Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
How to use and edit sound effectively
We have used themed music that would fit in with the genre of thriller and we have also edited the sound to try and minimise unwanted background noise and emphasize speech without making it unrealistic. We also had to edit the sound to overcome problems such as cameraman speech needing to be cut out because of words such as "action" or "go" being said too late therefore being in the shot we needed.
How to use the equipment better (tripod) and learning how to use more equipment (dolly).
In the preliminary task we made a mistake with the tripod as we left the camera on a tilt and it effected the framing in our final product we made sure we didnt make the same mistake and we also learnt how to use a dolly system, a crane and how to use lighting equipment effectively.
How to edit match on actions more effectively.
.We have used a match on action in our preliminary task and also used several match on actions in our final product in the run away scene (e.g. One where the character jumps over a fence and several match on actions to show the running from different angles) in doing this we have managed to make the match on actions quite well and had to make sure our editing was good to make sure the scenes looked good and nothing was repeated or missing or that any movements were done wrong.
How to get more interesting and creative shots.
In our preliminary task we have mainly used mid shots with little variation into a close up shot. In the final product we have tried to make as many varied shots as we could, we have used several mid shots, we have also used a close up and a long shot. We then used a low angle and a high angle shot for extra variety. For creativity we used shots from behind treelines and up trees to add effect.
How to add idents onto the start of the film.
We had not put an ident onto the preliminary task so we learnt how to put one onto our final film and make sure that the titles came on and stayed on long enough to read and show the company name.
How to use fades effectively.
We had not used any fades in our preliminary task. In our final product we had used several fades, some of them were used to cover mistakes and others were used to show a passing of time. Learning how to use fades has helped us with our editing capabilities.
How to handle the camera better.
In the preliminary task there are several parts where the camera is shaking due to improper technique with the tripod. In progression from this we have used better technique with the tripod and tried to take care with the camerawork as much as possible to make it look as professional as possible. We have also made the camera shaky on purpose to create the effect of point of view better.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Final cut express
Before this project i had not used final cut before and it has allowed us to edit our film very easily. It is very efficient at lot easier than the old method of cutting individual frames that were not wanted and glueing back together the peices that were needed as in that method there was no room for error but in final cut express mistakes can be un-done. Also the sound can be over dubbed and levels can be changed which is very adventageous for realism.
Soundtrack pro
Using soundtrack pro has helped us as it allowed us to add copyright free music and other sound effects into a soundtrack that could be added to our film to make it sound better. Also the copyright free music meant that we didnt have to pay any fee to use the music which was good.
Apple mac
This has been the first time i have used an apple mac and it has been very adventageous as it has allowed me to use all of the software that we needed to plan, create and edit the film effectively. It is important to use mac's as there is less compatibility issues than on Pc's. Apple macs are used in the film industry so it has been a good experience for us to use them as it has given us very good experience that will help us in our future media career.
Handheld digital camera
We have used a handheld digital camera in our film. It was very useful as it allowed us to record all of our footage and put it onto the apple mac's by capturing it in Final cut express. The use of the digital camera has worked out very well for us as it is a lot quicker and convienient than waiting for the film to be developed etc.
Story board Quick 5
Storyboard Quick has helped with the planning stages of our product greatly as it allowed us to create the scenes easier and saves a lot of time rather than just drawing out the individual scenes and scanning them into the computer. It also makes it easier to put them into final cut to make an animatic.
Livetype
Live type has helped in the making of the product as it has allowed us to easily put professional looking titles onto our film.
Final draft
Final draft has allowed us to create the script for our film easily as it can be set to structure the script the way it should be which saves time thinking about structure and it is easier to type and erase mistakes on the computer than it is writing it out on paper
Compressor
Compressor has helped in the production of the film as it has allowed the film to be compressed to a smaller file size so it could be uploaded onto youtube faster.
We attracted the audience the same way in which any other film maker would, we chose to use popular thriller/horror conventions. After viewing many films similar to our intitial one, we had discovered that forest and teens are a common match i.e Cabin Fever or House of Wax, especially in teen horror/ high school slasher movies. This is where our idea of setting the film in a forest came from. Another favourited type of film is that of gang rivalries and stereotypical east end london films, i.e Adulthood. This is why we chose to base our character around one similar to those in the Adulthood films. It is demonstrated by his steretypical language and dress code. By first hand experience i have witnessed that films which involve the charcters behaving as todays youth does then, the younger audience are drawn into it as they can relate to it. It is the same effect in our film. Had we have the equipment and budget we would have been able to hire top celebs who are recognised by the public, this is one of the ways that large institutions such as Working Title attract their audience. Instead we stuck to conventions and also music was a key component in our film. We purposely chose a specific track to attempt to "thrill" audience, after all it was a thriller. The music was inspired by the film 28 weeks later, as the fast action of running combined with the dramatic rock-like music, produces a sense of tension and danger for the viewer.
here is an example:
this was amother film which inspired our piece, we followed some of the conventions in this film such as the fast paced editing and the music which is dipicted in this clip.
Q4 Who would be the audience for your media product?
Legal aspects
The opening two minutes doesn’t contain anything worse than what would be in a 12 rating but the whole film idea would have content that would fall into the 15+ categories.
·This is because parental guidance is recommended, as there are some mature themes, such as the mugging scene or the abduction scene, which is not suitable for people below the age of 12. They may see it as traumatizing or generally scary.
·The reason why the opening is not a 15 is because there are no sexual, gory or explicit content based scenes that would not be suitable for children of the age of 12, we believe that children of the age of 12 would be able to watch this without being effected/offended.
·Although throughout the rest of the film there may be scenes that are unsuitable for 12 year olds therefore the rating on the whole film would be a 15. The reason for this is our chosen genre was originally thriller, but our plot had lead to incorporating a horror twist, therefore our initial genre is a thriller/horror hybrid. These scenes are necessary to portray this genre effectively. Many thrillers/horrors are at least a 15.
Other aspects
·A part of our audience would be Thriller lovers because we have followed the conventions of a thriller therefore they would enjoy this type of film as they watch this type of film regularly and they enjoy these conventions such as murders and crimes etc.
·The age group of our intended audience would be 15-19 year olds this age group was our original focus, even though parts of it are suitable for 12 year olds, we aimed it at 15 to 19 year olds because our main character is around this age group so the audience would be able to empathize and associate with them. Also teenagers go to the cinema’s a lot therefore they will be able to watch this film at the cinema.
·Another part of the intended audience would be People who like horror, our film is a hybrid between thriller and horror, people with a particular taste for horrors would therefore be interested in this film because that is what they like and they would want to see it knowing that the film contains aspects of horror.
·British teens because the characters are all British and we aren’t large enough to include American actors etc or distribute the film to other countries.
These are points that we discussed and chose to talk about i the video below:
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Throughout this module i have discovered and researched different film institutions, both smaller low budget independant film companies and also the high budget famous film companies. examples of these instituitions include; Coffee Films, an independant company that focuses on short length films, Universal, one of the most famous high budget film insituitions that fund feature length, box office films etc.
Coffee Films
Coffee films was first set up in 1996 in which it erected from the foundation of previously existing company The Naked Pony Theatre Company. TNPTC was originally based in South East England which spent three years producing a series of innovative and acclaimed productions, from European and English classics such as Woyzeck (Georg Buchner), King Lear (William Shakespeare), and La Ronde (Arthur Schnitzler), to their original work Titanic (devised by school children under the supervision of the company). their casts were often minimal, pieces which included a devised set of 200 people was narrowed down to just 4 actors. As well as this, at the same time technical director Steve Piper produced the 4 minute short Televisual Man with friend Dave Smith under the company name Mr. Spambapstic Films. Mr. Spambapstic Films was another company in which Coffee Films expanded from. since 1998 the main focus of the Coffee Films team consisted of film shorts, animated sequences and documentaries. Progression was continuous through the 2000s, ideas of shooting feature length films with no budget was an optimistic goal of theirs. Having little money and connections meant Coffee films were unable to produce box office hits but they believed that huge budgets were unnecessary and that hard work and determination was the key to a satisfying film. Coffee films became famous for their documentaries especially that of "The last of the Scottish Wildcats", short films were also a big hit but Coffee films is a Britsh independant film company so views only really ever branched into Europe at best.
below is a list of some productions by Coffee films:
Last of the Scottish Wildcats (documentary)
Under Same Sky (music video)
A Plaster, A Paper and A Cheese & Pickle Sandwich (short film)
Jake Stigers: Out of Idaho (documentary)
3 (short film)
How To Disappear Completely (short film)
Televisual Man (short film)
below is an example of a Coffee Films production. It shows the entire length of the short film "3". the film is only 3 minutes long and cost nothing, this is very similar to our product.
Universal Universal was founded by Carl Laemmle in 1912. He began his investment in 1905 when he bought into nickolodeons. In 1908 he bought into the Yankee Film Company which quiclky evolved into the Independant Moving Pictures (IMP) Company. laemmle had a great success when deciding to name the stars in his films, it bought many customers to his theatres. In 1912 Laemmle merged IMP with another eight smaller companies from the universal film manufacturing company, this is where the word universal made its first appearence. Laemmle and other colleagues partnered Mark Sennett for the highly succesful Keystone Film Company. In 1925 Universal Pictures Company inc. was born. In 2004, the controlling stake in the company was sold by Vivendi Universal to General Electric, parent of NBC. this is where Universal are able to obtain their funding and marketing and is why they are sunsequent to box office hits.
Leap Year
The Wolfman
Kick-Ass
Green Zone
Repo Men
Robin Hood
MacGruber
Get Him to the Greek
Despicable Me
Charlie St. Cloud
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Nanny McPhee Returns
Devil
Skyline
Little Fockers
4.3.2.1
The clip above is the trailer to Fast and Furious 5, this is a box office hit and my reasons for only showing the trailer is that unlike Coffee films, Universal make feature length films so it would be against copyright law to broadcast a full length film.
Our product is only an opening to a film, the length of it is in the 2 minute mark so it may be classed as a film short. As well as this our budget cost nothing so we also fit the criteria of low budgeting usually preferred by Coffee Films. if we had the funding and equipment to create a box office hit then the original plot to the rest of our film opening may have been more suited for universal, but because of the length and annual cost it is most likely one to be distributed by an independent company like Coffee Films.
Our film is a short film and would not be distributed by universal and would be distributed by much smaller companies. A distribution company is a company that distributes a media product by either putting it online to be paid for download or sold as a dvd or put into cinemas.
An example of a distribution company that might distribute our product would be shortsinternational.com:
This company has a relationship with itunes and would therefore be able to connect to their large userbase and therefore get the film distributed very widely. Also they have offices in america and france therefore they will be able to branch to other countries too. When submitting a film you are asked if you are submitting a student film and which school you are from this shows that student films are acceptable therefore showing we could distribute via this website.
A second example would be tri7entertainment.com:
This company distributes short films between 5 and 30 minutes which would be good for us as our final film would be inside this range. They also distribute feature length films which is about 85 mins + which is good if our final film ended up being that long. Currently this company is not looking for any short films so we could not distribute using this website at the moment.
Our film is currently 2 minutes long and would not be accepted at many distribution websites as it is too short and it may have to be played in a film festival etc. Allthough when it is finished there are a lot more possibilities for distribution.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As we only initially have one main character in the opening of our film, we only really represent one particular type of social group. This is the hooded teenager stereotype. Our film is targeted toward 15-19 year olds and so we needed it to appeal to this age group, the way in which we did this was through the representation of hooded youths. Their violent actions and symbolic "hood" is very popular in teen films such as the popular "kidulthood" and sequel "adulthood" this is why we chose to use this as a guideline in developing our character.
As shown by this image our character is seen mugging an innocent victim, of the same age, their styles are contrasted as one is represented in a hood and the other in a shirt. This shows by wearing a hood our main character commits violent crimes, this a purpose stereotype as we wished to show our character as a "hoody" stereotype.
Another example of the stereotype we used is in the film "Shank". the following is the trailer for it:
A character for comparison would be Sam Clarke out of the film Adulthood. his characteristics match up very similar to ours, this is because we based various elements around him.
This image shows Sam wearing a hood, this is exactly the same as our character. in the film Adult hood Sam has a strong East London cross jamaican accent. This today is considered a convention of "hoodies" as well as drug abuse and committing violent crimes. In our 2 minute opening our character has a very similar accent to portray this common stereotype.
overall our character is represented as a stereotypical "hoody" which was used to address/attract our target audience of 15-19 year olds.
As shown by the Prezi, our film uses the basic conventions of thriller films such as using fast paced editing and the use of appropriate music and sound effects to develop suspense and tension for the audience. as well as this our film challenges such conventions as having a female victim. in our film the victim is male which in thriller and horror films a like is not normal procedure. another convention which our film challenges is that our victim is not specifically human, it is in fact a creature, also it does not use any murder weapon, this again challenges usual thriller/horror convention. The plot of our film also challenges thriller conventions as compared to famous thrillers such as The Dark Knight, the plot focuses around a crime, where as in our film the plot is not based around a crime so challenges thriller convention there.
