Friday, 9 April 2010

Final Product - Opening Sequence

Rating


















Through looking at the certificate information on the BBFC website, we have come to the conclusion that our film will be rated fifth-teen in cinemas.

Thursday, 8 April 2010

How does your meda project represent particular social groups?

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



K: We made a film company logo and even made it look animated through iMovie by putting a fog effect over the image, making it looks more mysterious and scary.
C: The credits were in a simple white font at the bottom of the screen like most other films. This is because it is easy to see even though it is not the focus point of the shot.
E: We used a high angle when the character is running in the woods. We felt that it made her look vulnerable and though we don't see anyone running after her, the handheld shots and higher angles following her suggests that she is the victim and a killer is after her.
K: Another high angle is used on Lily when she wakes up, which is almost oppressive and shows that she's insignificant. We didn't do the point of view shot like we planned to do when she wakes up because it looked odd and too shakey. So we tried other ways to position the camera, for example, on her level, but we had the view as if we're standing over her which is almost suffocating.
C: We used a low angle on the character Kate - the girl who gives Lily a bad look - to show that she is insignificant when compared to her.
E: We used an ellipses by fading out when she walks to school and fading in when she arrives to school.
B: A common point of feeback we recieved was that te film ended suddenly. But we think that as it is supposed to be the first two minutes of an hour or two long film, it shouldn't conclude itself like a trailer. Instead, it should just cut to the next scene.

How did you address/attract your audience?

Feedback

The image on the left contains points of feedback we recieved from our media class. Like mentioned in the evaluation video (discussing the question "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"), most people mentioned that our final product ended suddenly, and though we agree that it did, we feel that it should end suddenly and move on to the next scene (if there was another 118 minutes left of the film). Though what we regret about our final product is that we did not include a reaction shot of Lily when she slams her locker shut. Thus, it might have not seemed to have ended so suddenly to the viewers.

Title/Logo

How i made the title:

Kirsty created the title in Photoshop. She used a downloaded font called broken74 because she thought it reflected the approaching horror of the film.

The line underneath the text was part of a downloaded title. Kirsty changed the colour to a dark red that looked like blood. She then added a black outer glow around it to make it stand out and look creepier. She included the line because she felt it gave a sense of finality and strength to the title, increasing the tension of the film.


She added a dark blue background then put a white radial gradient, at 61% opacity into the middle of it, that created a faint white circle behind the title, i.e. it lighted up the background behind the text. This again made it stand out more and also gave it a dark and sinister look.


She drew a shape that resembled blood dripping into a puddle, and then placed it underneath the letter V so that it looked like the blood was pouring off of the letter. She then made two little droplet shapes so that it looked like blood was dripping off of the other side of the V as well which made it seem a bit more realistic. This made it scarier and gave an insight into what might happen later in the film.

Then she brought the letter V in front of the line so that the blood effect would work properly and so that it stood out more. I then added a bevel and emboss to the text, line and dripping blood shape to make it stand out more and create a terrifying effect.
Below is a picture of the finished title:



Once we added the title to our product we made the title sharpen when the music that we added over the top of it reached its peak to add to the effect.


How we made our company logo:
Kirsty used this part of the new line cinema logo design and got rid of everything else in the image in Illustrator, so Kirsty ended up with this:





Kirsty then transferred this image to Photoshop.
Kirsty found the picture below on the internet then flipped it horizontally so that it faced the right and resized it to suit the image of the filmstrip. She then deleted the white background so that the camera was all that was left.





Kirsty wanted a dramatic sky effect in the background to add an eerie mood to the logo. This also reflects the type of films our company would make – horror films. She used a layer mask in Photoshop by dragging the cursor from bottom to the top of the page. It starts out white so that the ground disappears and gradually starts to go transparent at around half way up the page. So it still allows the sky to be seen but not the ground (which is what she wanted).




She created the filmstrip manually on Photoshop by making a black rectangle then putting smaller rectangles in the middle of the big one, but changing the colour to white. Then she made smaller squares to put above and below the white rectangles and made these white as well. She changed the opacity of the small squares and smaller rectangles to 5% so that rather than being completely transparent it gives the appearance of a real filmstrip.




Kirsty then added the text – a single letter, in capitals and herald font so that it is bold and stands out, to each small rectangle. She changed the colour of the text to a wood background, then added a pattern overlay filter, under bevel and emboss, of a fire effect.

She put a white background as a mask over the top of the sky but behind each letter to make them stand out. She then applied a wave filter by clicking on filter then picking distort from the drop down menu then clicking on wave on the second drop down menu.
So by doing all of this she created this film strip:



Kirsty then used the smudge tool on the end of the film strip by clicking on the black film strip and dragging it into the camera lens. She did this in order to give the effect of the filmstrip emerging from the camera.

She added the text shown below in herald font so that it stood out and put it at the bottom next to the new line cinema logo underneath the camera and filmstrip.




Below is an image of the finished logo:


Once we put this into IMovieHD we added a dark fog to make it look animated and also to make it scarier.

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



K: Like many other media products, such as Kill Bill, which was one of our main influences, we used a flash forwards scene that was in black and white. We decided to use the black and white effect in order to clearly show the distinction between the future and the present.
B: When we tried putting the opening credits over the scenes in our main character's house, they distorited the sound so that it was not in sync with the video. We realised that this was not our fault and, in fact, it was a glitch in the program. Because of this, we had to extract the sound and just match it with out main character's actions - the main action being her turning the radio on with a click. However, the credits had inserted noise that we had originally cut out of the film, that we did not want there. So we had to completely mute the sound for this scene and only allow the click to play. This didn't matter so much because thankfully, none of the sound was crucial.
C: We learnt how to change the volume of the sound because of this. This proved to be quite tricky, but at the end we were able to do this.
E: We couldn't rely on the tripod keeping the camera straight when filming the school sign as it was a windy day. So we tried to film at least two seconds of a straight shot of the sign and then used a still frame of this shot in our final product.
K: We found it extremely difficult to find non-copyrighted music that would actually suit the scene of our main character turning on her radio. So we decided to go on Garageband and make our own song using the program's many beats and tunes. This turned out successful because the music is simple and doesn't sound too depressing or too happy. We also tried to match the music with the end of the scene by making them both fade out together.



We also used the programe iMovie to do a voiceover of Lily breathing heavily, this was one of the sounds we had over the flashforward scene.








We used the two programs iTunes and GarageBand, these were used in the process of making the soundtrack of our opening sequence.



My group and I also used the internet a lot during the whole filming process for research. We regularly visited websites such as Youtube. This was to find our influences and to analyse other opening sequences of films. We also regularly visited the search engine Google. This was used for general research and also finding pictures for our research process. Google also help us to find our non-copyrighted music of our heart beat sound affect.

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the preliminary task to your full product?



K: There was a main problem that we attempted to overcome, that we experienced in our preliminary task - the sound. In our preliminary task, the sound was too quiet because the only microphone we were using was on the camera, which was too far away from our actors.
B: In our full product, we had no dialogue to worry about so this wasn't a potential problem. However we were still conscious of certain diagetic sounds that we included in our opening sequence.
There was also background sound that we had not desired to appear in our preliminary task, so we were very careful when filming out full product.
E: We learnt how to do match on action shots proficiently. The match on actions we used in out preliminary task turned out very well, so we were confident enough to use a couple in out opening sequence when the opportunities arose.
C: We aslo learnt how to use special effects on iMovie HD. The preliminary task that we did, enabled us to explors this and the different possiblilities within this. In our preliminary taks, we used a slow motion of a pen dropping, this persuaded us to use a flash forward in our real product and for it to be in black and white.

Saturday, 3 April 2010

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Below is a presentation about the institutional issues for our project. You may also view the presentation at this link: http://prezi.com/wedy1yjo1ldm/
Simply click on the arrows to view the next slide.

Friday, 2 April 2010

Who would be the audience for your media production?

This is Omar Hay, he is twenty three and lives in Streatham, London. He is of Black British origin and works as an administrator and Foxtons estate-agents. Omar likes to wear jeans with t-shirts, shirts and jackets. He also like wear trainers or plimsolls.

Omar is very sociable and likes to go out in his spare time. One of the things he enjoys doing when he goes out is go shopping with his friends. He regularly purchases item from stores such as Top Man, Office UCS, Burton, River Island, Footlocker and Next.

As well as shopping in his spare time he also likes, playing football, going clubbing, going out to eat and going to the cinemas. When clubbing he likes to places such as Tiger Tiger, Lloyds and Bar Seven.

In his spare time when going out to eat he would either go with his friends or his girlfriend. Generally he enjoys going to restaurants like, TGI Fridays, Frankie's and Bennie's, Toby Carvery and Harvester.

Omar enjoys mainly scary, action or comedy films when he goes to the cinema with his friends. Some of the past films he has watched and enjoyed in the past are Bourne Ultimatum, Mirrors, Be Cool, Rush Hour, Role Models, The Matrix, Paranormal Activity, The Omen, Hangover, 28 Days Later, American Pie and Scary Movie.

Omar like very recent music; the type of music in the charts today. He mainly listens to RnB, Hip Hop, Rap, Pop and House music. He regularly listens to the radio in his car however does not listen to it outside his car. The station he likes are KISS 100, Radio One and Choice FM.

In his spare time after work Omar also like watching television. The show he enjoys watching are CSI, The Fresh Prince of Belair, Law and Order, Heroes, 24 and The Wire.

This is a collage i have made that represents all Omar's likes.

We think Omar and other boy like him will watch our film because most people in their early twentys are set out to have fun and do something exciting. We feel as our move is a horror it will create excitement and in doing so will be fun. Therefore appealing to Omar and other people similar to him.

Thursday, 1 April 2010

Who would be the audience for your media production?

This is Taylor Smith, she is a 17 year old sixth-former who is planning on attending university next year.

She is a quiet, hard-working girl who, during the weekends, works part-time as a receptionist and also goes out with her close friends to concerts, the cinema or shopping.

Her favourite films range from thrillers to fantasy such as the Lovely Bones, the Saw series, Donnie Darko, the Sixth Sense, Stardust, the Lord of the Rings, and Halloween.

Alice's taste in music ranges from rock to pop, and listens to radio stations such as Radio 1, X FM and Capital FM.

Her favourite television programmes are Supernatural, Lost, Law & Order and Heroes.

We think that Alice is quite representative to the type of girls who would watch this film because she seems to like violence and gore, but also films that have a psychological element to it - and we think that though our film is not exactly a psychological thriller, it is close and contains violence. Furthermore, Alice in a way relates to the main character Lily, in that she is a quiet girl, though she seems to have more of a social life than Lily.
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