HCT Evaluation Question Links

Henry Cramer-Todd
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Questions 4 & 5
Question 6
Question 7

CF: Evaluation Question links

Connor Fitzgerald
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4+5 (in prezi format)
Question 6
Question 7

Group Tasks

Final cut of film
Preliminary task
Animatic
Wilderness woods
Location Reccie/ Pitch
Audience Research and Feedback
          1. Concept to greenlight
          2. Rough cut
          3. Final cut
Some audience feedback from the final production is presented in questions 4 & 5.

JP: Evaluations

Jake Piercy

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Questions 4 & 5
Question 6
Question 7

JP: Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

JP: Evaluation Q1

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HCT Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from your film opening?

• During the planning and development of our production we used various web 2.0 applications which enabled us to interact with platforms on the internet. For example we used Blogger. Being online, Blogger allowed all 3 members of our group to work together collaboratively by being able to edit eachothers posts and to help communicate our ideas with eachother by commenting on eachothers work.
• It helped us present our work and also we used it to include different forms of media such as Slide Boom and Slide Rocket, To present slide shows we had made.
• YouTube was used to present all of our videos including our Preliminary Task as well as the Wilderness Woods video and also any other work we presented in video format.
  Prezi was used to formulate slide shows in a different way and added a nice change to a standard slide show.We also used pictures and single text posts by embedding them into each entry.

•  We used my Canon 550D for the majority of the project. This provides different shooting modes such as 1080p at 25 or 24 fps and 720p at 50 or 25 fps. We decided to shoot at 1080p and 25 frames per second and in manual mode rather than automatic, enabling us to adjust exposure, shutter speed, ISO and apature to get the best shots in the situations we were in, as quality was important to us and we were not shooting scenes where the camera was moving vigorously so therefore 50fps was simply not necessary. 
• We used a number of lenses in the whole production including a 50mm prime lens with aperture of f/.1.8 and also the 18-55mm at f/3.4, both of course reaching up to the standard f/22.0 with everything in focus. We used the 50mm predominately as the aperture capabilities allowed to go down to f/1.8-opening the lens fully and letting as much light hit the sensor.This was key in the low light situations of shooting at night and allowed us the scope to tone down the lighter areas in post production. As we knew it is simple impossible to add information to a scene in post production that is too dark.

• We also used macro extension tubes to allow us to achieve super macro shots on the desk. Equipment we used for our production that we tested in our wilderness woods video included a track and dolly, a tripod, the Hague Steadicam and also a DIY dolly we made from skateboards and a tripod.This equipment allowed us to get smooth shots which further helped us portray the character we wanted to show.
• When filming our preliminary task we came across a number of issues. These were things such as the weather changing from shot to shot and leaving a door open when in the previous shot it was closed. So generally the issues were to do with continuity.                                
• Other issues included running out of battery when filming and keeping all the sound levels similar in post production. As in some shots there was a lot of background noise due to wind and murmuring from classrooms that varied and didn't flow when pieced together.

• To edit our final piece we used a number of computer programmes including Cinema 4D Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and Premiere Pro CS5.5. I used Cinema 4D to model the bullet shell and animate it falling to the floor as well as using plug-ins such as 'DPIT Effex' to produce the smoke. I used Adobe After effects to produce the titles by importing them and manipulating them on the x, y and z axis to get the right angle, effect. 

• The group used Premiere Pro to piece together the video and audio and export the final piece. This was easy to use and was great to work with to do the fast paced editing and edit on each individual frame.

• To Export of piece we used Premiere Elements and used certain settings to get the best out of the video we had made. We exported in 25frames per second at 1080p in an MPEG format.
• The codec of our audio was Dolby Digital and with a frequency of 48kHz and for our video we use maximum frame render quality.
• Our project is obviously on a smaller scale to that of a larger production of a full feature length film. In our film we shot over 3 days and used 2 different locations. Therefor the logistics of the our production was not hard to manage as it was just a case of getting members of the group and actors in the right place at the right time with props and equipment.
• We had 3 members of our group and 2 actors therefore it was not hard, although trying to remember everything on the day of shooting was hard and we found planning exactly what we wanted to do and the order in which to film the shots was important. The storyboard was also extremely helpful in helping us tick off the shots we had filmed. This is very different from a real film production process.
• For a real film the logistic would be much much harder to plan because of the scale and number of actors, different, locations, travel, catering, accommodation etc. This type of production would have a lot of people involved in different areas. There would be separate team for organising, and planning where everything needs to be at what time to ensure that the production process runs smoothly and efficiently.
• Another difference would be that a larger production would be shot and edited over a longer period of time. probably a year or so for a  full feature length. They would also most certainly have a lot bigger budget and therefore could afford to buy more professional equipment and travel to better locations as well as well known actors and professionals.

HCT: Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

• I believe that our film as a whole would be best aimed at the more mainstream cinema company, however at the same time one that is more independent. This is due to the fact that our production is low budget and we are not a well established production company.
• However the genres our opening hold are conventional of mainstream films. This doesn't necessarily mean that a larger conglomerate wouldn't distribute our product.
• Many larger companies have a separate subsidiaries that specialise in independent film makers and distributing their product.
• A good example of this would be Warner Independent Pictures. They are distributors of films budgeted at under $20 million and therefore we would apply for this however this is unlikely due to the fact that this is our first production and would be a risk for them.

• Our film would be shown in multiplexes as well as more independent cinema chains as our film reaches out to a mass market and mainstream audiences. However in much much smaller independent art house cinemas and the 'carrot cake' side to movie goers may not find a create attraction to our film as it is not particularly artistic and has not addressed any meaningful specialist topics that that audience would favour.
•  Our core audience would be males ages 16-24 as our film is a hybrid of two genres that favour this audience - horror and thriller.
• To get our film noticed we would have to take it to screenings at film festivals. We could take it to a smaller independent film festival such as Portobello Film Festival in London to try and get notoriety, however if want to get noticed by a larger company that could offer distribution on a global scale, we would need to take our film to a larger film festival such as Cannes or Sundance film festival. This would be harder to attract people to our film however if we did so successfully the benefits are very good.
•  I believe a distribution company that would be suited to our film would be 'Entertainment Film Distributors'. They specialise in UK Independent cinema and would be best suited to our product as they have history of working in films like ours.

• Their recent films 'Lockout' 'Piranha 3D' and 'Hugo' all contain special effects. Our film has special effects involved and they would be able to advertise our product effectively to gain the revenue we need to regain our cost, however small they may be.

Group: Evaluation Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In response to this question of the evaluation, we decided to create a video discussing what we have learnt from and what we have taken and used again from the preliminary task. Everyone in the group contributed to create this video.

CF: Evaluation; Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from making your film opening?

• We used a blog in order to allow us to collaboratively share our ideas and record our research, it also allowed us to recieve feedback from fellow students and teachers, which we felt would allow us to maxmise the standard of our work. Blogging is very practical for group work as it is open source in that the designated users can add to and edit the information from any device connected to the internet. The features of “Blogger” also allowed us to certify only people that we chose to be able to gain access to the blog, such as ourselves and the teachers.

• We used a Canon 550D with a number of lenses; we predominantly used a 50mm lens, and sometimes used an extension tube to allow us to achieve a number of macro-shots. We used a variety of other pieces of equipment such as a tripod to allow us to get smooth shots, and we used a steadi-cam to achieve this on shots where we felt the camera needed to move. We also used a track and dolly so that we could produce tracking shots.We did not use any sort of artificial lighting for our outdoor scenes, and only used regular ceiling lights when shooting in our interior scenes.

• Here is a picture of a track and dolly, which is very similar to that of the one we used in the production of the "Damnation" opening. It allowed us to create tracking shots that were smooth and gave our video a much larger variety of camera techniques.

• We also discovered a number of techniques concerning the equipment that allowed us to optimizethe standard of our production. A key example of this was how we were able to achieve the correct ‘white-balance’. To do this, we took a photo of a plain white piece of paper, and then set the white-balance in accordance to this photo. This allowed us to ensure that the footage that we shot outdoors at night was not grainy, and instead sharp and crisp.

• Here is a picutre of the on screen display controls that allows users to control and change the white-balance of a camera, which as I previously said, was essential for us to shoot a video that would not look grainy at night, and instead appears sharp and crisp.

• When shooting the production of our film opening for "Damnation", we encountered a number of problems related to a wide variety of aspects which we had to overcome, sometimes by improvising. A key example of this, was on our first film shoot, we were without the track and dolly, but still wanted to achieve some smooth tracking shots. To overcome this problem, we used two longboards (long skateboards), we set them parallel to each other, and rest the three tripod legs on the two decks.We would then push the boards along, thus creating the same effect as a track and dolly. This proved to be practical, but due to the improvised nature, it was maybe not as effective as what the actual track and dolly m ay have been. The displayed our use of our DIY device on a prevous post to the blog. The picture below shows this.

• The main difference between the production of our film opening, in comparison to that of a real film production, is that due to the small number of crew members, each member had to take on more than one role, and we often shared roles. A role that was shared for example was the editing process, in that we delegated seperate shots and sequences to be edited by each member of the group. Some of the roles that I felt that I took on was the production of props that were used in the final film opening, such as the map and the fake blood etc.
•  Another role I took on was being in charge of equipment. Obviously though, the three members of our group shared the roles of the creative triangle, as we all contributed in the writing, production and directing processes of our film opening. However, the production process of our film opening was similar to the production of a real film in a number of ways. On a more simple note, we followed 'unwritten guidelines' of more commercially made movies, such as the 180 degree rule.
• Another aspect of our film that is more traditional of a large budget film rather than an independently made film, is that we had to carry out a health and safety risk assessment, and had to inform people of the local area that we were shooting footage for a film for school work.

• The picture below shows the 180 degree, where the camera can move anywhere within the semi-circle, but it shouldn’t stray across the read line. Otherwise, cut shots between the talking characters would have them facing the same direction. The picture below displays the 180 degree rule graphically.

• The editing process for our group was significantly lengthy due to a number of aspects, most notably though is the use of montage edit, the large use of special effects and the use of motion tracked titles (both the movie name title as well as some of the credits). For editing, we predominantly used Adobe premiere for editing clips, colour correction etc. For designing and motion tracking titles, we used Adobe After effects. One of the shots in our film opening included the dropping of what the audience can infer to be a bullet casing, to model and animate this shot, Cinema 4D was used.
•  The first process of editing was looking back at our different takes of each shot and scene, and deciding which take we liked the most, we would then import these clips into premiere, and put them into their basic order. The next stage of post-production was choosing a font to use when displaying the name of our movie ("Damnation"). Using www.Dafont.com, we found a font named VTKS seven, which had a very discordant and scratchy persona to it, which is what we were trying to convey, and so we down-loaded the font and decided to use it. Next, we had to decide what kind of transitions to use between shots.
• We found a number of images on the internet consisting of a black screen and with scratch marks, these images appeared very rough. We used these images as transitions, but put them on to a low opacity, and made them appear to shake, again, this added to the theme of discordance. The fast cutting rate that we had been planning to use was easy to achieve, we simply used very short pieces from each shot we wanted to use. Although the Canon 550D presented colour extremely well, we decided to further enhance the appearnece of the shots by colour correcting many of the shots, this was done in Adobe premiere elements which made it extremely easy.
• Below is a picture of the DSLR camera we used to shoot the footage for our film (canon 550D), as well as pictures of the 50mm lens with an F/1.4 aperture we used, and the extension tubes that we used which allowed us to achieve macro-shots.

• The 50mm lens with the F/1.4 aperture allowed the camera to receive large amounts of light, and this was essential for us when shooting footage at night to avoid resulting with grainy and bad quality shots.
• The use of the extension tube was absoloutely vital in making our choice of camera shots stand out, as it allowed us to produce extreme-close up shots of items, objects or characters. To create such shots, most would think that we used another lens, but due to our micro-budget, we decided to use an extension tubes, which are financially effective. A macro-shot in our film opening is displayed below, where we wanted to show the discordance in the antagonist's behaviour, a macro shot was used to show an extreme-close up to the hand of the murderer.

• I have also learnt a lot in terms of creating buzz for a media product, to do this, I have used a variety of methods, but the most effective ones have been the use of viral marketing through Web 2.0. Firstly, I posted the film opening to "Damnation" on my social network pages, thus allowing friends, family and people I know to view the media product, many of these people then shared the video with their social group, and this carried on until we had a substantial amount of views. We have also been promoting our film opening on "hot-pages" (pages which are receiving a lot of visits on YouTube and the internet generally), we found that the best way to do this, was find "Youtubers" that have a loyal audience, who will view every video from a page that they subscribe to, as soon as this video would be released, we would post our film opening on that page.

JP: Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

• I believe our final media product would be more aimed towards independent and mainstream cinema due to it being a hybrid of mainstream genres with a low budget. Another reason we would be aimed towards this smaller, niche audience is that we are not owned by any very large conglomerates such as 'Time Warner'. However, our production is aimed at a younger audience than those generally attracted to independent cinema, and therefore i believe that mainstream cinema would be most suitable for us. 
• Our final production is similar to that of 'Monsters' (Edwards, 2010), because all special effects were done in the director's hotel room, similar to ours being done at school. Monsters was also filmed with guerilla tactics, similar to ours as we shot it all in two different nights for the two different parts. 'Monsters' was released to mainstream cinema, and considering our media product is quite similar in terms of production and editing, mainstream would be also be most suitable for our production.
• I believe our film would most likely be screened in a mixture of large multiplex cinemas and smaller, more independent ones, due to it being a mainstream audience. The audience in an independent cinema would not really be as suitable for the film as a mainstream audience would be. The core audience would be males aged 16-24 due to the hybrid genre of horror/thriller, which is most popular with that age group in males.
• In order to find a distributor for our film, we would have to screen our film at a film festival like Cannes or Sundance, which are intended for distributors to attend and find films which they think could be successful. We would be most likely to attract mainstream or independent distributors, such as 'Vertigo Films' or 'Pandora Cinema' respectively. After a few distribution companies have shown interest in the film, we would have to choose which ones we think would be most suitable for worldwide and national distribution of our film, and this choice would mainly rely on the aspects of money and the chance of success.

• I believe our film would have a very good chance of gaining the 250% profit that most films aim to achieve, due to our micro-budget and the film going on general release in mainstream cinemas. I am confident that our film would be very popular and profitable with our core mainstream audience, because it contains many things that our core audience are attracted to in films, and the special effects and original narrative that our film contains could also appeal to a wider audience than just the ones we aim for.
• Our use of viral marketing is very simliar to that of small independent films, for instance we have shared our video on several popular websites and YouTube videos, increasing buzz for our film and increasing the view count on our video, with people commenting useful feedback as well. We have also posted our video on social networking sites like Facebook and sent the video to our friends to maximise buzz.

CF: Evaluation; Question 3

Group: Class feedback from screening

• We screened our film opening to our peers in class, and handed out questinaires concerning the content of our project, for which our fellow students could reply to give us feedback. The questions covered aspects such as music/soundtrack, speical effects, camerawork, character exposition, narrative, the audience's favourite aspects and what could be improved. We handed out eight questionaires and recieved eight back, all filled out, this would allow us to optimise our final touches.
• The first question was about how appropriate the music/soundtrack was, and the questionaire offered the options perfect, accepetable, could be better or poor. Of the eight surveys, five people said that the music is perfect, while the other three said it was acceptable, from this, we concluded that the we were happy with this aspect of the production, and would therefore not need to change it.
• For the second question, the survey asked people to rate the quality of the speical effects (the bullet shell, the fake blood etc.) on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. The average score came out as 8.75 which would be rounded up to 9. We were extremely happy with this result, and thus decided not to change any aspecrts of the special effects.
• The third question was about the use of camerawork, people were asked to rate the camera techniques on whether they were professional, satisfactory, below average or poor. 100% of people who filled out our survey said that the camera work was professional, and we were captivated with this response.
• People were then asked to rate the characters on a scale of 1-10 (again with 1 being the worst and ten the best). The average score was 7.75 which we were satisfied with, but we did think that if we were to go through this process again, we could of paid more attention to illustrating the charcter exposition.
• The next question was about how easy the narrative was to comprehend and follow from the point of view of the audience. The options were: very easy, easy, hard or very hard. 2 people said very easy, 5 said easy and one person said hard. Again, we were pretty happy with this outcome and felt no need to change anything in this aspect.
• The next question allowed the audience to rate different aspects, firstly it was whether the character was mysterious or obvious, with 1 being mysterious and 5 being more obvious. The average result to this was 1.75, we were happy with this, as it meant that the murderer was closer to being mysterious which was what we were aiming for. Next was whether the murderer was more unusual or average, with the average result being 2.25, meaning that the antagonist was close to the center of the spectrum, which wasn't very helpful, but at least we learnt that perhaps the characters persona was not conveyed as strongly as it could of been. Lastly, was whether the antagonist was more sane or insane, with the average result being 3.25 meaning that the audience viewed the murderer as insane, which was definately one of the main concepts that we wanted to illustrate.
• The seventh question was an open question concerning the audience's favourite aspects of our production, generally we found that the most common favourited aspects were the motage editing style, the use of special effects and camera techniques as well as the general quality.
• Finally, people were asked which aspect of our production they thought could be improved. The most common answers for this question were that the victim's sins were not conveyed strongly enough, again this could be a problem with how well we conveyed the character exposition. Some people also said that the production was possibly too long, from this we learnt that if we were to go through this entire process again, we could ensure that the film does include a variety of different aspects.

CF: Evaluation; Question 2

How does you media product represent particular social groups? 

• Little major social groups are represented in our film, the antagonist (the murderer) is conveyed in a very discrete manner as little or nothing is shown about him/her or their identity.
• The only other character who is shown in our film is the murder victim, who is only shown after she has been killed. The victim’s social group is conveyed through mise-en-scene, as the white t-shirt shows how plain she is, which allegorizes how she does not belong to any specific social group. This also implies that she is almost 'neutral', and therefore innocent. This innocence was conveyed through the major contrast between her light-coloured appearence, and the colours of the murderer, the sorrounding environment and the blood (after she had been shot). These aspects are conveyed in the picture below.

• However, the reason for her murder, is that she has been shown to disobey the commandment of “Thou shall not worship any other Gods”, this is conveyed through the Devil/Evil related symbol on her wrist, which is shown through camera techniques such as the large close-up. This is almost a social group on its own, although it is far from a common one. It is represented commonly as dark, evil, weary and mysterious, which almost makes herself seem evil, although she is not the evil character. This makes the audience see the murderer’s killings as not justified, but slightly more deserved, we create this situation in order to allow the audience to build a relationship with the antagonist, which juxtaposes the persona that the character actually gives off, which is clearly an evil one, which is almost the driving force behind the entire narrative.

• Although this picture does not show it well, you can see the murderer inside the outlined red circle, this showed the antagonistic murderer to be lurking in the shadows, as if he was part of the darkness itself. This created a persona of the character, which was very mysterious and unknown, from which the audience could imply that he is an almost 'underground' character, and does not really participate in society.
• We feel that if we were to make the rest of the film, the more traditional and notorious social groups would have been recognized and represented.

CF: Evaluation; Question 1

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

• Our final film opening both challenged and supported the traditional attributes of other media products in the same genre and format (horror/thriller movie), we decided to use some traditional aspects to ensure the audience knew what the genre of our media product was, while we challenged some in order to almost shock the audience, in that they may have just started to believe that our product was simply a horror/thriller hybrid, but then the use of enigma codes make the audience question their thoughts so far, as they may start begin to think that it may be a phycological horror or a noir thriller.
• A typical characteristic of a horror/thriller movie that we incorporated into our film was that way in which the culprit of the crimes was very discrete, in that almost nothing concerning his personal appearance was given away, this was done through specific use of mise-en-scene which was researched through a survey. This was useful as at times, we were unsure whether or not to use this concept, but we used surveymonkey.com to create the survey, and sent it to our peers, friends and family to find what they thought concerning this. A vast majority voted for us to not convey much at all when it came to the appearance of the antagonist.
• An attribute of our film opening that we felt challenged the traditional features of horror and thriller movies, is that specifically, in other movies where the plot is based around the planned murders of a sociopath, very little is given away about the motive of the murders or the way that they are planned, which we felt was a crucial part of the narrative of our film opening. Our opening clearly shows that the motive for the murders is that people who have broken the ten commandments are being murdered, this also gives an insight into the antagonists thoughts, as it implies that he may be mentally unstable, which we felt would have been a major aspect of the film if we were to make the entire motion picture. 
• This creates a juxtaposition, between “Damnation” and “Seven” (Fincher, 1995) in that, “Seven” does not show the motive for the murders until a substantial amount of time into the movie, while we decided to show the motive for the murders within the first 3 minutes.
• Another major attribute of our film opening that contradicts the traditional concepts of a horror/thriller movie, is that the murderer appears to be very calm and collected, this contrasts with the murderers in other films that we researched such as “The Amityville Horror” (Douglas, 2005) which shows the murderer to be in a distressed mood, also in this movie, the murders are shown to be committed out of instinct, while in our media product, the murders are shown to be well planned, this creates suspense, as it makes the audience wonder “Why does he feel the need to kill those who disobeyed God?”.



• This picture is from "The Amityville Horror" (Douglas, 2005) and shows the antagonist to be very upset which is conveyed by the tears from his eyes, this is in a scene where he is killing his loved ones, but seems very distressed, and conveys the situation in a way that would suggest he has no choice but to commit these murders. This reinforces my point of murderers often coming across as distressed and agonizing.

• This picture displayed above from our opening to "Damnation" is from the scene where the murderer is approaching the victim before committing the murder, he is shown to be very collected and harmonious. The idea that the murderer would be so calm was an aspect we wanted to convey strongly, and after watching our production to the opening a number of times, it would be fair to say that perhaps we did not convey this as strongly as we had wanted to, which is something that we have learnt, and could use in any future productions.
• A traditional attribute of a horror movie that is common in horror movies, but not neccessarily essential, is the use of a fast-paced montage, specifically, these are sometimes used in films featuring a murder, and are used to somtime show the planning and motives behind the murders. A key example of this is in "Seven" (Fincher, 1995), where the audience were shown the murderer preparing to commit the murders, this scene had a very discordant and 'scratchy' feel to it, which we decided to use as inspiration. We felt that this complied with our resultant theme which had a noir-type feel, because naturally, the audience felt like a detective, as in their minds they were attempting to conclude why the murders were taking place?
• Another traditional aspect that we incorporated when designing the appearance of our antagonist is that we decided to predominantly only show the character's silhouette and only really show the character in  a dark environmnent. Concerning camera techniques, we thought we would avoid showing the antagonist's face on the camera, and so we only used long-shots when showing the antagonists full appearnece In order ensure that their identity remained concealed, which we decided to do after recieving the feedback from our online survey which was part of the audience research process, in which many people said that the antagonist's identity should not be revealed. The original idea to conceal the antagonist's identity came from "The Usual suspects" (Singer, 1995), where the mysterious character's face was not shown. They also concealed his identity by the use of dark environments (due to dim lighting) and  a dark colour based costume, his full body was covered up by the use of a long coat and a larger hat. This acted as inspiration for "Damnation".

Group: Lesson Update

In todays lesson we previewed the others groups final production videos before the proper screening on Wednesday. As we showed our video to the class we gave out the questionaires that we have prepared previously as we saw this as a good way of getting extra feedback from the other groups. We will post the results soon.

HCT:Q2 How does you media product represent particular social groups?

• There are two specific different social groups represented in our opening. The first would be the mentally unstable middle aged man and the second would be the young female.

•  The male figure is quite a common one to have in a horror as he appears quite disturbing to the audience and unnatural. 
• We have included this in our opening, the female role we represented as pale and innocent which is commonly used in smaller females in horrors to make the audience sympathise with her.

• The middle aged man is negatively depicted as dangerous in our opening and therefore this is a residual ideology as in a contemporary society it is unacceptable to consider a mentally unstable man as dangerous or a threat with no specific reason to believe so.
• However, in our opening the male is challenging the normal view of a middle age man as he is depicted as frightening and unsettling. The female is  represented as pale and innocent, mainly portrayed through mise en scene and her costume. 
• Her pale skin and blonde hard contrasts with the dirty floor she is laying on and the dark blood coming from her head contrasts dramatically with her hair. This same technique is used in the opening of 'Brick' (Johnson, 2005) when the body in the sewer looks very pale and out of place on the hard, cold, dirty floor in a strange position.

• I think that the fact that there is no dialogue in the opening, and that the antagonist is sometimes shown with canted camera angles, makes the character we wanted to portray even greater and unnatural.
• The little amount of the antagonist shown to the audience creates a mysterious feel to him and shrouds him in darkness and unknown. This makes the audience unneasy as the avergae audience member associated the darkness with fear of the unknown and therefor they fear the antagonist.

HTC: Q1 In What ways does your media product use, develop or challange forms and conventions of real media products?

JP: Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making your film opening?

• During the creation of our media product, we use a blog on http://www.blogger.com/ to help us work collaboratively and show each other research that we have undertaken that could be inspirational or helpful towards creating our final production. We posted any research we had made, planned and evaluated test shoots and discussed ideas for our final production together. The blog was extremely useful as it allowed us to share and develop ideas effectively as a group, and present our work professionally so our development and research processes were shown clearly to the teacher.

• When shooting our final production, we used a tripod, track and dolly for the outdoor shots as it helped keep our shots steady, we learned that this is completely vital as when shooting our preliminary task, some of the shots were shaky due to the lack of track and dolly. For some of the indoor shots, we had to improvise and use two longboards as a track and dolly because another group had rented it and we needed some moving shots. This was very effective and looked like we had used an actual track and dolly. We also used the Canon 550D when shooting our final production, whereas in our preliminary task we used the school camcorder. Lighting was a very important part of our final production, as we wanted to keep the shots very dark to make the antagonist seem more mysterious. 

• We overcame the problem of not having any fake blood for special effects on the day of the shoot by mixing red food colouring with golden syrup, and it created a viscous, red liquid which looked like blood, making the verisimilitude of our production much better. We also overcame the problems we had with natural lighting in our preliminary task by filming our final production all i one night, as the lighting/weather did not change.

• We did all of our editing on the video at school, and we avoided any kind of effects or transitions that would look amateur, like cross fades, dissolves etc, and just kept it simple. We created some of the scratchy effects by including grunge textures and keyframing the video so it would change light, position, etc. We colour corrected the entire video to give it a 'cold' effect, taking out some colour and reducing saturation, increasing the horror element of the piece. We also added a vignette to the piece, which carries conventions of film noir. We used Cinema 4D to create the bullet shell effect, and then colour corrected the shot using Adobe Premier Elements. The bullet shell was one of the most important parts of our production, as we believed it would make the entire video look more professional. We carried out a survey on http://www.surveymonkey.com/, and shared the survey on social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube, so we could get lots of feedback. When we got our feedback from this and interviewing people after presenting our final production, it was evident the bullet shell was successful and popular.

• We exported our piece straight from Adobe Premier Elements onto the computer's hard drive, and from there uploaded it onto http://www.youtube.com/ and backed the file up on two portable hard drives. Our production process could compare to some real life film productions in the way we learnt from previous mistakes and considered mise-en-scene, lighting and sound to the best of our ability. We also improvised at the scene of the shoot to improve our results and tackle difficulties, something professional film makers sometimes do.
• I have learnt a lot about technology and how it is very helpful with creating the right effects and atmosphere for a film. I have learnt how to edit movies on Adobe Premier Elements, and create and share surveys to receive feedback on possible improvements to be made. Colour correction was something I hadn't heard of before creating our film, however during the course of the year, I have learnt a lot about it and how it really affects the feel and appearance of a film. I have also learnt, during the evaluation, how to use sites like http://www.prezi.com/ and http://www.slideboom.com/ to present work neatly and effectively. We were asked to present our evaluation in different multimedia forms, and the prezi and slideboom created are evidence that I have learnt a lot about multimedia technologies and how they can greatly affect a production such as our own.

JP: Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• There are two social groups represented in our media product: Mentally disabled middle aged males, and young white females. The two groups are fairly common in horror/thriller films, as mentally unstable males are commonly conveyed to be dangerous social outcasts, because it is a good source for an antagonist. Young white females are commonly conveyed as innocent and naive, and we have done the same.

• The negative representation of the mentally unstable man is a residual ideology, as it is socially unacceptable to consider a mentally disabled person to be dangerous for no reason, whereas in our media product we have chosen a mentally unstable man because it challenges the social norm, and therefore frightens audiences as they do not know what to expect.
• The girl is portrayed positively, as being very innocent and frail, through the use of mise-en-scene. Her brightly coloured clothing and blonde hair make her look very vulnerable, and so when she is killed, the audiences will be surprised as she is an unexpected target for murder because she seems so innocent. She is depicting the traditional gender roles for females, as they are usually conveyed to be like this in most media texts. 
• The use of sound and camera/editing techniques reinforces the representation of the man, as the sound is quite discordant and ambient, not really matching what is going on, showing how the man is deranged and detached from society. The scratchy, 'grungey' effects also reinforce this, as the audience do not know when to expect one of the effects, just like they do not know very much about the antagonist or what to expect from him. The use of canted angles and some slightly shaky camera techniques also reinforces his discordant nature.

• Our media product constructs an ideological discourse quite conventional of horror/thriller hybrid films in British and Western culture, as the mentally unstable man is portrayed as a dangerous social outcast, and the young white female is shown to be the victim, an element common in many other genres other than just horror and thriller. The negative representation of the man is quite unconventional, however.

Group: Prezi presentation for Questions 4 & 5.

Group 8 - Q4 & Q5 - Who would be the audience for your film? How did you attract/address your audience? on Prezi

The above link includes a presentation created on 'www.prezi.com', answering questions 4 & 5 on our final production.

CF: Presentation style for evalution questions

• For questions 1,2,3 and 6, it seems appropriate to simply use individual text-posts to the blog in order to evaluate our project. We think that a text-format whilst including pictures and possibly short clips, is the best option for these questions.
• For question 4, we will be producing a 'prezi' presentation in order to discuss the audience for our media product. We think this is appropriate as prezi allows users to incorporate video, audio, pictures and data much more easily than that of a simple power-point presentation. This will be effective because we feel that including statistics and other resources from the world wide web to talk about why we decided to target the audience that we did may be useful.
• Similarily, we will use be producing a prezi presentation for question 5 due to the same reasons as previously mentioned concerning question 4. As these two questions are both focused around the same topic (audience), we feel that making one presentation to discuss these two issues would be sensible.
• For question 7, to compare our final project and our preliminary task, we will be producing a short-interview style video with clips from both the preliminary and final task. We will cover issues such as what we had learnt between the making of the preliminary and final tasks, how happy we are with our work as well as other people's views on our work, we will also cover other aspects. When displaying clips in this video that we will make, we may commentate over the video to give the viewer our thoughts etc.

GROUP: Final Film introduction:

GROUP: Final Film introduction:
Our entire sequence last for 3:03 including titles

Group: Consideration of lighting

• When we originally decided to shoot much of our film outside at night-time when their would be no natural light, we realised that we would have to largely consider how the lighting in the final-cut of our project would look.
• We decided to shoot at a location which had one-major source of light, this worked well has it created significant shadows, which was very helpful, as we had already decided as a group that we wanted to use shadows, for the "murderer" to hide in, to create a persona of 'the fear of the unknown'.
• We found that this decision was effective, in the shot where only the corpse is visible, some viewers noticed that the sillhouette of the murderer was noticable in the background, this is exactly how we wanted it to appear, in that he presence was subtle but noticable. This proved how effective our decision to use one source of light was.
• Another observation that we made, was that  

Group: Modifications

During our recent activity on the post-production process of the video, we have made a few modifications/edits to a number of different aspects:

• Firstly, as a group, we came to the conclusion that the font we had chosen for the title of the movie which was 'mail art rubberstamp', we decided that the font was not appropriate in that it did not tie-in with the theme of our film, we were attempting to give the opening to our film a very distorted look, and as a result, we opted for the font VTKS seven , as displayed below. We think that this is appropriate as it has a very distorted and scratchy feel about it, and can be used to create the illusion that the titles are actually scratched into some of the objects that appear in our sequence.

• Secondly, we also decided to change the point at which the title of the film would appear throughout the opening. Originally we planned to have a completely black screen appear after the opening sequence, on which the title would appear. We have now decided that the title will instead appear on an inanimate object in one of the shots which are set after the murder scene in the opening.
• We have also slightly modified the narrative of the opening, although we did not originally plan to, we decided at the time that we were filming, that camera shots of the murderer processing the photographs could be effective in creating suspense as to what the murderer is going to use the photos for. The shots  we filmed for this scene were very effective in the manner as previously mentioned, and we felt that they looked very professional.

Group: Evaluation and Feedback on Rough Cut

• For our lesson on friday, we were asked to create a rough cut of our footage so far for our final production. We recieved mostly positive feedback for our rough cut, with only very little negative feedback that involved the order of our shots, as it was quite unclear what was happening, and someone also pointed out that one of our shots needed to be shot again as it was too dark to see, this was the shot of Dan's feet walking along the pavement.
• Our positive feedback was varied and from many members of the class. Dan said our lighting was very good as it created a mysterious feel about the opening, and that it was very conventional of film noir. Molly said our opening shot was very effective for setting the scene. Dan also noted that our sound was very crisp and highly effective to support the mysterious feel. Rozzy noted that our use of pull focus and close ups were very attractive and reinforced the mysterious feel, and Miss Johnson praised our consideration of mise-en-scene.

Group: Evaluation of 2nd shoot

• We agreed with one of the actors (Dan Qureshi) to use his residence as a base for our operations for the few hours of filming, this was very practical as we was able to store our equipment and prepare our props and actors/actresses for the shoot.
• We arrived at the location which we used for the scene of the murder, we then consulted the neighbours to make them aware that we were shooting a scene for a film opening, to prevent any distress.
• Firstly, we filmed our establishing shot which was a shot of the environment sorrounding the location of the murder, we found that it was traditional of thriller/horror movies to have a wide-angle shot as an establishing shot.
• Secondly, we filmed the shot of the murderer (Dan Qureshi) walking towards the place from which he would murder the the victim, we shot a number of macro-shots including close-ups of his feet and an extreme close-up of the murderer's face. We also filmed a shot where the murderer is seen to be drawing something from his jacket, we used a stapler and a film canister to portray the look of him getting a gun from out of his jacket, as we were not allowed to use real or imitation weapons.
• Then we prepared the scene of the murder, we used chalk to draw a number of religious and cultural symbols to sorround the body, the victim then laid down in amongst the symbols, as if the murderer had killed her and then drawn the symbols. When looking back at this piece of footage, we were very happy with how the shot looked.
• We then filmed the scene where the murderer is photographing the body, the footage we shot here was satisfactory, but we were not thrilled. We decided that due to time constrictions and the lack of opportunities for our actors to come back and film that scene again, we decided we would use the footage as it was (although we would obviously edit it). We filmed some medium-close ups of the murderer taking photos of the body, the photos are almost a point-of-view (POV) shot from the corpses body, depsite the fact that she is dead.
• Finally, we filmed some more shots of the indoor scene, where the murderer would be planning the murders, these shots look very nice and realistic, this was partly due to the use of props such as a map containing photos, names and locations of the victims of the murders.
• Generally, we were very happy with how the footage we filmed at this shoot, we thought that some shots looked as good as we wanted them too, with most of them exceeding our expectations. One of our main worries about the productions process of our project, was that filming at night time could have looked grainy which would of had a very negative impact on the film in general. When looking over the footage, we were thrilled with how the night-time shots looked, and only required minimal colour correction for them to look good.