat your child bad, because this might happen.
The meaning behind the intro is that things that happen in your past can affect you in the future, what ever it is. Take this intro for instance, the girl is badly treated at home, so she feels the need to get revenge on men of a certain age.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My media product represents a stalker/psycho killer.
This is shown throughout the film, because in the beginning we see the actress walking down paths, hiding in bushes looking at the person she is stalking, she is also seen behind him, she is watching him closely waiting for her moment to get him. She is shown to roll him off the cliff and him landing in water and being dead.
By seeing her following, watching and killing, the audience can tell what she is a stalker/psycho killer, even thought it might not be so obvious at the beginning of it, but it gets more towards shot three.
The target audience for this film is not going to be stalkers, it is most likely going to be people of “12/12A”, so it isn’t too scary and gory for them.
The blatant target audience would not be stalkers because it is about them, so they wouldn’t be able to watch it because it might affect them or give them ideas.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
(Monday, 13 October 2008) I think that ‘Lionsgate’ or a smaller institution would distribute our product; I think that a smaller one would be more realistic, because we didn’t have much time and we spent little or no money on the film at all, it was low budget. By having a smaller institution it would be ok, but that would mean the film might not be as well known and as well advertised, because they won’t have as much money to spend on advertising and everything. It wouldn’t matter if we had a smaller one though because we have made a poster and that would give good advertisement.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
(Thursday, 11 September 2008) Now I think realistically the audience would be around a “12A” or a “12”. It is not scary or gory enough to be a 15, and I think that this audience might appreciate it better and get a little more scared because they are younger, and they don’t understand that things like this are not real.
This audience range wasn’t my first intention, because I thought it would be much easier to create something that would scare people, but now I know it isn’t easy to get the perfect storyline, because you have to think about how the audience are going to interpret it. It is harder than I thought to create something within the age range of a “15”, it has to have a certain amount of things to make it a “15”, which my film doesn’t have which is now why I think it would be between a “12A” and a “12”.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
(Wednesday, 26 November 2008) To attract and address the audience for my film, my partner and I decided that we were going to create a poster, the effect of having a poster is that it can go out to any audience and anyone can see it and think I want to watch it.
We wanted to it make look like it would be in cinemas or on the internet and look like it was good enough to attract an audience. Therefore, we made the poster quite similar to the design of the movie ‘The Grudge’ which has given me so many ideas, and we used our actress Vanessa on it, we used ‘Photoshop’ to make the perfect poster, and we used our names on it as well. Also we put a few stars on it to look like it’s worth watching and it had a good review.
I thought by making a poster it would make the film known and people would want to watch it, and because it looks creepy people could be intrigued and want to know more about it.
The poster is a good way to address and attract an audience because you can make it really good and interesting and people will be drawn in by the fact that it is such a interesting poster.

6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The products we have used in the process of making our introduction are:
>By using ‘iMovie’ I have learnt how to edit my film, learnt how to cute clips and make them the way I want them.
I have learnt how to add transitions in between scenes, learnt how to add music, titles and different effects. This product has been the simplest one to use, because you get used to using it and once you have got the hang of it you don’t really forget it.
‘iMovie’ is simple, and there are minimal effects on it which aren’t amazing and I wouldn’t choose to use many on my film.
From using ‘Adobe after effects’ it is a lot different to ‘iMovie’ it is more sophisticated and so much harder to use and understand.
I have learnt that this product is better to produce effects on and make the movie more professional looking. From using this I have learnt that making effects and doing things to the movie take time and a lot of effort and it is hard not quite as simple as ‘iMovie’
From using ‘Photoshop’ to create a poster, I found out how hard it is too use, I have learnt that it is a difficult process to produce a good looking poster with different effects on. I think in time for all the products I would be able to use them to some extent, maybe a bit better than I can now.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
My preliminary was such a small task compared to doing the intro, it was a big step from just using a small camera then going to the Canon XL2.
I thought that the preliminary task was going to be tough, because I didn’t understand the concept of the 180 degree rule, but from doing this small task I have developed a better understanding of how to things.
The preliminary task helped me to understand and get to grips with using ‘iMovie’, which at first was quite hard, but now it is easier and I understand it so much better. (Wednesday, 24 September 2008) We started from the very beginning, and I think that I have become better at understanding how to use the majority of the products we have used.
From the beginning, I have learnt how to use ‘iMovie’ which involves editing, adding and removing sounds, putting titles in and adding transitions.
(Tuesday, 18 November 2008), (Wednesday, 4 March 2009) and (Wednesday, 29 April 2009) ‘Adobe After Effects’ which allowed my partner and I to make proper titles with more complex effects, and much better selection of things than ‘iMovie’ can offer. I feel I have learnt and progressed quite a lot from not being able to even use the camera to having filmed, completed and fully edited 2 minute film intro.

Cutting parts of the film..

From having a talk with our teacher about how our film is and what he thinks about it, we cut the death scene of our film out, added extra titles and adjusted the music level at one part of the film.
It seems a lot better now, because I think it was a little hard to understand because you see a little eleven year old girl stalking a man then killing him. It now looks better because we have taken the whole body on the floor out, and it is just following her then you see her rolling a body off a cliff, it is more realistic and so much easier to understand, if you are the audience!!

Under Water Shots for Story Board

Shot Nine



Shot Ten



These are the final shots, my partner Poppy shot these in the film.

Adding effects to our final film on 'After Effects'

Poppy and I found that our film didn't look creepy enough, so we asked all the people in our media class if they would prefer night or day to make it look more scary.
The whole of our class decided that they would prefer night over day, so Poppy and I went onto 'After Effects' and put a 'Day4Night' theme on it, it made the whole atmosphere of the film creepier and more realistic.
By getting the opinions of other people was a good idea because it shows which they think looks better and which one they'd watch, the night theme or just the plain day.
The night theme made the intro look much more realistic, because something like that isn't likely to happen in broad day light.

Evaluation

EVALUATION CRITERIA
Candidates will evaluate their work electronically. This MUST contain an element of audience feedback and may be either integrated with the presentation of the research and planning material or may be presented separately. Where candidates have worked in a group, the evaluation may be presented individually or collectively but the teacher must allocate a mark according the contribution/level of understanding demonstrated by the individual candidate.

The questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are:
1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
5.How did you attract/address your audience?
6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Level 4 16–20 marks
Excellent understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production.
Excellent ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.
Excellent understanding of their development from preliminary to full task.
Excellent ability to communicate.
Excellent skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation

Final Editing of The Film.

For music, Poppy and I didn't want to use sounds from iMovie HD, because they are not really suitable for our movie, so we looked on "Proscores" which has a selection of good sounds which we are going to include in our film, and ones which aren't so good and we won't use those in our film.

Poppy and I both lowered the sounds on our clips which are diegetic sounds (which are the sounds made on camera for example the sound of the gravel when Vanessa is walking on it), and put in non-diegetic sounds, which are sounds outside the movie (background music).

This is the music levels which we made higher and lower to add better effects, and make it so that the audience will be more on edge.

[Clips of music we don't like and ones we do like, and why.]

For the titles Poppy and I decided we wanted to use a simple text. I think that the smiple font is nice yet effective, because it is not too over the top.For effect, we wanted to have something similar to "The Grudge" when it has a transition from one colour to another.Poppy and I used the programme "After effects" to create our titles, we tried to make similar titles to "The Grudge" but not with the bloody background or with any hair in, we just wanted a transition from one colour to the other.So, Poppy and I decided on having a black background with white text going from white into red and fading into the black at a good speed.We then made each title by repeating the process, and got the same effect for each title, when we had done these titles, we made it into a movie and rendered it so it could go into our final movie on iMovie.

[Picture/video clip of one title and print screen]

For our main title we were looking for a font that would also look simple yet effective, we found one but it didn't seem right and it looked really tacky and boring, Poppy and I decided to look at all the other fonts and we found one which was perfect it was called 'Helvetica'. It has a cracked effect at the bottom and top of the letters.We used a similar effect for our main title, but this time we wanted it to have texture.We added a stone effect to the layer, but had a black background, the text had the stone texture behind it, which looked really good I though.We edited the brightness and contrast of the stone so that it looked better. The main title had the same effect as the smaller ones, so it went from the stone texture background into a blood red colour, and faded into the black background. It looks really simple, but very effective.

^^Here is the stone texture we used for the background of out title "The Common".



Here is the stone on a layer on "After Effects" before we added the text and transition.

Here is the final title, "The Common" It is simple, and effective, and I am really pleased with what Poppy and I have created!



Here is one title, that Poppy and I created. I really like it, and think it looks good.

Final Titles.

Today Poppy and I thought we would do the titles to add into our film.
To do this, we went on "Adobe After Effects" and we decided that we wanted titles with a similar effect to the grudge, but not with the hair or the blood.
We put "Starring, and..., filming by, editing by, produced by, a production by, screen play by and casting by" and made it white, then it goes into red and fades out into the black.

titles

Today my parter Poppy and I looked at titles from the film "The Grudge" because we wanted to see how many titles there were at the beginning of the film and what they were, this is because we weren't sure what to include in our film.

Titles From "The Grudge"

Colombia Pictures
A Film By...
Name...
THE GRUDGE.
Name...
Name...
Name...
Name...
Name...
Name + Name...
Name + Name...
With...
And...
Casting By...
Music By...
Editor...
Production Designer...
Director of Photography...
Co-Producers...
Executive Producers x 2...
Produced By...
Based On & Written and Directed By...
Screen play by...

We also decided to look at another film, because we wanted to see if other films were varied with the amount of titles they have. So we looked at the film "Alien", which seems to be much older.

Titles For "Alien"

A..Production...

A Film By...

Name...

Name...

Name...

Name...

Name...

Name...

And Name as...

Music By...

Executive Producer...

Screen Play And story By...

Produced By...

Directed By...

ALIEN.

Editing the intro.

Both Poppy and I have started editing our footage.
We have been trying out using Adobe After Effects, it seems very complicated, but we are getting used to it. Poppy tried fiddling around with the contrast on her underwater shot to make it look more sea-like.
I thought that editing the intro would be an easyish task, but it is very time consuming and I want to perfect it all the time.
:)!

Second time filming!

On Monday, Poppy filmed Max jumping into the pool at our school to represent the body falling into the sea for shot 9, it went very well. It doesn't look to good just on it's own because you can see the ceiling which doesn't look realistic, so we will be using Adobe After Effects to create a realistic look.
On Tuesday, I did my shots two, four and five. I don't think that they went too well, because they are wobbly. I will edit them and see how well the look, if they are not very good I will do them again because I want it perfect.
On Wednesday, Poppy did the final bits of our filming, which was good. The problems we had was Vanessa hurting her feet again, because of the sharp texture of the floor, and Max hurt his face when he was getting rolled over, that was funny though!

Second Filming.

Next week Poppy and I are going to do the final bits of our filming. 

We hope to have it all filmed by the end of next week so that we will be able to have a fair bit of time to edit and get it correct.

We have had one problem that we are not allowed to take Vanessa out of school during the day, only in her lunch times and after school and on the weekends. By doing it after school it is difficult because of the amount of daylight left.

To complete everything I will have to film shots two, three, four and five. 

Poppy has to do shots six and nine, shot nine is underwater and will be filmed at Langford Pool which is at school.

The Real Poster!

To make the real poster Poppy and I will have to come up with a title, which I'm sure may be a challenge!
I hope that it will be really good and our target audience would want to watch it if they saw the poster!



This is our real poster, we got a lot of inspiration from the gruge film poster. I love our poster :)

Film posters

Today I decided to look posters of horror films, I did this because my partner Poppy and I are going to design one ourselves.
By doing this it will make it look like a real film, it will be exciting it will feel as if we have a real film coming out!
I have looked on http://www.pbase.com/ for pictures to use for my poster and I will look on Appl trailers to find posters that I like, and here they are below.



I like this one above because it is simple but effective. I like the text used also.



I like this one because it struck me when I first looked on Apple trailers, it is also simple, but rather interesting.



I love this one, I think it is really brilliant, it's quite creepy also. I like the texted used, reminds me of blood.

For my poster I would like to include the characters face, by maybe murging her nito another image to make her look creepy. I want it to give the effect that it is scary, but make it look cool at the same time.

Green Screen

Today we experimented with the green screen.
By using the green screen we can put it into "After Effects" it will be easier to put in and add effects rather than trying to get around the whole person and making it look good. Using the green screen will enable us to put the person into the background even not being there.
It is hard to get the layers right because sometimes the camera angle has been moved a little bit, by using the green screen we can just put the image into "After Effects" and play around with all the different settings until we are satisfied.







Poppy filmed me walking on the spot at the green screen, we did this because we wanted to try it out and add it to "After Effects" to see whether it is easier than just using it on its own.

This is using "After Effects" with the Green Screen bit added and and a few effects put in to try and make it look interesting.

Using After Effects.

Today my partner Poppy and I thought how we are going to add effects to our movie, so our teacher introduced us to a programme called "After Effects". By fiddling around with the effects we will be able to create effects that we have wanted all along.
Here is some footage I took of Vanessa, to create this effect you have to make two layers on of the person you would like in it and one of exactly the same place with no person in it, and by doing this you can put the layer of the girl on and off an different times, we can also change the colour to black and white.
I think that using "After Effects" will be hard to use at the start, but just like iMovie it will get better to use over time.
Here is a little bit of footage, it has been edited on "After Effects"

The pictures of filming!

These are some of the pictures that got taken today when I was filming Shot One.


Vanessa sitting down whilst Poppy and I were preparing the equipment.

I thought I'd try get us all to fit in this picture.

Poppy filming and me observing what is going on.

Setting up the camera to the right position.

Me doing a point of view shot for Vanessa.

Me with the Canon XL2.

Filming Vanessa walking.

Me and Vanessa.

Vanessa Poppy and I getting ready to start filming with all the equipment along side us!

Filming..

Today my partner Poppy and I went filming up Portlet Commen, for the first time.
It was really exciting, because it is our real film that we will be editing soon, and all the ideas just came in my head and I wanted to get them out and start filming.
I did shot one today, which was the only shot I could do at this stage because we didn't have our friend, but that was fine.
We used the Cannon XL2, which is great because of the quality and how it dosen't film every little bit of motion.
In my scene I used point of view shot, ariel view, tried to create the Saw shot and other different ones.
We also had the idea of creating flashes of Vanessa's face on the screen, and to do this we had to film the landscape, and then film vanessa in the same place again, by doing this we can add her face into the clip and it will look like it was all done in one clip, which is fantastic!
When I was filming I found that ideas came in my head, and I just wanted to try and do them all even if they seemed silly, I want this intro to be really good and so does my partner Poppy.
It was very time consuming, it took us around three hours to do 3 scenes, but I think that it was all worth it and will be in the end!
Today was very worth while and I hope each time we film every scene it will be just like today!!!

The Equipment we used:

Canon XL2 (the beast)



Tripod
We used the tripod to create steady shots, rather than wobbly out of focus ones, it helps to keep it in the right place all the time and it good for quick turns and moving up and down steadily.



Stepladder
We used the stepladder to create ariel shots of Vanessa walking by, we wanted to make a variation of shots rather than the same ones all the way through the film.



Beanbags (for the cannon XL2)
We used the bean bags so that we could lay the camera on the floor and it would be at the right angle, rather than us having to lie on the muddy wet floor and holding it in weird positions to get the right shot, which would make it wobbly and not very good.



Canon powershot A540 (for pictures to put on our blog)
We used this because we thought it would be fun to take pictures of ourselves doing the first shoot, it is nice to show the fun we had during the filming and the problems we had, also.



White T-shirt/nighty
Vanessa wore a T-shirt like this, and we got the right look across hopefully!



Problems:

- The weather was a bit of a problem, because we had to cover the camera with a towel, which was annoying because it was harder to use, but then the weather improved, that was lucky.

- The wet floor, it was tricky to sit down or put yourself on it when filming because we had to be careful of the camera and our clothes, we didn't want to get dirty!

- The stony floor! vanessa had sore feet after the shoot, she even got something in her foot and Poppy had to piggy back her some places!

- The equipment is very heavy, and hard to carry around to different locations, but it is very good quality,

First filming!

On Monday coming up Poppy and I will start filming some of our film for this first time!
We will only get a couple of scenes, but with a lot of different angles in and many times fimling the same one, because we want the shots to look sharp and perfect rather than look really cheap and tacky.
I will be doing shot one, of Vanessa our actor.
By doing this one scene, I will need to get a variation of shots, I have thought about getting an ariel view shot, point of view shot, try and re-enact a shot from Saw.
I hope that this event in the film will look really good, along with the others.
Poppy will be filming shots 7, 8 and 9 which she will also try choose some different shots and varey it.

Saw V

This weekend I watched Saw V, it was quite cool.

I like the effect of the music, and the camera techniques when the man is being tortured - with the trap on his head.




Here is a youtube clip of the effects I like, I would quite like to use an effect like this because they look really brilliant when you see them on Saw(s).
like the use of the music in the films, but I wouldn't use it in my film because it isn't appropriet for my film.
Because I am interested in the music made in Saw(s) I am going to investigate into some stuff and see wheather it would fit into my film and give the right effect.

Stuff to add into essay

Problems with Preliminary -

This was the first time I had really used a video camera, so both my partner and I found it quite hard, even turning it on was a little bit of a struggle.
After filming, we imported our shots on the computer into the programme we would be using called iMovie HD, which was weird because I had also never done this before. I thought it was confusing uploading the video and importing, but after doing it I realised that it was really simple.
Eventually having it uploaded onto iMovie HD we satrted to edit it, this was the hardest part I thought because I found it pretty hard to grasp. After trying a few times I started to understand how to cut shots, add different shots into different places with in the area, and the figured out how to add music and text.

Horror Conventions -

(Thursday 11 September 2008) I reasearched into this because I also wanted to know where horror films originate from, so I could make better ideas from knowing a bit more information.
Horror films are designed to make you scared and bring about fear, responses and terror to the viewer. Horror movie plots usually contain, evil forces or people sometimes the supernatural to interfear with everyday life and world. The movies usually contain a main character who is evil or something which interfears with everything around. Early horror films often got inspiration from stories and characters from classic literatre, like Dracula, The Mummy, Wolf Man,Phantom of the Opera and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Story Board -
By knowing the guidelines we will be able to know what we can and can't include, I wouldn't include things such as murders I have looked up because they are too obscene for my target audience.
Being aware of what we could and couldn't do helped us when we were making our story board, (Tuesday, 21 October 2008).

Arial View

My partner Poppy and I were lucky enough to go flying over our half term, and whilst we were in the air we saw Portlet Commen - where we are filming.

As you can see it is surrounded by sea, and is very rocky.

Animatic.

Today in media my partner Poppy and I both made an animatic.



An animatic is some drawings outlining majour events within the film.
In my animatic I have put the institution I intend on using which is "Lionsgate" and used the series of images my partner drew and also added music.
I am very satisfied with my animatic, and it is making me more eager to make my film introduction.

The actual story board.

This is the actual story board, which my partner Poppy drew, it shows eight individual shots of key events in our film.

Shot One.




Shot Two.



Shot Three.



Shot Four.



Shot Five.



Shot Six.



Shot Seven.



Shot Eight.



These are pictures for our story board, which Poppy drew, eventually we will put them on iMovie as well to see what it looks like in a sequence.

Taking pictures for the story board.

As I said lower down in my blog, we have been assigned jobs, and Poppy my parter has the job of being the story boarder.
We went down to Portlet Commun, on the weekend to take pictures so she can make them for our story board.


This is when we went up to Portlet.

Below are some pictures of Poppy doing the story board.







These are the pictures Poppy took at Portlet Commen to eventually create our story board.

Shot One.



Shot Two.



Shot Three.



Shot Four.



Shot Five.



Shot Six.



Shot Seven.



Shot Eight.

The reason we took these pictures is so that we can make our story board as detailed as possible.