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Evaluation Q6&7

Evaluation Q4&5

Evaluation Q3

Evaluation Q2

Evaluation Q1

Evaluation Question Six and Seven Script

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
"Through the this process we have learnt an abundant amount of things. We learnt to edit on a MAC and to sequence small shots to create a flashback effect and fast pace. We learnt to pull focus on a camera by doing depth of field to help with our establishing shots and to make them better. We also learnt to use a tripod and to adjust the height to create different shots.
Because we filmed on multiple days, the saturation of the shots were different so we had to learn to colour correct it to make the continuity better."

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, how do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
"I believe we have developed a lot since our Preliminary Task. We learnt to film lots of the same shot so we had a lot more freedom of choice in the editing process. In our prelim, there were many shots of us laughing or having big grins on our face. We didn't want this in our actual product because it would reduce the quality of realism. There was laughing and buzzing in our prelim task so we learnt to reduce the white noise and prevent that.
We also only really had two shot angles which was long shot and mid shot whereas we were able to use more in our opening; extreme close ups, close ups, establishing shots, long shots, etc and we also developed how that could affect the mood of the opening.We also learnt that not everything had to necessarily be framed central to the shot which is why, when Zoe runs into shot, we have her running in the right third of the frame.
In the prelim, the editing was quite poor and we didn't have much shot variety, so I think that's where we developed most."

Evaluation Question Four and Five Script

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
"The audience for our media product would be 15-30 year olds. As a group we decided that our certificate would be a 15 because of the strong language. Also looking back at my research questionnaire, 53% of people surveyed said they mostly watch 15 rated films.
My teacher Mr Mounsey brought up an interesting perspective, that though he would rather watch an 18, most films are rated 15 otherwise they wont sell enough tickets. Despite the strong language, our film wouldn't include any sexually explicit or pornographic content so it wouldn't need to be rated an 18. Therefore, our audience would be 15-30 year olds because a lot of people in that age bracket like gore and horror which may be included in our film."

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
"Our cast includes teenagers which makes the characters more relatable to the target audience we are looking at. Also, the film opening starts in the middle of the action so after, it goes back to what happened before and how it led to this situation. This left a lot of the audience discombobulated. In the showcase we received a lot of feedback of people being confused about what was happening but this is what we were aiming for. We were aiming to throw them off so that they would want to continue watching the film to find out exactly what happens next.
Also, the teenage generation nowadays tends to like the aesthetic of things. We really wanted to home in on the establishing shots and make them the best quality we could so attract this audience."

Evaluation Question Three Script

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
"If our opening was a feature length film, I think it would be distributed by a small company such as Sony Pictures. As exemplified in the first two minutes, our film would contain a lot of strong language meaning our audience would be a lot narrower. Films containing a lot of strong language tend to be distributed by small companies which is why I think ours would as well.
Our opening is an action/thriller which is also often distributed by small companies, an example of this is Drive (2011) which was distributed by FilmDistrict.
Big companies such as Disney tend to have larger audience brackets so strong language and gore tend to be avoided, therefore I think our media product would be distributed by a small company such as Sony Pictures or FilmDistrict."

Evaluation Question Two Script

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
"Media coverage of teenagers is unrelentingly negative and portrays teenagers as toxic towards society. We wanted to challenge this by making our protagonist a teenager to show that not all teens are 'scum' and some actually try do something positive for society by relieving her sister of this crime and try to find out who the actual perpetrator is.
We decided that our protagonist should be the only character shown on screen throughout the two minute opening, this challenges the stereotype that women are weak and shows that she is an important character."

Evaluation Question One Script

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
"Our media product challenges forms and conventions of real media products as the protagonists in films of the genre action/thriller are usually male and middle aged such as Bruce Willis' character in Die Hard (1988).  Females tend to be represented as weak and dependent on men so despite this, we decided to challenge this stereotype and made our main character a young teenaged female.
However, we followed the convention of high key lighting being cast upon our protagonist to highlight her position as an important, positive character in the opening, alike Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series.
The absence of dialogue follows the reality convention of thriller/action movies. Realistically, you would not talk aloud to yourself while in our protagonists situation so our choice of only having one line of dialogue "shit", which is a reaction, emphasizes the quality of reality.
Also, the use of flashbacks follows the thriller mind and perception conventions; of a view of the world around him/her and his/her conscious, mind and thought likewise shown in The Unusual Suspects (1995)."

Evaluation Question Plan

Media Showcase Feedback

We had our media showcase on March 20th to present our finished film openings to a wide audience. We then collected data and feedback to assist us with our evaluation. Looking back at the evaluations helped us see in hindsight what we could have adjusted to make our opening better.

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
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, how do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Title

We spent a lot of time deciding what our title should be and where it should be placed in our opening. We changed the placement and adjusted the colouring to make the title perfect, it took some time but I think we got there in the end. Our initial idea was to have it on the first establishing shot as that was our idea when we were storyboarding, plus the title would fit nicely layered on the whitespace over a line of trees. As seen in our opening, that shot was first and we thought it came slightly abruptly.
After agreeing this was not a good place to put the title, we didn't have another suitable establishing shot so because we already had to film a couple more shots, we went out with the intent to find a nice establishing shot to overlay the title on top of. It didn't take us long until we found the perfect shot but next in our process was to select which title we would like and the font and colour of it. We came up with the name "Framed" because the older sister, played by me, was framed for a crime she did not commit. Our credits were in the font "Birch STD" so to stay consistent, we changed the title into that font and made it white to contrast the green in the establishing shot, as white made it too indistinguishable.

Makeup

The night before we filmed our opening, Zoe and I had a conversation about how she should look for the shoot. The main topic of conversation was makeup. We discussed many ideas, some including:

• Dark eye makeup and light natural face
• Neutral eyes, face and lips
• Just simple dark eyeliner

After contemplating all of these, I told her to wear none and she agreed with my choice. I told her that if she felt uncomfortable with no makeup, the least objectionable option was neutral eyes, face and lips but she said she would go with whatever we chose as a group. So I consulted with my group and we all decided upon no makeup at all. We wanted her to seem tired, yet young. We thought that realistically, someone in her position would not have the time to apply makeup so having none at all creates the most realistic atmosphere. 

Costume Choices

For Zoe's costume we decided to keep it very casual and dark to connote her characters corruption. She is a young teenager whose childhood has been corrupted due to the graphic truth of the crime her sisters been blamed for so we decided to dress her solely in black clothing. We had her hair braided so it wouldn't get in the way of her face as she moved about and ensured her clothing and shoes where adequate for the running shots.
On the other hand, my character was going into hiding/running away and was trying to become "invisible" - she didn't want to stick out. So we decided to dress me in something very casual and plain.

Production Companies

To ensure our film opening replicates real film media products, we decided to add production companies to the beginning of our opening. Although we know that it will not give us extra marks, we still wanted it to be as similar to real products as possible. We selected some photos that River had previously taken and added text on top. These are the company titles we decided on:

'Sunset Productions'

'In Association with Needle Films'

'Castle Productions'

Film Synopsis

After brainstorming a couple of ideas, we decided that our film should be an action/thriller as we came to conclusion that the figure seen in the Polaroid photos would find out about Zoe's character trying to relieve her sister, so ergo attempts to perpetrate another crime and gather evidence to blame her this time. When the protagonist finds this out, she begins to track the man down using the camera evidence ergo resulting in an attack to conclusively prove both the protagonist and her sister as innocent. 

Final Film Opening: Framed

We have finally finished our film opening and after watching it a million times and reshooting scenes so many times, we are so proud of the outcome. From the prelim to now, we have changed and developed our technological skills so much. So here is the finished product:

 

Our Film Certificate

We spent a lot of time during lesson thinking about the certificate for our film opening. While deciding, we thought it was important to look at the BBFC certificate system and my research questionnaire to ensure we chose the right certificate.
The current BBFC system is:

• Uc (Universal Children) Suitable for all, but especially for children under 4. Used for video only. Retired in 2009.
• U (Universal) Suitable for all. (The board states that while they cannot predict what might upset a particular child, a "U" film should be suitable for audiences aged 4 and older).
• PG (Parental Guidance) General viewing but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. (It is the board's policy that movies rated "PG" should not disturb a child of about 8 years of age or older; however, parents are advised to consider whether the content may upset young or more sensitive children).
• 12A (12 Accompanied/Advisory) Recommended for 12 years and older. People under 12 years must be accompanied by an adult.
• 12 Recommended for 12 years and older. Anybody under 12 may see it, as long as a parent or guardian says they can. Nobody younger than 12 may rent or buy a "12" rated video.
• 15 Suitable only for 15 years and older. Nobody younger than 15 may see a "15" film in a cinema. Nobody younger than 15 may rent or buy a "15" rated video.
• 18 Suitable only for adults. Nobody younger than 18 may see an "18" film in a cinema. Nobody younger than 18 may rent or buy an "18" rated video These films may contain extreme gore/violence and/or sexually explicit content.
• R18 (Restricted 18) To be shown only in specially licensed cinemas, or supplied only in licensed sex shops, and to adults that are older than 18 years old. These films contain sexually explicit, pornographic content.

We looked back at my research questionnaire and at about 3:20 the comments about certificates start. About 53% of people surveyed said that they would rather watch a 15 rated film, which was by far the most preferred certificate in this research.

Mounsey drew up an interesting perspective that, though he would rather watch an 18, he mostly watches 15's because companies won't sell enough cinema tickets if rated 18.

So after deep thought, we decided that a rating of 15 would be appropriate for our film as it contains use of strong language and therefore could be considered inappropriate for persons 12 or under, however even though there may be gore and/or violence throughout the film if we were to make it feature length, it would only be moderate and there is also no use of sexually explicit content and therefore a certificate of 18 would not be necessary.

It also means that if our opening were to become a feature length film, it could be viewed by a wider audience and consequently would be more of a box office and general success.

Vlog 8 - Finally Refilming

Film Review: Untouchable

In lesson today we watched Untouchable (2012). This film was entirely in French and provoked a great deal of emotion from the audience at the end of them film.
Two juxtaposing men; Philippe who is an eccentric Parisian millionaire and quadriplegic and Driss who is a strapping immigrant from a broken home, form an unusual yet heart warming friendship as Driss becomes Philippes carer and bond over the twos vastly different lives and cultural opinions, inevitably at the expense of jokes using stereotypes.
Philippes friends start to warn him of Driss' possible intentions but as he dismisses this, the two become inseparable and creates an optimistic moral that if you give a man responsibility, he will act appropriately upon that despite stereotypes.
Like 'Arrival' (2016), the plot is not necessarily linear. We had been told the film was about disability and the non-linear scene sequence caused a sense of insecurity in us, as we presumed the fast car scene would be the cause of Philippes disability. Though as we later find out, we were wrong and changes our emotions, but for the better.

Continuity Mistake - Refilming

In our first feedback video of the whole class, Ms Foster mentions that the character that Zoe plays, the protagonist, lifts up the pictures and the letter, then puts them in the box. The issue was that she picks up a couple leaves with the pictures but when she puts them in the box, there are no leaves.
So we decided to reshoot it so keep the continuity. We're going to reshoot on Tuesday and i ensured that there are still leaves at the park.

 

Second Draft Feedback

Today, we showed my two friends our next film opening draft, after correcting all the editing errors discovered in our last feedback. They didn't have anything to correct and they especially loved the establishing shots. Doing this, we are able to get feedback from media laymans who are also in the age range of our target audience - showing that if our film opening was a full feature length film, it could be quite successful with our audience.

Class Feedback

On Wednesday, we showed a draft of our film opening to our whole media class in order to receive feedback. We got a lot of positive feedback but also, received a bit of criticism. For example, in the flashback cuts to my character; you could slightly hear me speak - something that we couldn't hear on the MAC. We were told to adjust the title placement so that it wasn't right at the beginning and to make the police sirens more realistic.

As a result, we layered a couple more different police siren noises onto the original sound to make it seem like there were more than one car chasing her. We ensured to completely mute the video sound of me talking and moved the title onto a different establishing shot that was a couple more seconds into the opening.

Doing this class feedback was really helpful because they gave us a new perspective on our opening and enabled us to see errors that we had failed to see ourselves. We were also enabled to get feedback from a vast amount of people, consequently identifying more corrections ergo ensuring we get the best quality opening possible.

 

Exposure And Editing Update

In the new scene that we added of our protagonist's sister, we thought that the shots were quite unidentifiable as a flashback. So, to deal with this issue we decided to heighten the exposure levels to make them seem more like a memory.
Then we decided to muffle out the sound of me talking to make the flashback appear distorted and faded. We then Foleyed on a voiceover of Phoebe, reading out the letter as my character. The voiceover is abruptly interrupted by Police sirens which we also Foleyed on.

Filming Day 4

Today we went to Phoebe's house to film the extra scene that we previously mentioned. As spoken about in this vlog, we filmed a POV shot of our protagonist when she was younger. We placed the camera facing the window so that the figure of her older sister was hazy to give a more obvious connotation that the particular shots were flashbacks. I was cast as the older sister and to continue the flashback theme, we are going to muffle out the sound of my voice shouting at the sister and instead, Foley a voiceover of Phoebe pretending to me reading the letter, to act as a recollection of memories that Zoe's character is remembering as she searches through the box.

The footage we filmed will add about 15-17 seconds onto our opening so we'll only need about 9 seconds more of establishing shots, which I am filming tomorrow after school.

Title Sequence

To make our film opening as similar to real movie openings, we decided to add conventions and forms of a real opening, including a title sequence. Our next decision was to decide which credits to add. The ones we decided on were:

• Starring Zoe Stamoulis 
• Starring Abbie Taylor
• Directed by River Flores
• Filmed by Phoebe Butcher

Film Review: Arrival

I got recommended, by one of my teachers, to watch the new film Arrival (2016). The film is about 12 alien spacecraft's, at once, all landing on earth in a sporadic pattern and the government hires a linguist to study the aliens language in order to interpret it and communicate with them.

As soon as i watched the film it instantly struck me as a great film to exemplify amazing shots and use of camera movements. One of my favourite shots in the whole film was when Dr. Louise Banks and some of the other characters are flying over the sea coast at night time in a helicopter (shown below). I liked that shot because the shot slowly retracts with the helicopter and also doubles as an astounding establishing shot. In fact, almost all of the establishing shots are amazing through this film, especially the shot that pans over the alien spacecraft that is placed in Montana. 

The plot is incredibly intriguing and challenges the typical conventions of films and their time sequence. Unlike most films, Arrival doesn't follow a linear time sequence. Instead it makes you believe that the events where chronological and the actions that occur were a consequence of the events that started the movie until the end when it is revealed that those occurrences where in actuality, the ending of the movie and the result of the films actions. 

Vlog 7 - A New Scene

We decided that, because we needed an extra 16 seconds at least of footage, we were going to add in an extra scene. The scene will need to be shot at someone's house so weather conditions are no longer an issue. The scene we are thinking of shooting is of our protagonists older sister giving the box to her to hide when she was young so we need to cast someone as an older sister which we are due to start thinking about soon.

Gender Representation In Our Film Opening

When discussing our characters right at the start of the term, we thought that it was important to challenge gender stereotypes in our film opening so we decided that having a female protagonist rather than male would help widen the audience interest. The teenage generation nowadays widely appreciates different genders having equal representation in films and in the media so we thought it was important as especially in a particular genres, such as thriller and horror, females tend to be represented as weak and dependent on men but we didn't want that so making our protagonist female would make our film more popular whilst also spreading the idealisms that gender equality is important.