Hello :)

Hello :). I would like to say how great it was making this blog. It was a lot of fun and I learnt new skills as well as improving my old ones. I really hope you enjoy reading it.

Just some small instructions. :)

- The posts that are quite early on are to do with the preliminary task.
- Towards the middle of the year I have wrote a lot of random posts or quick brain waves, however I have also got some important posts like the health and safety and shotlists.
- For my evaluation I have tried to use many different ways of showing technology. Altogether I have .... 2 prezis, 1 power point, 1 directors commentary, 1 post with screenshots and 1 straight essay.
- Questions 4&5 are presented as one post as they are very similar.
- The prezis and the videos are embedded correctly however they may take a little time for them to load up and work.
- Early on within the blog the changeling link is not embedded correctly as the website wont allow me to do this however if you highlight and right hand click then press copy and go it will take you straight to the website where you have to scroll down to the third video called the changeling. Sorry for any inconvenience. Anyway this is my very last post and I hope you enjoy reading my blog as its been a very fun yet organised task.

Have a good day :D

Amy

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

6) What have you learn't about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have done this question by taking still images of the different type of technologies that I used. I then put them into a video where I spoke over the top explaining what I used them for. I have actually uploaded this video from something called Drop Box as this allows me to either stream it online or download it and upload to my blog. I have uploaded both as it provides a choice and shows the different types of technology used. 
The stream link is below.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1215913/question%206.m4v

4&5) Who would be the audience of your media product and how did you attract them?

When making our title sequence we had to make sure we were always thinking of our target audience. To the right is a picture of a handwritten list of Psychographics and I scanned this into the computer which I then edited over the top to allow you to see which sections apply to our title sequence. The written part in blue is the bit I wrote in Paint as it then makes it easier to read and understand.

After making the list I then posted my video onto a group which I made on the social networking site -Facebook. With in this group I added lots of people that were in my target audience. I then wrote questions that I wanted them to answer. I got a lot of positive answers and some also that really helped with understanding different views. 

Below I have included the screen shots of the comments that my target audience posted. As your'll read from the comments most of the people enjoyed the video but mainly enjoyed the last shot of the phone ringing as this was scary and created a lot of mystery. A few people commented on the titles themselves and thought the writing at times was hard to read. Everybody however did say they like the music as it provides a lot of tension and matches the theme of horror very well.

As you can see from the comments most people really enjoyed it as it created a lot of tension and made them want to see what happens next which is what we wanted to achieve. I was very surprised to see that most people thought it was more thriller than horror but I think they are very similar. A lot of people said that wanted more to happen in the title sequence but at the start we said that we didn't want to much to be shown as it creates an enigma code. We though if we showed to much with the titles then they perhaps wouldn't want to see the rest of the film. If I had time to edit my title sequence one last time I would take these comments into account and try and match what they want as it will allow our title sequence to be loved in many ways by all.

Overall I have had some positive feedback that's really effective for my target audience of 15-19 years  both male and female.

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

Our production company ‘pear tree productions’ is a low budget horror that targets the student audience aged 15+ who are interested in horror.  Our particular horror film is a British film as this gives it a homely feel.

Because we have created a low budget film it would be played in the small independent cinemas that target our audience directly.

The best way to show a low budgeted film would for it to be played via the Internet. Here it could be advertised on many social networking sites like Myspace, twitter and Facebook where all the students are joined together. I believe this would be the perfect way to target our audience. It could also be watched at local small cinemas or at exhibitions in the local halls.  We would like to think our low budget film could be also watched at the film festival where many new films that don’t have big distributors could be watched by all,  allowing us to get the biggest target audience as possible. Here is the web address for the Edinburgh film festival.

http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/news/2011/01/regular-deadline-31st-january

Even though ours is a student film, if it was made into a real film we would like help from the ‘majors’ as they will allow our film to be successful and shown in many high end cinemas.  We believe the best way to connect to our target audience is through the internet however doing this increases the change of illegal downloading, which we do not want to happen, so with help from a ‘major’ it will allow our film to be distributed legally rather than having to deal with it being distributed by many sites illegally. Our film would be played in many of the towns and cities. Targeting the cities more as that’s stereotypically where the students lie. However we would like to see if we could grab a money deal because even though we do want to make a profit we want the students to see it at a reasonable price and not think they are overpaying. However I understand that the price may not be able to be changed, as it’s the cinema making the money.

Twentieth Century Fox, (a well known distributor and production company); this company is our first choice of a major distributor as they have done thousands of horror films that fit our theme. We want a well-known distributor as they offer their own brand name to our potential film and can already offer us a high amount of screenings just by the film history. They have done films such as black swan (2011), Jennifer’s body (2009) and Alien (1979) of all have become big hits in the horror industry targeting the student age group (the same as ours).  Here’s the website that shows you all of the films they have ever done. Once clicked on the link it provides you with the total score the film has gotten.

http://www.imdb.com/company/co0000756/


Twentieth Century Fox are a film producing company who have produced thousands of award winning films such as Alien (1979) and Black Swan (2011).  I believe Twentieth Century Fox would distribute our film because despite it being a British film it can offer a wide opinion on horror and will be a popular choice for the student audience making it a big hit. It will offer different feeling that can make the audience feel uneasy or anxious.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

Below is a power point that I have created to answer this question. I made it in Microsoft power point which I then uploaded to a site or slide share where it is shown really well and effectively and it was easy for me to then put into my blog.

Once uploaded I realised that the slide 'music' doesn't play my clip. So therefore a black box is just represented. Originally my clip was being played allowing you to listen to the music.

Sound/music

We first of all decided to put three different parts of a soundtrack by moulding them together in sound booth. We tried to do this however due to the pieces being completely different it was difficult to achieve the thing we wanted. I then found some copyright free music that allowed us to mould two pieces together to create tension yet mystery into our sequence. We also timed the music very well with what was happening in the footage which is an important. It was at times difficult to add in new clips because the music would then fall out of place.

Nearly done

When finishing off our title sequence we watched it through many times and I soon realised that we missed a very important piece of footage out -the phone call. We really wanted to include this as its quite effective and adds mystery to our sequence. Thankfully we realised with time to spare as it then allowed us to find somewhere to fit it in while still give us time to finish off any last minute parts.

Below is our final video for our title sequence. When uploading it we were a bit rushed due to another class coming in and we were in the middle of uploading it. We did upload it eventually after uploading it wrong to you tube. I am very happy with our final video however there are a few things that could be improved of which you will find out in my evaluations.

Funeral

We filmed the rest of our title sequence today however a big problem did arise. We wanted to film in the church as it would allow us to give an end to our title sequence however when we got there and a funeral was taking place so it was impossible for us to film in the church. We then had to think of a new ending quite quickly has the battery on our camera was slowing dying. We then decided to still use the church but perhaps include the grave yard also. We thought of an idea of her running up to the church door to discover it to be locked and then run into the grave yard. We filmed this and thought of a ghost effect. We thought that she could disappear to add a little more mystery into the title sequence. We tried lots of new camera shots that meant if we our sequence still wasn't long enough we could add clips in.
Another problem that did arose was the battery. The battery had 1 hour left on it and mid filming it said it was low which meant we had to rush a little to get all the shots in. This may mean that there are shots that wont be as good as the could be due to us rushing to get all the shots done. However hopefully the clips we have will be good and we will be able to work with them.


All we have to now is edit it and add any special effects that we want.

The deadline is approaching and we still have a lot to do. Hopefully we will be finished with the filming and editing on tuesday allowing us to finish up any loose ends until friday. We will hopefully finish all the filming  tomorrow allowing our title sequence to be nearly finished. Getting all the filming done means we can concentrate on the music and any special effects that we want to add in.

I had an idea for the introduction of our title sequence as at the moment its just got a girl running. I thought of this when i was on the train on my phone.


I thought that the girl could be texted someone in this ally way like saying "where are you?" then her phone could comes up with a notification saying there is no signal and she doesn't know what to do. She then hears a noise behind her like a rustling sound and gets scared. She runs and then drops her phone on the floor. You can see her running away in the background not in focus and the phone in the foreground is in focus as it rings with an unknown number. As she runs this introduces the beginning.

We are going to be filming the remaining part of our title sequence on Monday (24/01/11). Hopefully we can record footage that is long enough and fits in with the clips we have at the moment. We are planning on filming the introduction to it and the ending. 

Filming

We had a little trouble earlier on in the week with regards to filming. Originally our actor didn't have time to film with us and she told us the day we planned on filming however we now have found a time where we all can film. On Monday ( 24/01/11) we plan on filming the rest of our title sequence. I think we can film everything we need to in the time we have and then complete the editing in our media lesson the following day.

First cut

This is a screen shot of our first cut of our title sequence. Its still not finished as we plan on adding some more footage into it.

Sound Booth

Today we created our soundtrack. We found three different pieces of music to use but we could decided which one to pick. We then decided to edit the music in the application 'sound booth', this let us pick the parts we wanted and then mould them together. Originally we were not going to have a soundtrack with just diegetic sounds however when editing we decided that a soundtrack was needed to make our sequence sound and feel better. I think the sound track has added more of a mystery feel and it also creates tension building up to the final shot of the phone ringing.
Below is a screen shot of us using sound booth.

Pick ups

Establishing shot

Close up of where she’s running.

From running to close up of eyes. (Bit in the middle)

Start?

Church long shot of her running up to door.

End?  Inside church? Match on action?

Camera on tripod and spin round (shows her confusion or her searching for something)

Match on action- walking through door

Zoom out so can see all of her

Camera spins

Fade out

Fade in of her – (doing something)- sitting down?

Ideas for out Introduction for our title sequence

Camera does establishing shot of ally before girl running then the camera zooms/gradually moves in towards her.

Still shot of ally way. Cut to her walking. Noise in bushes. (Camera ‘spying’ on her) girl then begins to run after she’s frightened.

Filming

We have decided that once edited our footage we needed more clips as so far the title sequence was only 30 seconds. We have decided to film on Wednesday (19/01/11) once again as we all finish college at the same time and the lighting should be the same as before. We hope to make a better introduction and ending of the title sequence.

Editing

This is a screen shot showing the on location software. We used this to allow us to make our tape footage into little clips making it easier to edit later on. On location also lets us delete the footage that is not needed for our title sequence.








After On location we moved onto Premiere Pro which is where you edit the title sequence.





This is a screen shot of Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro is the software we have used in order to edit our title sequence. We so far have edited 4 minutes of footage which only equals 30 seconds in the editing suite.

nine

Last night I was watching the film 'nine'. It made me think about the different sort of title sequences as the ones we have previously watched have varied a lot. We thought of including some sort of animation in our title sequence as it would allow our titles to be different and cleverly made however we realized as both of us our not very artistic that it would be impossible. I then came up with an idea last night while watching the film. I thought we could include still images in our clip. Due to our title sequence being called capture I thought we could have a camera sound then a still clip of the girl running which appears with the names of the people. I think this is a different idea but could make our titles longer and slightly more interesting to others. I will first have to check this with Graham but hopefully we will include it in our sequence.

Editing

We have finished our editing however its only 30 seconds long. So we need to go back out there and continue to film. We also discovered that we need to film some shots again as they don't fit in with the other footage. We plan on re-filming either on monday or thursday depending on our actor and weather we can get equipment out. The edited footage we have so far is really good and includes lots of match on action which we are pleased has work. Once re filmed we hope it will look really good.

Graham and me have finally decided on a title. We didn't want anything original for a horror film so it was very difficult to agree on a name. Graham originally came up with the name Shutter-speed. This was a good name however we soon realized it was a name of another film. I then suggested other words that related to shutter-speed which is where we got capture from. I think this is a great name as it can mean serval things . 

filming

We finally got round to filming. We managed to do it at the right time of day which meant we didn't need lighting but also allowing it to look quite dark. We had a successful day filming and managed to film everything we needed pretty quickly allowing us to do any pick ups later on.
When filming we noticed that our building we were including was locked so we had to change the ending as we didn't know if we would get another chance to film. 

On wednesday (5th January) we will start to film our title sequence. We are planning on getting it all filmed in that afternoon which will mean we have a finished title sequence, giving us more time later on to improve. I have addressed our actor of what she needs to do etc and we are very comfortable filming will go well.
In our lesson today we tried out the editing program once again to refresh our memories which will be a great help later on. While we uploaded our practice clips we played around with the special effects to see if we had any ideas for our sequence. It gave us a chance to explore more ideas.