task 7 looking back at the preliminary task and what has been learnt in the progression from it to full froduct

Planning and preparation
When we were working on our preliminary task we had a set storyboard to work from, a set time of 1 hour to film in, a script, and only a 4 shots that we had to film, others were bonus and optional. We were also given our location and had to work with the space, lighting and props we were provided with adjusting it all as best we could. We were lucky with the location we were provided with was a good one, we got to film in the studio which meant we had a little more freedom than we would have in other locations. The actors we chose for the parts were random people who were free at the time not much thought went into there characters.
When we working on our main task a lot more thought and effort went into the preparation in every aspect. We planed the location around our story spending time looking for a space that gave the mood we wanted and had the space to film in which was difficult as our location was a bathroom and bathrooms are usually limited on space. Our actors were specifically picked, the mail actor because he was good looking and had an athletic build to look like a high school jock, the female actress we chose because she is innocent looking with blond hair and is small she also looks like a cheerleader type. We chose not to have a script we just recorded ambience sounds of the shower and added sound effects and music of sound track pro, we planned our props such as our jock jacket hung up on the peg, the blunt knife we used for the weapon, the consume of the actress which was a tight fitting rear of jeans a tight vest top, red cardigan and hair band which we chose to appeal to are target audience for sex appal. The rage of shots we had to take was a lot wider we planed these with a story board and a shooting script.




Development of film-making skills and use of camera

A big difference between our prelim task and our main tasks was that in our prelim task we were provided with a script so the sequence had dialog where as our main task had no dialog just abeyant sound, music, and sound effects from soundtrack pro. There for in out main task we had to communicate events completely visually with no verbal communication to do this we used obvious actions such as the suggestion of striping. We also used our editing to do this by creating quick cuts in the editing to show the audience that for example the climax scene is taking place or about to take place. To help us imagine how we would communicate this way we created story boards before we shot the sequence to visualise the out come and structure shoot day. We practiced with the camera different shots to the basic wide, mid, close up. We practiced shots such as tracking, hand held, extreme close up ect… to make the sequence more interesting and portray the mood of the scene.







This is our over the shoulder shot example that we had to film in our preliminary task. As you can see it is boring and armature. We cant see enough of the girl who’s shoulder we are looking over and the information in the shot is cramped into the left hand side of the frame and the right hand side of the frame is empty. Also the subject (the boy) is to far away for the audience to receive information from the shot.

This is an example of an over the shoulder shot we filmed in our main task. As you can see it is a lot more professional than the earlier example. We have placed a lot more of the girls frame in the shot which is important for the audience because by being behind her shoulder it places the audience on her side and from her point of view. Having the stairs in the shot make it more interesting and also give her a destination and give the audience information about the story.


This is our wide shot example from out preliminary task. As you can see the shot is again very boring with all the focus points for the audience on the left hand side of the frame. There is not much information given in this shot we cant see who the girl is talking to or doing which makes the shot very boring to watch. We also can’t see any detail of the subject (the girl) so by looking at this freeze frame the audience cant receive any information about the story



This is our example of a wide shot we filmed for our main task it is obvious that this looks a lot more professional we have divided the information into 3 different sections of the frame, the girl on the left hand side, the jock jacket in the middle of the frame and the boy in on the right hand side. Although there is a lot of information in the shot it is divided as to not overwhelm the audience too much. I like how this shot shown the killer so close to the victim but he has no idea she is there. This shot gives the audience a lot of information and suggests the story.

From these examples it is obvious that our main task is a lot more professional looking than our preliminary. Our preliminary task taught us a lot and helped us to learn from our mistakes, for example when it came to filming our main task we thought a lot more about framing our shots better and carefully filling shots to be interesting to the audience, the amount of planning we did for our main task made it earlier for us to plan how we were going to do this, we used shooting scripts and story boards. It was still a challenge for us to try and make sure that every shot was full of information yet placed just right I think we did a good job with it though there is inevitably some that wont have all of these things but we did film multiple versions of each scene to try to insure this.

sound effects
The difference in sound between the prelim task and the main task is quite extreme. In the prelim task we had a dialog, which we recorded with the microphone on the top of the camera, which picked up other background sounds, which sounded messy, and amateur. In our main task we had no dialog just ambient sound we recorded of the shower running with the boom, which was our diagetic sound, and sound effects and music that we got from sound track pro which was our non diagetic sound, we composed the music from single beats that we sound on the program and layered the sounds to fit with the changing moods of the sequence. The types of sound effects we used were the extremes of each other some were deep booming sounds for dramatic effect and the others were high pitched screeching sounds to make the audience uneasy and uncomfortable. We used the booming sounds for the impact of the knife reaching contact with flesh instead of attempting to create realistic stabbing sounds, which we felt, may sound messy. We used the nigh pitched sounds when we were building up to our curtail scene in order to communicate to the audience that the most important scene is about to happen and keep then in suspense. We made sure that our sound effects for this task were timed perfectly which we did by experimenting on final cut pro.
For out preliminary task sound we didn’t editing it at all we just used what we had recorded on the day with the camera microphone when watching the finished piece you can hear that the sound is unclear and ruff with a slight eco to it. If I was to re do it now I would record a dialog separately with proper recording equipment. We used no sound effect at all when editing it was all diagetiic sound. We learned from the mistakes we made with the first task and although we hardly used diagetic sound what we did use of it we recorded properly.

after effects

The aim of after effects was to try and help our film to look as professional as we could make it, by using suck tools and colour correct. When working on our prelim task we didn’t use after effects because the expertise was more about learning how the cameras worked and learn the basics of editing, the result of this was compared to our main task messy and amateur. When working on our main task our aim was to focus on learning how to use after effects as we had already learned the basics of editing and camera work. The after effects we decided to use colour correct because we felt that the lighting in the bathroom was to warm and we wanted to create a more edgy mood to so we darkened the light making the sequence feel completely different. We were working with the editing program final cut pro which is where we edited our sequence and added the after effects. we also used after effects to enhance some of our sound effects for example the foot steps when walking down the corridor we enhanced the sound and gave it a slight eco. We lastly used the effects to show our title and distributor, we used blank black slides with white bold righting with fades in and out for the writing. We didn’t actually need many after effects as we were relatively happy with our camera work and our idea didn’t require much change

task 6 what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing product?

task 5 how did you atract/adress your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience?

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task 4 who would be the audience for your media product?

Name: jack smith
Age: 18
Birthday: 21st April 1991
Sex: male
Nationality: English
Occupation: student

Hobbies: football, rugby, playing drums, listening to music, watching tv, watching great movies, playing playstastion…

Music: mgmt, the killers, dizzy rascal, fight star, kings of Leon, john mayer, …

Films: all the saw films, scary movie 1 and 2, the god father, rock and roller, green street, wanted, transformers, succubus,

Hay my name is jack smith I am English and I live in surrey I am in my last year of collage at the moment and am wanting to go to Leeds university in September, I enjoy hanging out with my mates, clubbing, meeting hot girls, lads holidays!

I think that this person’s blog suggests that he is educated as he is at collage and going to university her is middle class and has normal teenaged interests such as football and clubbing, he is also young which represents our target audience.

I think he would like our film because he is educated so would expect a horror film that had a twist and want so predictable though he isn’t a nerd so he is still a normal teenager and has stereotypical interests, he is young and horror films are targeted at young people between 15 and 25.

task 3 what kint of media institution might distribute your media product and why

After research our group decided that Lionsgate distribution company would be a good institution to distribute our film because it has a history of distributing and taking on horror films of the same genre as our film with horror, blood, and the air of surprise, suck as Saw VI, My Bloody Valentine 3D, Saw V (produced by Twisted Pictures) and many more. We wanted to take sure that our distributor was believable had experience with the same genre of films. I think that lionsgate films would be interested in distributing our film because it is a jumpy horror film which is a big appeal to teenagers who want to see a realy good horor with a good twist and that delves into the unexpected.

task 2 how does your product represent particular social groups

Our product represents the particular social group ours being teenagers, we used two actors in our film both of whom were teenagers of the same age 17 so this is the social group that our film represents the actors are represented as high school sweethearts the boy being a typical jock boy which we represent by having a jock jacket hung up on a peg which we have her smell we also show his stereo type by choosing a muscular actor. Our actress we made to look innocent with long blond hair and having a petite body with tight fitting clothes. However with our actress we have not conformed completely to her stereo type in looks we have done this though she looks innocent we have chosen her as the killer over the strong boy. We don’t reveal this until near the end of the film letting the audience use there imagination about her character. We have her slowly doing things that the audience may question about her such as smelling his jacket in a stalker way then when she pulls out the knife the audience realise that her intensions are different to what we have made them believe. We created a scene before the stabbing when the actress first walks in to the bathroom as starts to remove some of the clothes and take her hair down which suggests she is going to get into the shower with her boyfriend, it is then we flip her stereo type and show her a psycho killer. We wanted to flip over the stereo types because it is our USP to our film and will draw in our audience because they are getting a different film to the usual horror stabbing film.

task1 in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

The beginning of our sequence is a black slide with the logo of our distributor: Lionsgate films this slide is simple and effective in informing the audience of the distributor and may give them a clue as to what the film is about due to the other films the company may have produced before this, for example with our film it would be horror films such as the saw franchise. This slide is typical to kick off a film nearly all modern films have there distributors name before the film starts because they will have put up a lot of money and taken a risk of the film so they will want the best advertising.

This freeze frame is one of our corridor shots; it is in the first 10 seconds of the film before this shot we filmed our actor turning on the shower in a bathroom so to then have our actress walking down a corridor in the scene after gives the audience a suggestion as to her destination. Though at this point the audience still aren’t awear on the genre of the film for example weather it is horror or romance or action ect… however if the audience were paying real attention they may become aware of out subtle hints such as the girl walking alone down a lonely corridor with the camera following her suggests she is the victim and being followed however that is the reaction we want from the audience as we are trying to hide her identity as the killer so the outcome of the film is a shock. The lighting we used was industrial giving the corridor a cold hard feel. The lighting links in with our genre of film with ought the audience guessing the outcome.

This is our killer who at this point we don’t know her role as a killer this is the point that the audience start to question her role in the film when she starts to behave strangely such as smelling the victims jacket as she is depicted doing in the freeze frame. The actress is the opposite of the typical killer for this genre of film her being a traditional cheerleader type with a blond innocent look she would be the typical victim to get killed this helped us to hide the genre of the film until the curtail moment.

This is the point in the film where she pulls out the knife and the audience realise the true role of the actress and realise she is about to kill the boy in the shower and her identity has been disguised up to this point. Our choice of weapon the knife is however a traditional horror film weapon due to it being a messy tool to kill somebody with spilling a lot of blood and the death being relatively slow by bleeding to death rather than killing someone with poison or a gun which if done properly aren’t as blood thirsty killings as the use of a knife. It suggests our killer to be a real psychopath. The contrast of the way the girl looks which is very innocent and her psychopathic tendencies challenges stereo types.


We made the choice not to use a lot of titles in our sequence we in our group felt that placing titles over our sequence in places would take away from our sequence and spoil the mood of it so we chose to place some simple black slides at the beginning saying the distributor and then at the end of the sequence saying the name of the film. The freeze frame above is an example of a shot we may have used for titles.
We decided to have our thriller title in the end, and to write it in a simple white font. This looks good and easy to read without using expensive technology as in other movie titles.

Evaluation task

Lighting
The lighting we used in our prelim task was very basic, we used a single ceiling light fixture to light our set. It was very simple and the set could have been lit a lot more effectively. The lighting we used in our main task was more complex, although we still used the lighting which was provided with our set we chose not to over work our choice of lighting because the lighting that was provided with our room had a slight yellow tinge to it. This was useful to us because in our piece at the beginning we create a false sense of security leading the audience to believe everything is safe which is reflected in the yellow lighting we used however even though the lighting was reassuring in ways it has an under tone that when shone on the skin gives a slightly ill look to the flesh which adds a sickness to the film suggesting something is slightly wrong.
Sets
The sets that we used in are prelim task was simple and basic though being in the studio was one of the best locations our groups could chose from, it consisted of 3 walls fixed together to take the shape of a basic empty room with one door and one window we didn’t plan any aspect of our set before shoot day and even on shoot day we didn’t change anything we just filmed the sequence right away. In our main task we roughly planed our set by doing lots of research such as viewing different locations and choosing the one that we felt was the most effective and gave the right feel to the sequence such as ours was a school bathroom with a shower in the right place in the room where we could get a shot of shower and the door to the room so we could make the link between our two characters. It also had good props such as pegs on the wall to show it is a locker room and the room was quite large so there was enough space to film comfortably. The only thing the bathroom didn’t have was a sink but we resolved this by using another bathroom in the building which had the same tiles so it made a graphic match. We had two other locations which were corridors they were different but by using doors and stairs. The door we used was also a graphic match because the door to the actual bathroom was not in a good place so we filmed the actress pushing through another door in the building. Our set was very important to our sequence.

sound
In the prelim task we used very basic sound just using the microphone on the top of the camera to record abidance sound in the room and dialog of the actors. The sound was not clear in that sequence at all. We used no other form of sounds such non diegetic sounds. The sounds we used for our main task we also filmed with a mike and boom but we didn’t have much non diegetic sounds to film just the sounds of the shower and breath of the actress. We mostly concentrated on diegetic sounds finding the right music to fit the sequence. We started using a soft drum beat at first which sounds slightly sexy and up beat we then added a slight under tone of a high pitched sound as the sequence begins to get scarier ones we reach the curtail moment of the sequence the sound becomes even more high pitched and louder than ever to show the audience that that is the most important peace in the film. We chose our sound effects carefully because music does so much to suggest mood in a film.


The editing process
The editing in our prelim task was very basic we did no ruff cut and all our shots were taken straight from the story board and shooting script that we were provided with. In contrast to that the edeiting for our main task was a lot more complex we logged the shots we thought were good enough as we did at least 3 versions of each shot, we then made a ruff cut of the sequence and after that refined it and worked on after effects and sound effects. The whole editing process for the main task took about 9 hours if not more in total, the time we spent editing the prelim task was about 3-4 hours in total and that is including learning the soft where as it was new to us. During our main task our aim was to get our film looking as professional as possible as we used the prelim task to teach us how to use techniques, as a result of this our main task came out looking much more polished and professional from the experience
Titles
We didn’t use titles at all in our prelim task so the sequence didn’t look like a spoper short film just a badly filmed scene from one. The titles we used for our main task were very simple, we just had plain black slide which showed before and after the film. The first slide at the beginning of the film showed the distributor’s name (lionsgate) which was with bold righting that faded in onto a white background, and the title of the film which came at the end of the sequence was the same. We chose to have plane simple slides and to not gave away to much of the film with the beginning slide because we wanted the audience to use there imagination about the genre of the film. We also felt that the black and white contrasting colours were bold and dramatic. We put these titles in using the final cut pro editing program.

Camera stills

Photograph works as a universal language, it is a way of communicating to anybody in the world. The vocabulary has to be understood, it is consisted of textures, patterns, colures, shapes and lines shade of light to dark and sharp images to blurry images. In order for our photographs to convey there meanings clearly have to make sure our vocabulary is written in the right way to make sense we must also orange visual elements in an organized manner.

This camera above is one similar to the one we used when we were experimenting with taking photographs and the settings on the camera. The aim was to learn about basic camera shots for example establishing shots, close up shots, mid shots ect…

This is an extreme close up this goes to the person or object in extreme detail this if usually uses to show emotion on peoples faces

This is a close up shot it shows the whole face of a subject usually. or hands showing an action being done

This is a mid shot it shows some part of the subject in detail and still showing most of the subject

The subjects fills the full frame or as much as possible this is done to show the subjects form and suggest there character with clothes ect…