Candidate and Centre Number

Candidate Number: 8137
Centre Number: 16121

Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog! :)

The Handler Pitch

Titles for Drive

MoodBoard

I chose these types of settings because from watching action/thriller film openings these were the most common settings they had. For example the Dark Knight the opening to that is in the city and an office/bank.

The makeup that I wanted was quite dark eyes so they looked serious, also if you see most spy movie they have got dark eyes as well. For example on the poster Salt the actress has got dark eyes to make her look quite mysterious, also it looks quite intriguing. The blood is up there because normally in action/thriller films there is also a fight scene and one of the characters always gets hurts so the blood is to show that they are in pain and the fighting is realistic.  

The types of actors that I have chosen to put on the mood board are actors that have all been in an action/thriller. Something that they all have in common is that they are all men; I think is because it’s usually the men that are the heroes and the women that are the “damsel in distress” This is why for my film opening I would like to have the lead role to be a women so it’s not the same as the other films.

The props on the mood board are very classic action/thriller. From all of the film openings that I have studied so far they have all included a gun, which I think out of all the props I have on their makes it the most important genre significance.

The costumes that I have included are mainly linked to the type of character that we are basing my film opening around. I am doing a spy film, which means that the costumes link in with the theme because the main clothing is black, but it’s quite stylish because spies look good with what they are wearing. Also they normally wear sun glass to hide their identity.   

The lighting that I have chosen to put on is very dark and mysterious. The surroundings are dark and have some light on the actors face to so their facial expressions but also it makes them look quite eerie. 

Location research

This would be a possible location for my film opening because, ours is about a ex-spy. By having her live in quite a rural place will show that she left because she wanted to settle down and wanted a family because it’s nothing like what she had to deal with in the city. Also by having it in quite a calm place it shows she wants to let go of the past and move on but also she is trying to make it hard for people who she has caught to find her. Personally I think by having it in a ordinary home it will make the opening realistic and more relate able, so as the film goes on hopefully the audience will connect with the character more. This would be easy to film here because I can get to it easily and I do not have to pay to use it and I can re decorate it to the way I want it to look like.

Another possible location for my film opening is London because; this is where most of the action will happen. London is always busy and it’s exciting. This will make our film opening realistic because the plot line of our story will fit in and it will look like this would actually happen.The only problem with filming in London is that it would be very expensive to get there and if I need to re-due any of our shots then I will have to pay a lot of money just to get there, also because it’s so busy it will be hard to get good shots of the action.

Make up research

The makeup that I wanted for the opening film would be simple and natural, because I wanted the audience to see the real character, not the character with make up on but just her. Hopefully by doing this the audience will get to know the main character and see who she is without having any more detail of her personality. This will be easy to do because all the actor will need is some mascara and they will look like I want them to.

When the main character is called back into the field she will become who she was. This means that the makeup will get darker to make her look more mysterious and see her fit into the spy character. From having dark eyes this will totally juxtapose from what she looked like in the opening so the audience can see the characters progression. This will be a little harder to do as I do not know how to do this. This means that I will have to watch tutorials on how to get the actors eyes like this.

Costume

This is what I want the main character to be wearing for the opening scene because, it’s something you would wear everyday if you are going for a run and that’s what the character will be doing during the opening scene.  This will be easy to get as most people already own a pair of jogging bottoms and a casual jumper they can through on.

Research on what pictures to use

Overall from asking a random selected people, which three pictures makes the actors actually look like a family. The three that were the most popular were 1, 2 and 10. To make out movie opening more believable I needed pictures of the family hanging up on the wall and the three that were the most popular, I will use them so it's the public view on what looks better so I have a bigger chance of getting it right.  

Audience feedback

Overall the session was really helpful, as we got to know from our target audience if our film opening was easy to understand, because if it wasn't we would be able to find out ways in which we could improve our sequence to make it easier to understand. Our average score for understanding was 7, which meant that they could mostly understand what was going on. We knew that we were not going to get 10 out of 10 as we did not want the audience to completely understand what was going on, because from them not understanding what was going on it would intrigue them to watch the rest of the film. We also asked them if they would see it in the cinema, this was an important question because our film was going to be in big mainstream cinemas like Cinema world. From this we could find out if our target audience would actually come to see our film, and as a result we now know that we should go for big cinemas instead of independent cinemas because our audience will want to go watch it. 

Question 7

Question 7 Looking back on your preliminary task – What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To Full Product

We started our preliminary task with no camera or editing experience, so the whole task was a learning curve for the both of us. The hardest part of filming our preliminary task was filming in the dark. As amateurs to filming, we threw ourselves into the deep end as getting the right light for the camera to pick up was extremely difficult. However, we used the lights from camera phones and torches which were enough light for the camera to pick up whilst creating a spooky atmosphere to go with the horror genre of our preliminary task. The editing of our preliminary task was tricky as the criteria for the task was very specific, for example, we had to match a door opening exactly to fulfil the match on action section of the task. As fist time editors also, this was extremely hard to master due to the complexity of the editing software and getting to grips with the preciseness of the film editing itself.  The researching stage was much simpler, we knew what we wanted to find and what we wanted to base our task around so the planning and the visualising our idea was straightforward. We then had to put our idea into writing by making a storyboard. This was a lot harder than we imagined as it was hard for other people to visualise our idea due to some drawings being very poor and inaccurate.

Our film opening now was much easier for us to get to grips with. We understood how to work the cameras now and we knew what the best shots to use and how long the shots had to be to keep the film interesting. The planning was much easier also; making the storyboards simpler and the research more in depth helped us, as a group understand what our film would look like. The final editing was simpler as we knew what we were doing and where shots and music should go. We used a range of camera equipment, such as tripods. This was to help us gain a good static shot and also help us to stable the camera for the clearest and steadiest shots. However, the hardest part of the making of our film opening was the titles and the making of the production logo. The titles were difficult because we had to find the perfect place for the titles to fit. Also we had to make sure that the names we were using weren’t too long or they would take up half the shot. The production logo was extremely challenging as Adobe After-effects was very hard to use and understand. We used a website called videocopilot.net to help us with making the logo. After one failed attempt we got to grips with the software and made a logo that was simple yet effective. The logo also represented the genre and the logo is Egyptian style and represents action and adventure.

What have you learnt from your Preliminary Task

Risk assessment

Activity assessed: As media task filming	Assessment date: 15/12/13	Assessed by: Kayleigh Umfreville Ryan Lomas
Activity location: house	Who is at risk: actors and camera woman	Next assessed by:	Approved by:
Activity location: The street	Who is at risk: actors and camera woman	Next assessed by:	Approved by:
HAZARD:	Risk level Before High, mediocre  or low	Risk level After High or low	Control measures Reducing the risk to a minimal risk
Failing down the stairs	Mediocre because there will be nothing on the stairs that the actor can fall down, however, she could still trip over her feet, so there is still a chance that she could hurt herself.	Still mediocre because there is nothing that I can do to make her not fall over her feet apart from warning her before she goes down the stairs, but there is still a chance that she could fall over.	Make sure appropriate foot wear is worn so that there is a reduced risk of slipping and falling. Also she could look down as she goes down so she can see what she is doing and as a result reducing the chance of her falling over.
Tripping when running	High: because there could be certain cracks in the pavement where she could fall over them or there could be stones that could make her unbalanced.	Mediocre because there will always be a chance of the actor falling over but I will point out all the places that she needs to be careful of so when she gets to that part she can easily go over it avoiding her falling over.	Make sure appropriate foot wear is worn so that there is a reduced risk of slipping and falling.
Camera woman falling over and crack equipment	High: because when doing a tracking shot the camera woman could drop the equipment and the camera may crack.	Low because with all potential trip hazards removed and things that could injury someone if they fall are removed.	Make sure appropriate foot wear is worn so that there is a reduced risk of slipping and falling.
Family members getting in the way	High: Could get in the way of shots which will make the shot lose the effect on the audience because they will now be detached at what it going and will watch the people that are accidently getting in the shot	Siblings and parents are kept away from shooting areas so they can not intervene.
Hit by a car when crossing the road	High: because when crossing the road a car may come out and hit us.	Low risk because camera woman will keep the equipment away from the roads so they cannot get hit. However for the actor when she crosses the road I too have to look out for her when crossing so we avoid getting hit by a car.	Making sure that we look both ways when we cross.

Personal protective equipment needed:	Provided by:	Level of first aid provision needed	First aiders Debbie Gemmill
Nearest telephone: In my house		Nearest 24hr hospital/doctor	Orsett hospit

Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This project has given me an insight into Media in general and all the aspects of it; from research and planning to filming and editing.

Research

When researching into film openings and into genre of films it became apparent to us that there are a alot of different things we’d be able to do. We were able to attend a BMI conference on the art of film making. This allowed us to get a real insight into the art of film making and also allowed us to understand what the examiners were looking for. The experience was very interesting and enabled us to understand exactly what was expected of us. Also when researching into titles we were able to access a website calle www.artofthetitles.com This website was extremely useful when looking into the order of titles and the different ways that they would appear on the screen

Pre Production
the planning of our shoot was extremely helpful, it gave us a clear indication of what needed to be done and roughly the time it should take. Also what each shot would look like and what it would have in each shot.

Story boarding
when we produced our storyboard we were able to breakdown shot by shot that we wanted. We probably should have taken a little more care in including the detail into the storyboard as when we came to shooting we found that although we knew what we wanted, we found it hard to shoot. This definitely something we learnt from this project, because next time we would make sure that our story boards and shot lists are very detailed and we would ahve everything planned ready to prompt us, because it would allow us to avoid mistakes and it would be more efficient with time as we did not have long to film it.

Production

 Lighting
we were originally going to shoot the outside section in the morning, at around 5 o clock, because at this time there would have been a little light to make it look very early in the morning. But we thought about the limitations of this and decided to shoot her in the morning at 11 o clock. This meant that lighting did not restrict our filming, because the sun would be high and bright at this point of the day. We could not film throughout the day and not worry about changes in lighting affecting our sequence, because of her running outside and in each shot the lighting changes then it would lose the effect we wanted it to have on the audience.

However, lighting also proved to a problem. We found it difficult to get the lighting right for the interrogation scene. On our practice shoot, we thought that the light that was already was in there would work best as it was quite dull. However, after capturing and putting our sequence together we realized that this would not work. The lighting had to be much darker and there had to be a stronger contrast. When we re-shot we used a small LED light to achieve this contrast in light. I learnt about the importance of lighting to represent a certain genre – dark lighting is linked with an action/thriller. After this mistake I was able to learn how through the use of different technologies different feels can be achieved. After using the LED light we achieved a much better and more accurate representation of an action/thriller movie.

Camera

We got used to the grips with this hardware equipment during our preliminary exercise, because from the cameras that we were using we found out that it cuts off really quickly so we had to wait a couple of seconds before we stopped recording.
On our practice shoot we experimented a great deal. We wanted to give our self a lot of material to choose from. For example when we did the outside shot when we were looking in, filmed it loads if times from different angles and different lights. From doing so many different shots of the same shot we could see which one turned out the best and what would add to the effect on to the audience.
We tried:

·         Zooms

·         CUs from different angles

·         Different lighting

·         Different shots which were not originally storyboarded.

These worked really well; as some of the shots used in our final sequence were not initially story boarded but look good in our final piece and really add to it.

I learnt a lot more about the whole filming process and the difficulty of different shots. When recording a tracking shot I found it quite hard because it was difficult to maintain a steady pace while following the actor on screen, and keeping the camera still. CU and still shots were much easier as once they had been set up; no movement of the camera was involved so there was less room for error. Also I learnt that you cannot always film what you had planned out because sometimes your ideas do not work which means you have to think up different ideas or slightly different so it can be easy to film, or you think up really good ideas on the day which would make the scene fit better to the genre we have. 

When shooting we used the automatic setting on the camera, this sometimes meant that some of our shots were out of focus for a couple of seconds.  I know how to use the manual setting on the camera that we used but it does take a long time to get it into the right settings to find out how much you have to turn the lens too. If we had more timer to film then I would of changed to camera to manual to see how it looks and experiment with it.

Tripod
The whole filming process allowed me to learn about the fragility of some of the hardware equipment. When filming a tracking shot of Megan running the Tripod got damaged, to the put where it was no longer useable. This highlighted the need to look after the hardware properly because we were being cautious and it still got damaged. Luckily one of our group’s dad has a tripod that we could borrow, and we were extra careful when filming the tracking shots.

I learnt a lot from this project and feel much more confident if I had to use the hardware again. For anyone doing Media, I would advise them to practice using the camera and equipment prior to the shoot (The Preliminary Exercise helped me to familiarize myself with the equipment), because it does take a long time to understand how the camera your using works.

What worked well?

·         Capturing the footage

·         Using the razor tool and putting the sequence in order to create a narrative sequence

·         Adding effects such as a black fade.

·         Adding titles and using cuts to black

·         Linking and unlinking sounds to achieve continuity

·         Foley sounds

·         Using Adobe after effects to create to production logo.

Problems that arose and how we solved them

·         We had trouble with filming the phone shot where we saw the message pop up. However this did not work so we filmed it from a different angle and used it in a different way to make it work.

·         We finished filming; however it was not long enough. To solve it we worked out another day of filming and planned out everything again to what was going to happen and we had to film more, which would be really good for our genre signifiers.

·         Music was very hard to find because when we looked at some on YouTube they were all very dramatic and we only wanted subtle music that would keep the audience interested but does not make them focus on that. Also we could not find any music for the interrogation scene so we ended up not having any because it looked a lot better.

·         Finding a place for our main title was hard because there was a shot at the end which was perfect for the main title, however, it made our sequence look like a film trailer. To solve that we filmed more to put after it so we could have the title in that place.

What we have learnt

·         We have learnt how to carry out all of the processes of editing listed in the what worked well section

·         We have learnt that editing is extremely time consuming and takes patients and effort. We worked well as a team. We both cooperated and we all put in maximum effort. This was essential in turning out a good project.

Editing

When we began editing we knew nothing about the software or how to use it. We had never done Media before. Luckily we used the software when we did our preliminary, so we knew the very basics of it, but we wanted to know some of the techniques to see if we could make our sequence better, so we watched some tutorials on YouTube to get more of a feel to it.   I found this very helpful, as none of us knew how to use it. I am now much more familiar with all aspects of editing from capturing the footage to adding music and sound effects. With editing it is something that takes time and patients, there are always things to improve and work on. There are also many different effects which can be used such as a dissolve and fades. The editing time allowed us as a group to experiment and explore the many different creative possibilities and choose the one that worked the best. I enjoyed working as a team as everyone’s input was valid and taken into account. The hardest part of editing was adding the foley sounds because we had to get the timings just right for it to look it was the actual sound. We recorded some of our own sound effects for example the door opening, dropping the bracelet and the shoe hitting the floor. This gave us a good experience with creating sounds that we had to record our selves because it means that we can experiment and find out what actions work out the best.  

The pieces of technology that I used frequently

Blogging

Blogging was a technology that I used on a daily basis, because I uploaded all the research and the things I learnt in class up on my blog. This was really useful as I could always look at it anywhere I was, which meant that I could easily access my work.

Internet

This played a massive part in my film opening, because all of my research was based around this it was how I got to look at different film openings that I did not have on DVD. It allowed me to upload the opening on to face book to get feedback from other users. Which was really helpful as I got different opinions.  

Question 5

How did you attract your audience? from umfrevillek

How did you attract your audience?

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As we was making an action/thriller film, we decided that out target audience would be more aimed at the younger generation as they are more suited to this genre of film. We felt this because most action/thriller films, for example James Bond, are more aimed at the younger audience due to their extreme, action packed storylines and younger, more attractive actors. In the opening this was key to establishing the genre and attracting our target audience. For these reasons we chose younger actors. We chose younger actors to relate more to our desired audience.

The main audience that we targeted was 16-25 year olds. We didn’t specifically chose a gender to aim our film towards, as we felt that our character and storyline suited both genders.  We considered the male gaze when choosing our main actor. We felt that a female lead would attract more of a male audience whilst also still appeal to a female market. Males would find a female lead role attractive whereas females find it easy to idolize a character of the same gender. Feminists view the theory in three different ways: The way men look at women, the way women look at themselves, and the way women look at other women. This was perfect for us to use a female lead as all three views will complement the film perfectly.

As the film is a high budget, it will be distributed to high profile cinemas across the country, for example, Vue and Odeon. This will give us a wide range of viewers; this also means that our target audience is directly targeted. The film will then grow popular as larger cinemas are more convenient for viewers to see our film.

Our target audience will tend to watch blockbusters as they are a higher budget, which means that the features that the film has, for example explosions will attract the audience because this is the type of features that they like to see within a movie. Also big actors and directs because this means that the film will have high expectations and the audience will rather go to see that instead of an independent film.  Independent films are more artistic which would not appeal to my target audience because they want a movie that will appeal to the mass market.

The audience will want to go see a film mainly because of these factors:

Director and actors - if it is a good director and is known to make entertaining movies that they will want to go see it because of the reputation.

The genre- when a person knows what type of genre they like the best they are more likely to go and see a movie of the genre because its something that they are interests them, and they find it entertaining.

Marketing- From a film having enticing trailers this makes the audience what to see a film because from that snippet they believe that they will enjoy that film.

Audience Profile by umfrevillek

Core audience

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

part 1 for question 2 by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate

In our media we wanted to focus on the two main characters from different social groups.

We wanted the main character Megan Lyons to be represented as a normal mother doing everyday things but with a secret. In order to do this we introduced the idea of her being a family member. We did this by having her receive a message from her husband telling her that he has took her child to school, also by having family pictures on the wall as she goes down the stairs, shows this that she is a family woman.   Being a mother it shows that she is caring and she always puts other people’s needs in front of her own. When deciding how to portray the character we realised the importance of the following:

Location

To represent this we made sure that the location of her house was a little bit messy showing that it’s quite homey and she works so she cannot always clean up. We thought that the paper chains on the wall would add effect to this because it shows that they are celebrating Christmas like a normal family would. Also a flower basket outside the house makes her look like she takes care in the appearance and makes them look normal.

 In the house we kept up all the pictures of her family because it makes her look like she has a weakness. She is the type of person who is very secretive. This helped to represent this particular social group. 

                                       

 Behaviour

The behaviour of Megan represents being a normal person because when she leaves her house she does not close the window or locks the door, which shows how comfortable she is, with the people that live around her which show that she is sociable with her neighbours because she can trust them. Also she represents an everyday person because of her facial expression when she sees the man that picks up her bracelet. Any person in this situation would be quite scared because they do not know who the person is.

Costume

We also realised the importance of costume for this character, because we wanted her to look a little bit scruffy because she is going for a run and as a mother sometime they just cannot be bothered with making an effort because they have so many things to do. In order to achieve this she wore her hair down but a little bit messy to make her look casual, also she wore her running clothes to make it believable, but she is also wearing proper running leggings and trainer to make it look like she does this on a daily basis which shows that she is very fit. She is wore a university jumper to show the audience that she is smart and old enough to have a child.

Character

Megan fitted in with the characterisation of the character because of the way that she carried herself she always looked like she was holding something back, also making her character look like a victim fitted really well. The way she portrayed the character represented this particular social group.

Next character Hayley “the spy”

The typical spy

Hayley’s character is the total opposite of Megan’s character. We wanted her to represent the other end of the social scale. She is quite loud and sarcastic and does not really care what people think. When casting for this character we wanted someone who was quite young and pretty.

When choosing her costume we wanted her to look as if she was wearing those clothes from a while, because she has been out on a mission that has gone wrong. She was wearing all black with a leather jacket which is typical for what a spy would wear. We also wanted her to look scruffy so her hair was quite messy to look like she has struggled to get out of where she is now. The makeup that we used was eyeliner at that was it because it gave her a edginess’ about her which was the type of character that we were going for. We did not use any fake blood because we thought that it would look really fake and unrealistic which would detract the audience away from what was happening , also we thought about how that the interrogator needed information from her that is why he has not hurt her yet. 

Behaviour

They way that she behaved was also represented a typical loud and sarcastic because she answers about and is really patronising towards the interrogator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxRYgUlIDpY

The Dark Knight Interrogation scene

Action/thriller movie consist of the person being interrogated to be loud, patronising and sarcastic. We used a similar idea to this. Slow shots were used to create tension between the characters, but as the interrogator lost his patients the shots get faster to show that he is getting frustrated because they are not getting what he wants out of them. In this way, this part of our sequence is represented of the age and the type of person they are. She is young and very defensive. 

However our media does represent another social group because of the men that are involved. They represent the dominate men in society. We made them dominate by having the man in the first half standing outside her house and showing up when Megan least expected it. The fact that this man only had one line in the whole opening that just his presence makes a person feel uncomfortable. In the second half he was the different side of dominate to the first half because the interrogator was violent towards the spy, showing that he does not care about the person he only uses them. Their costume was the same, a suit. This represents the social group because it shows that they are in the same business, which shows that men who wear suits and that are in the hierarchy tend to be more dominate over people.   

part 2 for qes 2 by lolkayleigh on GoAnimate