Sunday 18 April 2010

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

When i first heard about what we had to do for our preliminary task i thought it would be a quick, easy and simple process. I now know that i was very wrong. It was a lot harder than i thought it would be, from seeing it look so simple when other people had done it, to actually attempting it myself, came as a big shock to me. We learned about the main shot types and i thought it would be fairly easy to get shots with them and to get the continuity (reality within the media product) correct. But it took us many takes of each shot to get it how we wanted, both on the preliminary task and the main task.
I have learnt greatly from this that it is not simple and easy to film shots. It takes lots of attempts to get it right and to make it look good. Also i have learnt that if the film looks simply made then you have done well.

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

I did already know a bit about some of the technology we used throughout the making of our media production but i have learnt many things.
For example:
• Cameras
i thought it would be very simple to film with the cameras, to get the perfect continuity and angles. But i was very wrong, it looks so simple when you see it on the television, but when it came to actually filming it was very hard to get the angle and continuity correct. It took many attempts to get the shots we needed because of the angle being wrong, an actor corpsing, the length of the shot was too long or short and so on. Almost every shot we did we used a tripod; this was because it kept the camera straight and prevented shaking.
• Adobe premier pro(for capturing and editing video files)
When i first saw this program it looked very complicated to use, i was correct to a point. For what we were doing it was fairly simple, adding in effects and transitions etc. But the further we got into it the harder it was to use. I managed to make one of the titles scroll across screen slowly at one point, but when it came to doing it for the next one I could not remember how i did it and i tried many things. Also even after being showed how to do some things, we found it hard to copy how it was done. When we first loaded up this program we had to use a fire wire to capture the video data on the camera onto the computer, with this i found that the fire wires were very sensitive and it was rare that it would work without having to hold it firmly in the fire wire slot in the computer.
Basically from doing this product i have found that the technology and technique used is alot harder than expected.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Well, basically, to attract our audience of late teens we used ideas that scared us. We did this as we though whatever we were frightened of; our target audience would be frightened of. One thing we did was to make the victims in our product a similar age to the target audience so that it would freak them out. Also to make the murderer just seem like a normal person.
Another film which does this is scream

Scream also makes the victims in the film a similar age to the target audience and the events they are killed in to be just an every day happening.
So we used similar aspects to this to attract our audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience was late teens, this was mainly for the fact that we are in the criteria and we know what does and doesn’t scare us. Moreover, we took into account who are target audience was before and during filming the piece. Each part we planned and filmed, we thought about what our target audience would think of it. We mainly thought about the:
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Gender
of our target audience. We used murder and horror as teenagers love watching those types of films.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074&feature=fvw (as you can see from this trailer) a lot of the time young men take young women to see these types of films as it makes them seem brave.
So we used aspects such as murder and kidnapping because it is a common thing in today’s society and it mainly happens to people around our age and youths generally enjoy watching films which represent real life happenings.

What kind of Media institution might distribute your media product & why?

As my media production is one in the horror genre, I would use a distributor which specifically works with films in the horror genre. A production company such as Twisted pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_Pictures would be a good start as they have done the saw films and many other sick horror films alike. Also as I would like to spread this product world wide I would like to use a company such as Warner Bro’s as they would easily be able to do this.
Furthermore, I would release my product in cinemas and in theatres to greatly advertise my film. The television would help a lot as the cinemas and theatres would want to show the trailer of it to attract viewers to go see it. Once the trailer is on television there would be billboards up around the world and pictures in magazines, posters around everywhere etc. The trailers sometimes show peoples reaction to watching the film, such as paranormal activity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074 This would greatly attract audiences to see the film as they can see the reactions on people’s faces who are watching it. Also trailers show quotes from news papers and famous people. If people read and trust these newspapers or are inspired or like these famous people then it would urge them to go see the film.

'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'

A social group is any set of persons within society that differs from other sets due to demographic, economic or social characteristics such as age, ethnicity, sex, education level, race, religion, income level, lifestyle, beliefs, etc.
Our media production represents the social group of white youths being more sick and twisted in the head than young black youths. As the killer we use in our production is a young white male and is no ordinary killer as he uses a butcher’s knife to kill his victims. This idea also conforms the fact the most famous horror film killers are in fact white males.
Continuing on, Our production, although it does use females as victims, challenges the dominant ideology that most murderers are generally men and that most victims in slasher films are generally females, as the majority of the victims in our piece are men. A film which greatly challenges this dominant ideology is ‘I spit on your grave’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Spit_on_Your_Grave_(film) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKCys3sd8Bw
In this film it is a female murderer and all of the victims are male.
We challenged the ideology that women are more vulnerable than men by making the majority of the victims in our film, males.

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

For our main task, my group decided to do an opening title sequence for a film in the horror genre. The main reason for doing this was because all the members of the group have seen many horror films throughout our lives and felt it would be safe if we worked with this.
“Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness. Many horror movies also include a central villain.” – Wikipedia
My group worked with this quote to create our title sequence, but we mainly used the theme of death and mental illness. Furthermore, we developed such existing openings like ‘The devils rejects’. http://timeldridge.blogspot.com/2010/02/devils-rejects.html This opening title sequencing is very similar to ours, it uses the missing pictures which is one of the main signifiers we used throughout our piece.
From doing research into the horror genre we discovered what the best age boundary to aim at for our target audience – 15-19(late teens). Purely for the fact that this is what we are and we know what does and doesn’t scare us. This was a benefit as it greatly helped us to plan and work on our opening title sequence and to conform a lot of common elements of modern horror films such as murder and kidnapping.

Sunday 21 February 2010

Powerpoint and Further Reasearch

Powerpoint to main task



















Props- The main prop we used throughout our piece was the knife(as the main signifier). At first we were going to be using a butchers knife but none of the members in our group actually had one. So we had to improvise with another big knife. Another prop we used was the missing posters, these are also a big signifier. We used 6 or 7 missing posters throughout the piece and we had permission from the people to use there pictures in them.

The only actor in our title sequence was curtis, but you dont see his face. This was mainly for the fact that he of all the members of our group, he was the best for the part and we didnt want to use other people as an actor. Also curt was the best/freakiest at cutting up the meat so we thought that would go well with the storyline. Curt just wore dark clothing throughout-Black coat (with hood up so that we couldnt see his face) black jeans and shoes. He wore this so that it seemed as if he didnt want to be seen by anybody, as if he was up to something.

Sound used- We used a variety of clips from sounddogs.com throughout or opening sequence. We used a clip of metal clanging when each letter of the word MISSING appears and screams throughout the title sequence. We used our own sounds such as the meat chopping throiughout the piece also.



Heres the scipt we were going to use

Richard Eno:
(Pictures of the missing children will be shown with names in the top right corner)
-Over the past two weeks, a number of children and young teenagers have been reported missing in the Totton and Ashurst area
- Police have obtained three suspects from a number of leads within the past week
-Reasons for disappearances are unknown

(With picture of suspects up instead of children)
-If you happen to see or come across any of these suspects, please contact the police immediately
-Avoid at all costs, if unavoidable then approach with caution.


Ticker/Roller text:
Additional News:
-Second earthquake to hit Haiti
-Andy Murray through to Wimbledon final
Weather:
-Heat-wave expected to hit Britain
-Killer wasps entering France, expected to invade Britain in mid July

Monday 8 February 2010

The Devils Rejects



The opening title sequence to this film is very similar to certain parts of our title sequence, we will be using the slow zoom effect which is used here when the missing pictures and police evidence pictures are shown. The credits which appear in this piece also use the same effect as the one swe are using in our title sequence. The music used throughout the opening gives the effect that the film is going to be set in southern america due to the fact that the music is very country style. On top of the music is commentry from a news broadcast related to the pictures being shown on screen, this is one of the ideas we were going to be using in our piece but didnt qutie get around to doing it.

Sunday 7 February 2010

5th Feb

Today Me and Curtis put all the rushes we had so far together, we added in a few extra rushes also(For example-each letter of the word MISSING). We then started editting what we had, like putting in a slow zoom on one of the meat chopping shots and a black and white slow blurry effect on one of the missing poster shots, we will continue to be editting the rest of shots over the next week. We have to film only one mor eshort part which is the news broadcast which Reno is going to be acting in for us. We will then add that to our rushes and edit that. WE may overlap the sound from that over the duration of our clip and also may use the sound of the knife chopping over the duration of our clip to give an eery effect throughout the clip.

Monday 1 February 2010

update

1st February- Today we finished capturing and updated blogs

29th January- we are capturing and doing prologue

28th we filmed at my house, we filmed cutting up meat

26th we filmed stuart walking around but we may not use that shot

23rd me and curt discussed and learn how to use a programme called bonx tv. We will use this for a news broadcast were reno will present

21st we filmed more missing poster shots

19th catched up with blogs

16th we made our missing posters

14th planned our ideas

12th we made a suspect board and filmed

Creep

Creep uses fast blurry images in which confuse the viewer as the images are very hard to work out what they actually are. The images are as if someone is running away from something, or trying to find a way out of the place they are in. Some images however are purposely viewable. For example You can clearly see the blood on the floor in certain parts, this is used to make it clear to the viewer that the film involves some sort of killing. It also shows a blurry image of a woman being tied down and a hand being held on her face with lots of blood around it. They use this to startle the viewer into thinking this film is going to be about killing.
This is imilar to what we will be using, fast moving disturbing moving images. So this opening was a big help to us as we will be using similar techniques.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peggLQ1fLg8 <- This is the link to the video.

Friday 29 January 2010

Prologue

Today we logged the shots of our main task which we have filmed so far.

Prologue-Main Task

Shot 1: 0:01:19:13-Missing poster of short blonde haired girl. The camera zooms out. We will be using this shot.

Shot 2: 0:01:25:15-Missing poster of brown haired young boy. Mid shot of missing poster blowing in the wind, we will be using this shot.

Shot 3: 0:01:30:15-Missing poster of young blonde haired boy. Camera pans diagonally across missing poster, we won’t be using this shot because camera is too shaky.

Shot 4: 0:01:32:17-Missing poster of young blonde haired boy. Camera pans diagonally across missing poster, we will be using this shot.

Shot 5: 0:01:38:16-Close up of young boy, medium length brown hair, camera slowly zooms out from poster. We will be using this shot.

Shot 6: 0:01:45:00-Close up of an old door with padlock, the door is shaking as if someone is trying to escape through the door. We will be using this shot.

Shot 7: 0:01:48:00-Camera pans across police suspect board, it shows possible suspects and information about them. We will be using this shot.

Shot 8: 0:02:03:00-Close up of suspect, slowly pans down the poster. We will be using this shot.

Shot 9: 0:02:09:07-Midshot of suspects panning around the board. We will be using this shot.

Shot 10: 0:02:21:18-Mistake shot. We won’t be using this shot.

Shot 11: 0:02:24:00-Low angle shot of suspect, camera pans up his body. We won’t be using this shot.

Shot 12: 0:02:29:00-Wide shot of suspect walking, as if security camera shot. We won’t be using this shot, as actor corpses.

Shot 13: 0:02:32:00- Wide shot of suspect walking, as if security camera shot. We won’t be using this shot, as actor corpses.

Shot 14: 0:02:35:20- Wide shot of suspect walking, as if security camera shot. We won’t be using this shot, shot cuts too quickly.

Shot 15: 0:02:38:00-Close up of suspect walking out door. We wont be using this shot as the camera work wasn’t good enough.

Shot 16: 0:02:42:21-Mid shot of suspect, actor corpses therefore we won’t be using this shot.

Shot 17: 0:02:43:22-Quick accidental cut, we won’t be using this shot.

Shot 18: 0:02:44:00-Another accidental cut, we won’t be using this shot.

Shot 19: 0:00:00:00-Mid shot of suspect walking, camera follows suspect, we won’t be using this shot as actor looks at camera.

Shot 20: 0:00:09:19-Midshot of suspect walking camera follows suspect, we will be using this shot.

Shot 21: 0:00:00:00-Close up of knife cutting human meat. We will be using this shot as chopping board moves.

Shot 22: 0:00:28:23-Close up of human flesh being chopped up. We will be using this shot.

Shot 23: 0:00:00:00-Close up cutting up human flesh. We will be using this shot.

Shot 24: 0:00:33:21-Close up of knife next to meat and the killer is playing with the human meat as if it’s a toy. Knife is picked up by killer at 0:00:48:00 they continue to cut up meat aggressively. We will be using this shot.

Shot 25: 0:01:06:06-Killer moves meat off the board and picks up another piece and starts slicing it up. Gets even more aggressive at 0:01:30:00 places the knife in the meat at 0:02:26:00 and starts picking at meat. We will be using this shot.

Shot 26: 0:03:46:00-Over the shoulder shot but actors head was in the way, we won’t be using this shot.

Shot 27: 0:03:47:14-Over the shoulder shot of killer cutting up meat, we will be using this shot.

Shot 28: 0:04:03:19-Extreme close up of meat being cut up, we will be using the majority of this shot.

Shot 29: 0:04:32:20-Extreme close up of killer stabbing meat as if it’s a real human. We will be using this shot.

Shot 30: 0:04:40:00-Killer places knife down clearly in front of the camera, we will not be using this shot as a stage hand gets in the way.

Shot 31: 0:00:00:00-Mid shot of killer cutting meat with left hand this time, we will be using some of this shot.

Shot 32: 0:01:01:01-Extreme close up of killer stabbing knife down into the meat directly in front of camera, then killer takes of gloves slams them down and leaves. We will be using this shot

Shot 33: 0:00:00:00-close up of suspect walking through puddle. We won’t be using this shot. As camera too far away.
Shot 34: 00:00:06:00-close up of suspect walking through puddle, we will be using this shot.

Shot 35: 00:00:13:00-Mid shot of suspect walking away from camera, suspect starts to run. We won’t be using this shot.

Shot 36: 00:00:27:00- Mid shot of suspect walking away from camera, suspect starts to run. We will be using this shot.

Shot 37: 00:00:40- Mid shot of suspect walking away from camera. We won’t be using this shot.

Friday 15 January 2010

Today 15/1/10

Today we have designed and printed the Missing posters which we will be using in our final piece. We did 10 different copies and asked each member of the class to let us use their picture because this is the only safe, legal way of doing this without getting prosecuted.

We will be taking shots similar to this.


We will also be using a black and white style or sepia type style to film these shots.

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Storyboard / our idea

We have just finished our story boards for our AS media title sequence. We did 10 story board shots,we will be using more than that but these are just the raw shots of what we will be using in our final piece. Some of the shots will be seen more than once but will slightly vary each time. Such as missing posters, but each time a different one is shown, also when the knife slices down onto the meat, one of our names will be on it (credits). Also in between shots a letter from the word 'Dissapear' will flash up and the final shot of the title sequence will flash the full word-'Disappear'.