Question seven- SlideShare

Question seven- Thoughts

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

For this question I will do a slide share as I haven't done one in the rest of my blog yet. It is also a good way to display information clearly.

Question six- Table of comparison

Question six- Thoughts

Question- "What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing your product?"

For this question I will create a table, showing the technology in one column, its use in the next and an explanation table for what went wrong and what didn't. 
I may make two tables, one for software and one for hardware.

Software used:
Final Cut Pro X - Editing
Logic Pro 9 - Soundtrack
Omnisphere - Sounds
Trillion - sounds
Garageband - Sound recording
Blogger - Blogging
Prezi - Presentations
Word - Documents
Screenflow - Screen recordings
Quicktime - Viewing
Photoshop - Background
GoAnimate! - Animations
Canon/sony operating systems
Blogger app

Hardware used:
iMac's 2008&2011 - Some editing, some blogging, soundtrack
Macbook Pro - Most blogging and editing, documents 
Canon 700D - Most filming
Sony new-5n - flashbacks
iPhone 5S - mobile blogging
Tripod - stable shots
Samson go mic - sound
Cam caddy - stable shots in motion

Question five- Annotated video

This is an annotated video as an answer to question five, it explains how and why we attracted and addressed our audience with examples from our text.

Question five- thoughts

Question- "How did you attract/address your audience?"

For this I will either annotate a video or annotate frames. As I already have used a 9-frame analysis I think I'll opt for the annotated video.

Think about feedback and features of your product, such as, narrative, miss-en-scene etc and how it's
tailored to your audience.

Question four- GoAnimate!

Question four- thoughts

Question- "Who would be the target audience for your media product?"

For this I shall use go animate as it seems to be an interesting and fun way to put across information.

My audience:

• Mass - 15+ (no age limit), although could be argued as a niche audience
• Thriller fans
• Demographics of audience

Question three- Prezi

Evaluation Question three- Thoughts

Question -"What companies would distribute our product and why?"

I will most likely answer this question in the form of a prezi presentation. It is both visually appealing and informative, it also has the added bonus of allowing me to embed it to my blog, making it look more professional.

Research:

• As research, I found various different examples of film festivals, both small and large.
• I also found a list of distribution and production companies.
• I conducted extensive research into the working and operations of production and distribution companies and decided to talk mainly about smaller companies as opposed to bigger companies who do both production and distribution under one company

Question two- Comparison to existing products

Social groups represented in our product:

Our product features social groups and representations, such as, teenagers and youth (age), representations of gender, Disabilities and class/status.

To begin with, age is represented in our product via youth. The protagonist in our piece is represented as young and able bodied. He shows no signs of physical disability or a lack of physical skills. This also links to ability. We created this representation in order to create a contrast between mental and physical states. We represented youth in order to create this representation and contrast. Youth was also represented as criminal but vulnerable at the same time. We created representations of criminality by use of props and costume. The prop of money used in the flash back showed some sense of illegality as a young

man shouldn’t be able to acquire that much money legally, nor should he be being chased at his age, this is also how we created themes of vulnerability for youth.

Going back to representing able bodied-ness within the social group of age. A text, which uses similar representations to our product, is ‘Looper’. The protagonist in ‘Looper’, ‘Joe’ is shown to be able bodied through both, his actions, but also by mise-en-scene. The location shows that he is able bodied, as it is remote. He is in a cornfield, presumably in the American country. This shows able bodied-ness as it is difficult terrain to cross and would be difficult to access. This adds to over all representation of youth. Another representation of youth is ‘Joe’s’ costume. Similar to our protagonist’s, ‘Joe’s’ costume is dark, yet fashionable for his time. This represents youth to the audience as the protagonist’s know what is fashionable and of the time, and older character’s may not be as knowledgeable and may be wearing outdated clothing. As it is dark in colour, it connotes mystery and possibly illegality. This shows that other thriller films are using the same representations as us, just to create slightly different meaning and to allow a different niche of the audience to identify with the characters.

Another representation and social group in our product is that of ability/disability. In our product, we depict the protagonist as being physically, very well abled (as shown as part of the representation of youth), but as mentally unstable and paranoid. We represented the protagonist in this way, as it is stereotypical to the genre and sub-genre. We showed our protagonist to be paranoid particularly during flashbacks by showing him grabbing his head and slipping to the floor, so we showed it predominantly by his actions and also by the lighting. Use of shadows both on his face and in the location add to the representation of shadows and that something is always lurking behind them. A real text, which also uses lighting in order to represent paranoia, is ‘The Machinist’. In ‘The machinist’, lighting is used to create shadows on the face of the main character. Shadows are a stereotypical convention of genre and are used to represent paranoia as they represent the unknown. In our product, we used shadows, not only on the face, but also in the location in order to create an effect of paranoia and almost a sense of self-destruction within the main character. This is too shown in ‘The Machinist’. However, we used location to help represent disability as well as character. Within the representation of paranoia and mental states, come representations of loneliness and not belonging. Our main character is shown very much to be lonely and is shown to not really fit in anywhere. ‘The Machinist’ also shows this. However, they show it by showing the man to be almost dangerous in his ways, where as we show our main character as this through isolation.

Lastly, we have representations of gender. This representation crosses with a lot of other representations. It crosses with ideas of crime from age/ ‘Looper’ and ideas of insecurity and paranoia from disability/ ‘The Machinist’. To begin with, only the male gender is represented in our product. Men are represented as criminals. This is a very stereotypical representation of men as they are commonly seen as criminals and most likely statistically the most criminal gender. These representations are, again, shown via use of a dark, street style costume, which gives strong connotations of criminal behavior. And also by the fact that he is running. People often say ’Those who are innocent, do not run’, this could be argued that our main character is not innocent and therefore runs. But, we could also link it to the male representation of paranoia and reason that he runs due to his paranoia. In a sense, the two representations are battling with each other until the question is finally answered at the end of the film.

In the screen shot to the right, females are being represented to have an inner fight, just as our protagonist/antagonist has. She is shown to be having some mental conflict, which is a stereotype for women as it usually the me who remain calm and level headed. In our product, we chose to change that and create a mental conflict in the male character’s head. There is another difference between the two representations. Our uses more stark lighting whereas ‘Prometheous’ is much darker. This shows possibly a more twisted representation of the female gender in ‘Prometheous’.

Question two- Thoughts

Question-"How does your media product represent particular social groups?"

For this question I believe that a comparison to existing products and analysis would be best suited.

For the comparison I will use these thriller films:

• 'Looper'
• 'The Machinist'
• 'Limitless'
• 'Prometheus'

Social groups I will include:

• Age
• Disability
• Class/Status
• Gender

Question one - 9 frame analysis

These are the 9 frames from our product which I will analyse.

Frame 1.

Frame one has been extracted from our primary ident, it helps to show one of the ways in which we suggested genre in our product. Using genre specific idents is a convention of all genres, including the thriller genre. Our idents are genre specific as they give connotations of mystery/ un-knowing, isolation and confusion to the audience.These connotations help our product to conform to some aspects of most thriller films. We have not developed this idea of genre specific idents as it is logical. If, for example, we put a ‘Dreamworks’ ident on our product, that would completely throw the audience in the wrong direction. Whereas having a genre specific ident tells the viewer that they are in the correct place, viewing the correct film. We also showed conventions of genre by using flashbacks. As in frame 5. However we challenged some aspects of the conventional flashback by not changing a visual effect or filter on the footage. We simply changed location and left the footage in the hope that the audience may struggle to define between flashbacks and real-time. However, we decided to add in transitions to lessen the confusion but keep the same initial effect. This is how we conformed to and challenged conventions of the thriller genre, but we also challenged some conventions, for example different locations and features of a setting like sets of stairs and narrow doorways. We felt that if we were to add these in, we would have to change our story line and so decided to leave them out as they are not integral aspects of the genre.

Frame 2.

Shows our use of special effects in the product. We used special effects such as filters on our secondary ident (as shown in frame 2) and transitions in our flashbacks and at the start of the product. The slow fade in at the start of the product is seen in a lot of thriller films, this is because it slowly reveals the picture and sound can often be heard first. This creates an effect also commonly seen in thriller films. This is a way in which we conform to the thriller genre another thriller products, for example ‘The Machinist’ uses a long fade at its beginning with sound throughout the fade. As I said for frame 1, we chose not to use special effects in the flashbacks which is a slight deviation and development from the thriller genre. 

Frame 3.

This is the introduction of the only character seen in the opening sequence. And in keeping with thriller form, not much of him is shown and not much about him is given away. This is in-keeping with the thriller genre, we developed the way in which the character was introduced to the audience by showing his face straight away, but fir a short period of time, this allowed the viewer to ask questions about the character in-between shots of his face. Most characters are usually introduced via a series of extreme close ups encased in shadows. It also allows the viewer to slowly build a mental image of the character before seeing the whole character. This conforms to some aspects of the thriller genre, such as, the fact that it makes the viewer ask questions, but develops other aspects, such as, the fact that more of the character is shown in their introduction, but in shorter shots. 

Frame 4.

Frame 4 demonstrates the font and text style of our product. As commonly seen in the thriller genre, we have used a plain simple font, in white, on a dark background. This is a convention of genre seen throughout most thriller films. Films, such as, Limitless use this simple style of font. So, for this aspect of the product, we did not challenge or develop anything, we simply stuck to the conventions of genre as we believed it to be the most effective way. The plain style font gives little away about the events to come and is not misleading in the sense that it gives the viewer a false sense of genre. Due to this, the text appears plain and clear, however, it in its self gives the incentive to ask questions as it bares no complexity and very few connotations.

Frame 5.

This frame is showing our only use of props in our product. We chose to use very few props as they would not suit our narrative, they would clutter the simple nature of the shots if we were to include them. We used money as a prop in the first flashback to offer some explanation as to why the main character was in his position. A lot of thriller films use limited amounts of props, for example, in ‘Flightplan’ the opening sequence only features an umbrella as far as props go. Costume was also very limited in our product as well, as we only had one character throughout the whole extract. We use the same trousers and shoes in the flash back as in real time to create small links, showing that they were the same people in different mindsets. 

Frame 6.

Number 6 shows us how and where we set our product. We chose to use an empty town center as our location and setting. We did this in order to achieve the commonly used connotations of isolation and vulnerability. These connotations are used frequently in most thriller films, this is why using empty places and/or detaching the character from the public are massive conventions of the thriller genre. We conformed to this convention as it fits our story line and conveys the connotations I spoke about earlier. We chose the alleyway location as heavy shadows are cast by the street lights in the alleyway. Shadows are a further convention of the thriller genre which shows that we further conformed with genre specifics. We also developed the conventional setting by merging both a public place and isolation. This packs the maximum amount of connotations into one location to achieve the correct effect on the viewer.

Frame 7.

Cinematography and editing in the extract were a mixture between using conventional techniques and breaking conventions. We stuck to conventions by using predominantly short takes and lots of close up shots. Close up shots and short takes add to the sense of un-knowing and suspense in a thriller which is why they are two of the biggest cinematographically used conventions in the thriller genre. We complied to these conventions as they work in building up connotations of isolation and vulnerability. However, we chose to add in some longer cuts, the varied shot length shows the main character’s mental state of mind and connotes that to the audience, this is why we chose to develop shot length conventions. For editing, we simply used cuts rather than transitions, until it came to the flashbacks. We used shot transitions in order to define the difference between real time and flashback. We tried different transitions, both stock and manually made, but in the end a transitions called ‘bloom’ came out on top, although it is a stock transition, it gave the most definition to the flashbacks and distinguished the flashbacks creating a link between them.

Frame 8.

We chose not to challenge anything to do with the narrative of our thriller. We chose to keep the conventional thriller genre, which starts at the recognition disequilibrium and then starts from the beginning. We chose not to change it as it is one of the most distinguishing features of the thriller genre and in my opinion, is the most defining mark of a thriller. Our sequence, therefore, opens into recognition of disequilibrium, but features flashbacks of disequilibrium just being recognised, where as it opens more towards disequilibrium being fought against. 

Frame 9.

This frame shows the main title of our sequence. As you can see, we kept to a plain font, as talked about in frame 4. We used mostly integrated titles in our sequence, this went smoothly with genre specifics of integrated titles. This use of integrated titles allowed our product to run smoothly without breaks, with the exception of the main title at the end. We kept the titles out of the flashbacks so as not to confuse the narrative and audience. However, the title break at the end of the product, as seen in frame 9, shows a clearly un-integrated title as it is on a black screen, we used the pinnacle of suspense in our extract to challenge genre conventions and to display our main title. The title flickers on to the screen as a car screech is heard. This shows that the suspense is broken and questions are asked during this time as they do not know who has been struck by a car. This develops title conventions as we merge integrated and separate titles, however, we use it to achieve another genre specific.

Evaluation question one - thoughts

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

In order to answer this question, I think I shall create a 9 frame analysis or a directors commentary. These seem to be the most relevant ways in which to answer the question.

The advantages of a 9-Frame analysis are that I can get a lot of detail into each analysis and will feature direct links to our product. However, it may become too wordy and less visually appealing than another format.

On the other hand. A directors commentary will be more visually appealing, but will contain less detail. 

Therefore, for this detail I will try to pack in a lot of detail as I feel that is where priorities must lie in the evaluation, and especially in questions like this which require explanations.

Final Product- Subversion

This is our final product, named 'Subversion'. It is a psychological thriller by genre and is set in an empty town centre at night and shows one mans struggle against himself as he is on the empty streets alone... but is he alone?

Editing- Finished!

The whole product is completely finished now tweaks on video and sound have been made and it is ready to be burned to a disk. Overall, I spent around 2 hours on editing, on and off in lessons and at home. Now that I have done it, I could recreate it in 5 minutes. However, it takes a while for the first ideas to come through.

Our introduction to evaluation

Today we shown the seven different questions which we will answer in order to show how we constructed our product now that it is completely finished. These questions will help us show and explain what we did and why during the creation of our products. Here are the questions:

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

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

3. What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media products?

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?

These questions, naturally, will have to be presented in different forms in order to show technical ability. Here are some ways in which I plan to present the questions:

video

directors commentary

prezi

go animate

slideshare

audio

annotated screenshots

screenshot comparisons to an existing text

detailed 9 frame analysis

Ident 2 improvement

We decided to rename the 'Mystical Productions' to 'Mystic Productions' as it sounds a lot more memorable and less fantasy-like. We also changed the font to make it more visually appealing. We also used a white font in order to create a strong contrast. The smoke unveils the title showing possibly a confused narrative which clears as time passes.

Sound Track

For the extract we tried to keep the sound track subtle until the last third as that is when key events start to take place. This was made using Logic Pro and Omnisphere. 

We chose to keep the track subtle throughout as that suits conventions of the thriller genre, for example, silence is a dominant feature of a lot of thriller films, silence can be as effective as sound it's self. 

We chose omnisphere and logic as logic is a very advanced music production software which we are used to using. An omnishphere was used to retrieve the desired sound. We chose to use the long winded wining sound as it is eery but not too much so, it is enough to allow the audience to know that something is consciously there.

Also, trillion was used to find sound effects such as, the heart beat and the car screech.

Ident 2

This is our second ident (incomplete) it currently lacks sound and needs to have its font changed. We chose to have another ident as it looks more professional than just one. We recognised, that as a convention of a lot of genres, more than one ident is shown and is often that of either a production company of distributor for example, dream works and 20th century fox.

Re-Filming complete

As of tonight, all refilming has been completed fully. It is now all ready to be edited together and have sound added to it. 

We had to refilm as the previous footage which we collected was not up to a good enough standard, some shots were slightly blurry due to a faulty lens and others were overly shaky, so we thought that refilming would be there correct route.

Risk Assesment

  

Locations, dates, equipment, people

We on the 3rd of this month, however, we will require at least another night of filming. Possibly this sunday (10th).

We used a sony nex-5n for filming on the 3rd, however, there has been an accident in which it has been broken and we are now using my new canon 700D for filming, as I said in the earlier prezi.

For our location, we have chosen to use a town centre at night, this is so that we achieve the correct balance of some traffic but no pedestrians so that the character will appear isolated. All alleyways and streets used will be in the town centre.

On the 3rd, Mark, Liam and myself were at the filming, that is all group member and using Mark and Liam as actors.

Product name

In order to find a name, we looked at the themes that would be shown in the rest of the film and in our two minute extract. We whittled the possibilities down to a final three, Auto Oblivion, Auto Eradication or Subversion. We chose them to try and show the main character's mental state of mind which would become more clear in the latter parts of the film. Auto means self, so we chose this to try and show 'self destruction' with Auto Eradication, however, it sounded too long winded and sinister for a thriller film, which led us to one work titles. Subversion seemed to fit well as it carries  similar themes to that in the film, had not been taken by a film that has already been produced, and sticks in the viewer's minds. 

Ident improvement

Earlier today we received feedback commenting on our ident. We were told that it was a good and effective ident, however, it needed to be shorter. We acted on this by making the initial part of the ident faster, thus shortening the final outcome.

Equipment and software used for filming and editing

This is a short prezi simply to show what equipment and software we have used during the making of our product.

First ident

Here is the start of he ident, before sound has been added. 'New Moon' shows that something new has been created and is also a symbol of mystery and questioning, but the shadowy cloud coverage makes the questions and answers unclear. These are conventions of thriller genre and so fit the final product's genre well.

Ident development

The idea which we intend to follow up for our ident is that of a moon passing across a black nights sky. Clouds will be passing across the moon, this should give an almost confusing effect to the ident, then, the text 'New Moon' shall appear in white on a black screen, this shows the questions being answered, this follows the narrative of a thriller and should be an effective ident.

Re-filming

I decided to offer the suggestion of re-filming our product for continuity reasons. The first resin being that camera quality had changed due to the purchase of a new camera, also, the weather had chained during the filming and was set to stay like that for a further few weeks.

After re-filming, the footage looks a lot more professional, although we have cut it finely to our deadline date of the 29th. Re-filming was also recommended in our student feedback.

Editor's first cut

This is the first cut of my main product. This is simply putting the clips together and added some basic effects, titles and sound will be added later. Things I like about it are; it flows well as a film should, it looks reasonably good quality wise and as a first cut, it doesn't yet have to be perfect. Especially as we will refilm as I do not like some shots.

Editing- Nearly there!

This will be my final first cut editing post as I have nearly done. After that there may be more general editing posts but there will be few adjustments besides sound and feedback improvements.

Both flashbacks have now been completed. Including the second one which features the layered shots of Liam in the bathroom. This was simply created by changing the shot opacity.










The first cut is now ready for exporting and to 
be shown to the class. It will also be critiqued by a class of year 13 media students who will anywise meanings and representations created in the product.













This is how I will export it, and then send it to a compressor to reduce the file size as it is too big for blogger and an inconvenience to transfer.