Question 7 EVALUATION

Learning how to use the cameras

The principal aspect to begin with was learning how to manage the cameras, the main attributes of the camera, IE learning how to use white balance, auto focus, inserting the memory in order to avoid problems in the future and produce well presented work.

Blogger

Blogger became really important to all the students as daily we had to blog about the different areas we learnt about in class, for example when we learned about final cut pro, adding sound and titles or maybe just blogging a brief summary of how we felt during the lesson, was it effective? did we understand everything? any problems?   more or less it became like our daily diary.

Final cut pro

After several practices with final cut pro, we were left to commence producing an opening to our thriller, final cut pro enabled us to edit our clip, take things we no longer needed, mix scenes together, make them longer shorter, add effects, and overall help us produce the excellent video we did.

  

Fonts

Personally, i did not understand how to use fonts and struggled at the start, but after good practice it was jade and myself who ended up producing the fonts for our thriller clip.

 

Finally, the truth is at the Beginning  of the course i did not know how i was going to get through so much work, and having to learn so many different attributes, but now i feel like an expert, and thankful with all the members of staff for their hard work with our learning.

Group31: NEWSPAPER PRACTICE VIDEO

Group31: NEWSPAPER PRACTICE VIDEO

Question 8

For our preliminary task first of all i was the actor, so i didn't film at all. We had technical problems with the first video, leaving it inconsistent and jumbled up. The rest of my group came in the next day, unfortunately i didn't have college that day and had a doctors appointment to go to.

Our understandings of filming and editing have improved significantly since our preliminary task was set. First of all our scenes were shot rather unprofessionally, this was because none of us had experience making films. There were 4 of us so not everyone learned how to use the camera at once so we progressed at different stages. One of the main problems were the shots were inconstant, resulting in a badly shot film.
After consulting one of our teachers Annabelle, she told our group how to make our footage more consistent, such as walking through a door mirroring the shot at the other side. Since then we have also learned how fade footage in and out to connect it to the next, helping us make the film more understandable when it changes to a different scene.

Another key skill we have progressed on is the sound of our film. Back when we did this preliminary we had little knowledge of the software we needed to use, therefore leaving in the unnecessary sounds and leaving us without a soundtrack in the background. As you can hear in the film below, there is unnecessary sound from the people in the room talking. This is very unprofessional and something we improved on making our final film as we knew how to change the sound on FCP and export it into SoundTrack Pro. Letting us add in effects and take out unnecessary noise.

We learn't how to use the camera, tripod and software to its best ability. So our films were stable, consistent and sounded professional. Over all i have learn't so much since our preliminary task and i'm really grateful that our media course is taught like this. We have had the help of such great teachers and technicians every step of the way, until the point were we don't need anymore help and feel confident that we can make films ourselves.

Unfortunately our class has had some trouble with our blog, as uploading videos and pictures hasn't really worked. I think this is because the files are originally on the college computers, not letting me copy them from previous blog posts. . At the moment i've been trying to upload my preliminary film shots, however it has been an hour and this is all its shown:

I have tried to use the software ScreenFlow which records what is on your screen and also through the camera on your mac, i would have used this to comment on the video while its playing. Unfortunately this hasn't uploaded. Hopefully i can use this in the future to analyse video footage.

Question 1 EVALUATION

SEVEN is a clip that we can really compare with and have many similarities, we have developed the use of conventions with our clip through the use representation and icons, the mask in our film represents the hidden identity of the killer. On the other hand, the pictures also provide the audience with a sense of narrative representation as indicates to the audience an immediate image that the character behind the mask is evil, in a way its confirmation that the character is evil and not creating a stereo type image no more. 

The opening of a film is very important, it either makes the audience intrigued and wanting to carry on or makes them not want to pay attention. We tried to make our opening  strong by having major impact on the audience, combining sound, representation, icons to make it really effective.  

Furthermore, the location of seven and our film portraits that image bad 'scary' as our target audience call it  as we provide a long shot of the room from the start, introducing to the audience a view that would make them start thinking ideas of what that room involves, the darkness, the red lights, the mask on the table, all playing with the audience imaginations.

In the same way, sound also gives atmosphere to the opening, it creates tension and suspense keeping the audience wanting to know more at all times, at the edge of the seats.

A critic named Stanley Kauffmann was giving his ideas on what makes a classic opening and he stated that “the classic opening to a film is first the Establishing Shot of the city like New York, followed by the tilting shot of the Building from bottom to top, and then through the window to the reception to the main office where the story begins.”

Question 4 & 5

To distribute our media product we would need to be backed by a well known distribution company such as 'Twisted Productions' who produced saw. They would probably take us because of the style in which our film has been made.


If i took a different approach and wanted to distribute it myself, i would enter it into various film festivals and competitions to get it known and liked by a wide audience. If it won the film festival that is a major advantage and when we released/made the trailer it would support us by saying it has been discovered in such a way it has won awards. Alternatively we could put the trailer on youtube, send the link around the web on friends blogs, social network sites and put them on other youtube channels and hope it goes viral. By having the video on youtube we can attract more people to view it if we put keyword such as festival award winning in the title. 


We could also advertise our film quite cheaply by have adverts on the internet before the most viewed videos meaning a large majority will see it. Other forms of adverts i would consider to be way to expensive and unsuitable for such a small production, unless it was back by a well known distribution company.


I would also make a limited number of DVD's and distribute them to various companies/ people that could help back my film. These methods would make sure my film would be successful as it has been proven with students that go private schools and actually hire actors to star in there thrillers. A example of this is:

I believe my thriller is much more thrilling than this example but this video has still got a considerable amount of views

Question 3

Our main target audience for our film would be teenagers ideally 15-18 year olds.
It would not be suitable for anyone under the age of 15 to watch it as it contains horrific violence and gore.
15 is the ideal target audience for a thriller as the majority of people who go and see films are interested in macabre.

The contents of the average bag/ pockets of viewers:

Question 2

I will comparing the similarities and differences between my film 'The Deaths Click' and 'Se7en'.

• Se7en uses more effects such as distorting the image, slipping out of focus or mirroring it at certain points to enhance interest and suspense. 
• The colours used are different, Se7en at first is lighter, and only fades to a red wash when the photos are being developed. By doing this it contrasts the two different atmospheres the director whats to create. 
• In Se7en the actor is doing more to keep you interested. As a posed to our film where the audience has to keep on guessing what the killer is doing. We intentionally made it difficult to see what the man was doing. This added a great effect of uncertainty.
• The red in our film is there to represent bloodshed, such as the victims blood on his mask. a picture is shown of one of his victims in a pool of blood. However in Se7en it is there to show he is developing his pictures of his victims, rather than already giving a sense of blood/murder.