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Question 4 and 5
Question 7

Final Cut
Seized final cut

Audience Research
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Final cut of Seized

YM - Group Evaluation Question 7

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

Before we could get on with filming our opening sequence, we had to produce a preliminary task, which ultimately, gave us the chance to experiment with the cameras, and different shots and angles that might be of use in our opening sequence.

For our preliminary task, we were given a brief to follow fully to show we were able to use new equipment and follow instructions. The brief was that we had to film a conversation, with the use of the 180 degree rule, film the opening of a door, and show that we have used continutity editing (the continuity editing was mainly used while filming the opening of a door, too make it look smooth and real). Also, the task was set to experiment with different camera techniques before we set out to film our footage for our full project.

Part of the planning process before we undertook the task of the preliminary task was to decide on a genre that we wanted as our opening sequence. The choices were, Horror, Thriller or Teen Drama. Having chosen the genre we wanted before we did our preliminary task meant that we could focus our filming of the preliminary task more toward thriller, in terms of plot and camera work and editing.

Following the preliminary task, sat down to discuss further the choice of genre and then to move on to create a plot that is conventional of this genre, before we could look at specifics such as costume and location. In our preliminary task, we filmed in school, which while there were restrictions, we didn't have to carry out reaseach to find somewhere suitable. Therefore, one major issue we came across was what location to use. We wanted to find a location that fully fit with the characters and plot of our opening sequence and we discovered we'd have to travel to find somewhere.

The planning involved in our first trip to do our owning filming included a reccie with the rest of the media students in our year to Wilderness Woods. Although the location was nothing like the one we had chosen, this trip presented us with a fantastic opportunity to play around with the camera and different techniques. Through this reccie, we discovered a couple of shots, mainly the dutch angle, that we thought presented our story incredibly well, especially considering our genre.
Before we could go to our first shoot, we had to know what we were doing on the shoot so we didn't waste time. To do this, we set out a plan in the lesson before the shoot and chose the shoots we were going to do, when and where. We used our storyboard to help us make this decision. We also wrote a small script for the small amount of dialogue we have in our opening, this meant we didn't waste time deciding what to say on the day of the shoot.

In terms of carrying out the filming and editing process, sorted 2 dates out where we set out exactly what we were going to film so we know we could get it done within this time frame. This gave us more time to edit the footage, which we did on premiere.

We didn't feel like we came across many restrictions. However, we did use a different camera to the ones the school were offering. This we thought would cause some problems in premiere but it turned out it worked exactly the same. The biggest problem we faced was not being able to have any interior shots at the Heygate Estate, meaning we had to find an alternative location for these shots. This wasn't a difficult task as Ali's garage presented the best option.

In terms of strengths and weaknesses concerning our final product, I think that there are plenty of each prominant in the sequence. I think the continuity editing and cutting rate of our running sequence was as good as we could have gotten it, and resembles that of a similar scene in many thrillers like ours.
Weaknesses definitely include the titles, mainly because we couldn't find a perfect place to put them, meaning they appear quite randomly. If we had more time this is one aspect we'd spent a considerable amount of time experimenting with.

I think the actual filming of our opening sequence went great. We only needed the two days we set as we knew what we were doing so got on with it and accomplished what we wanted. If we were to improve this in one way, I'd say the planning of the dates we go should be done further in advance, as we only planned these days a day or two before hand.

Group Evaluation Question 4 and 5

Who Would be the audience for your film? How did you attract/address your audience?

NOTE: Unable to embed prezi presentation. Please use the link below.

http://prezi.com/22ihqgolggtu/final-audience-research/

YM- EVALUATION (6)

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

Throughout the process of this project I have learnt many things in terms of technology. The main things being, blogging, filming and editing as prior to this project I had no experience in any of these areas.

Blogging was introduced to me as a completely new way of communicating and recording our progress. Blogging presented many challenges for me, not only learning how to navigate the blog itself but knowing the right way to present the blog and my individual posts. It took time to understand that writing in an essay format wasn't how blogs work, and that bullet pointing and using colour, highlighting and the bold key was the way to emphasise a point. Also, using images and videos to back up what I was saying in my posts was something new to me too.

Collaborating through the blog with the other members of my group was extremely important and something I had never done before. To begin with we were confused as to how collaborating through the blog would be possible, however before long we discovered commenting on each others posts was the most effective way. This meant we could keep up to date with what each other was doing while presenting our own ideas.

The filming of the product was another major learning curve in the process of making our opening sequence. Having never used a camera in this way before, it took several goes at many of our shots to get the positioning of the shot how we wanted it, especially because there were many aspects we need to bear in mind too. For example, the rule of thirds and the 180 degree rule. These things helped us use the camera in the best way so that the composition of each shot was the best it could be.

Personally for me, the final learning curve, editing, was the one I found hardest to get to grips with because I had never used a piece of software even remotely similar to that of Premier. This factor meant that I wasn't familiar with all the names of effects the software offered which made it hard for me to use and really quite intimidating. Editing things like the brightness, saturation and contrast was something I managed to do really easily, as well as playing with the chroma key to wipe away the blue screen we had put in place while filming the interior shots.

We had to go through all the footage we uploaded to our timeline and go through it all, to perfectly create continuity editing, to make the opening sequence look smooth.

Anchoring the soundtrack to the footage so it fit perfectly proved to be a difficult task, especially as the point where the music drops in our soundtrack had to fall at one specific point in our project to give the right feel and atmosphere to the running sequence. The task of fading the music in and out however, I found to be surprisingly easy.

YM- EVALUATION (3)

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

An independent distribution company is the most likely company to distribute our media product. This is because it is a low budget film and therefore won't have all the features to compete against the Hollywood thriller movies. Our product wouldn't have the famous stars in to entice people in to watch the films, nor would it have big stunts or expensive costumes and props to make the film seem better.

An independant distribution company we could use is Optimum Releasing

Many thriller movies are distributed by industrial distribution companies because of their ultra high budget, and famous stars. These companies are very unlikely to distribute our films as these companies tend to exhibit their films in the multiplex cinemas which appeal to the four quadrants. As the target audience for our film is the core audience, leaning slightly towards the males of this range, it doesn't appeal to the four quadrants. These industrial companies also focus on distributing the high budget films and tentpole films that can afford many extra effects that lower budget films cannot. It is because of these reasons that the conglomerate companies will not distribute our film.

YM- EVALUATION (2)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening sequence focuses on the social group of young, white males. Having males in our opening sequence conforms to the conventions of the appearance of this social group in thriller movies as stereotypically men are seen as stronger both mentally and physically and are therefore more able to handle the action and severe events that often occur in thriller movies.

We are portraying this social group in a rather negative light. Our opening sequence suggests to the audience that young, white males relate themselves to drugs and trouble due to the obvious fact that the protagonist has got himself into trouble and therefore is facing the consequences. There are implications weaved into our opening sequence through the flashbacks that the cause of all the trouble is a drug deal.

Mise-en-scene plays a major role in constructing this representation of young, white males. Stereotypically, young, white males in bigger cities appear to dress in tracksuits and hoodies and we conformed to this stereotype by dressing our protagonist in this.

The emergent ideology of this social group says that young, white males live in run down areas where the habitants come from a low economic background. We have decided to keep to this stereotype and pick a location that conforms to this ideology.

In terms of camera work in presenting this social group we use in our opening sequence, the repeating close up of the money in the first flashback reinforces the stereotype that teenage males constantly find themselves in trouble.

Using a male as our villain as well continues to conform to stereotypes that say women are weaker and more vulnerable than men.

The way we presented this social group in our opening sequence isn’t really challenging the social norms related to this social group as today teenage males have a reputation of causing trouble and being a nuisance in society, particularly in large cities- which is the location of our opening sequence. Therefore, I wouldn’t say there is anything ideologically disabling about the way we have presented this social group in our opening sequence.

YM- EVALUATION (1)

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

Throughout the planning stage of our project, research was a key element to get to know the main conventions associated with thriller films. (For example, titles, plot, characters, mise-en-scene, sound, camera and editing). To produce the best possible opening of our genre, we used these conventions and real film openings that we had looked at in our own work.

Plot


One incredibly important convention of a thriller is the plot. People enjoy watching thrillers for the thrilling storyline, which needs be faultless.
Our plot is conventional to thrillers aimed at the same target audience (core audience) as us.
It relates to teenagers in society today, and the troubles and problems they face. It includes a lot of fast-paced action to keep the audience interested in watching the rest of the film.
In thrillers, the use of big stunts etc aren't crucial to make this happen as the plot itself is often relatable to the lives of the target audience so they feel they want to continue watching. This also helps to keep the budget down. Many of our ideas came from the research we did in 'Shank' (Ali, 2010) where the action and tension was created with a fast cutting rate and fast-paced storyline.
The plot of our film revolves around a typical young male who got himself involved in drugs and shows how dodgy deals to help him keep his family together lead to severe consequences.




Characters


Our protagonist who has the majority of the screen time, is a teenage male. This is conventional of thriller movies because they include a lot of action and stereotypically males are seen to be stronger and more able to handle such situations than females, hence why it is males who are often seen in thriller films where there is a lot of action.
Teenagers aren't necessarily conventional of thriller protagonists as they are seen to be
too young to find themselves in situations which often reveal themselves in the plot. Films such as the Bourne Series (Liman/Greengrass, 2002-2007) and 'Taken' (Morel, 2008) have males protagonists, however they are shown to be older, often in the thirties. However, while having a teenage protagonist may not be conventional, there are other thriller films such as 'Shank' (Ali, 2010) that follow suit.


Our villain is also male, which is conventional because stereotypically males are seen to be stronger and more powerful than women.




Mise en Scene


Considering all aspects of mise-en-scene while planning our opening sequence was vital. In terms of location, all our research showed that thrillers are located in busy places, most often cities, so we decided to film in London so we could get a real city atmosphere coming through to the audience.
Heygate Estate already has a reputation that backs up our reasoning for picking such a location and we decided it was the best location we could find.We chose the Heygate Estate within London to be our main shooting location after we analysed our protagonist and decided we needed a run down area of
London to film, as he was presented as being poor and into drugs which suggests that he needs the money so therefore couldn't live somewhere where the location looked expensive. The

In terms of costume, we again had to consider the protagonist and how we are presenting him. Due to the location we selected, it was obvious we couldn't pick a costume that had connotations of wealth in any aspect as it wouldn't fit with the rest of the opening sequence. Therefore we decided to select tracksuit and a hoodie as stereotypically this is what teenage boys in the city, especially those who are 'trouble' wear.




Props


We used as little props as possible in our opening sequence. This was for several reasons: Firstly, we had to think carefully about how we were going to take all the equipment and props to our location as we were travelling by train, therefore we knew we had to keep props minimal. The props we did have however, was a mobile phone so the protagonist can be contacted by the villain, and a half full beer bottle and a cigarette packet on the table in the flat. This is to show how little he has.




Sound


Choosing a non-diagetic soundtrack to play through our opening sequence proved to be very difficult. We used our research to narrow our choices down so the soundtrack was conventional to the thriller genre. We needed a track that was in a major key and was upbeat so it anchored the running sequence. The track we chose in the end we though was appropriate because it was almost chaotic which is very representative of the life of our protagonist. The voice of the singer sounds almost discordant which adds an almost uneasy edge to the music building the tension for the audience while they wait to see what's going to happen. This music isn't typically conventional of thriller films as lyrics aren't a predominant feature of the soundtrack, especially during action sequences such as our running scene. However we felt the voice gave our piece the right feel to it and therefore challenged the conventions in this respect.


The diegetic sound of the phone ringing is amplified to create an enigma: Who's on the phone? Why? Many questions are raised using such simple sounds, and this is extremely conventional of thriller films, particularly the ringing phone as this is a common theme in thriller movies for the villain to communicate with the hero.


Camera


In thrillers a range of camera distances is extremely conventional. We saw this as an easy opportunity to conform to the conventions of thriller movies and many distances are used within our opening sequence, mainly during the running sequence.


We used a few close ups to show the protagonist's reaction to events, such as being told his family have been taken and seeing a dead body in the estate. Reaction shots are seen very often in thrillers, for example, 'Panic Room' (Fincher, 2002). These shots help the audience understand the characters better as they gain an insight as to how the character is feeling at that particular moment.




We used a couple of extreme long shots to set the scene and to show the audience where the protagonist is. The extreme long shot we used to show the protagonist running across a bridge lets the audience see where he is headed, while emphasising the grubbiness of the location. Again, this shot can be seen in many thriller movies, often during a running or chase scene, to see one or more of the characters running through a crowded city like in the Bourne Series (Liman/Greengrass, 2002-2007).


The positioning of the shot was an important factor we had to consider. As our opening sequence is from from the thriller genre, this meant there was a lot of movement and we decided that central shots of characters wouldn't work. Because of this we use the rule of thirds throughout our sequence to give more of a moving feel to the piece.


Towards the end of the running sequence we used a dutch angle to emphasise the speed at which the protagonist was running. Another reason we chose this shot was because it almost represents the character himself and the way in which his life is slowly being turned upside down.


We use a point of view shot during the running sequence, from the perspective of the protagonist to place the audience with him so they can feel his fear. This shot isn't so conventional of thriller movies however as a group we decided the audience needed to feel more involved if they were to continue watching the rest of the film, and a point of view shot seemed the perfect shot to use to create this effect.


Another technique we put into our opening sequence was shallow to deep focus as the audience was introduced into the flat of the protagonist. We used this effect to show how he was asleep and the sound of his phone was slowly bringing him into consciousness.




Colour


Colour isn't necessarily the most important factor to consider when filming a thriller movie. However, we found that due to the nature of the storyline that the lack of colour is important. Therefore we had to plan when we went to film carefully as we wanted a dull, cloudy day so colour would be minimal and would fit anchor the location we selected. The costume of the protagonist and antagonist is very plain and dark continuing this theme of minimal colour. We chose to keep the colour very dull and grey because this is the conventional colour scheme of thrillers, while at the same time being extremely representative of the life of our protagonist.




Editing


Editing was extremely important for us in many parts of our opening sequence.


To start with we needed to find a way to tell the audience which parts of the opening sequence was a flashback and what was present day. In the end, we decided to make the flashbacks appear in black and white so the audience knew they were different and on top of this we added titles to show the change it dates, to further reinforce the difference in time.


Also, we had to edit all the shot of the running scene using continuity editing, so that the audience couldn't see the cuts and it would appear invisible and seamless. On top of this, the running scene needed to have a fast cutting rate to keep the audience interested and to help build the tension, therefore conforming to the conventions of a thriller.

Titles

Our opening sequence needed us to add titles in to inform the audience of the change in dates, between the flashback scenes and the present day footage.
In terms of font and size, we went for something plain and quite bold so it seemed almost masculine therefore attracting the attention of our target audience. Also, films we had looked at during our independant research showed that many thriller films went for plain bold font. Such as The Bourne Series (Liman/Greengrass, 2002-2007) and Panic Room (Fincher, 2004).

LB- Evaluation Questions

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


Question 1
• Our opening sequence is seen as a conventional one for the thriller genre. As the titles we used were similar to those used in opening sequences like ‘Panic Room’. The form of my opening sequence is conventional as in panic room the titles are similar to our opening, as they are seen throughout the opening and the main titles is shown at the end.
• Our soundtrack is also conventional of the thriller genre as it creates suspense. Our opening sequence also introduces the main character in the first scene. We did this by using close up shots of him, which gave a clear identification of the characters exposition as being the main protagonist.
• We also used lighting to create suspense and mystery by having the first scene in black and white, which is something we saw from our genre research in the opening sequence of ‘Seven’ and decided to incorporate it into our own.

• We thought allot about costume for our main protagonist as we decided he had to look scruffy and run down in order for the character to fit in to the plot, because of this our main character wore tracksuit bottoms with a hooded top to show he was from the area.
• Our camera shots needed to show the scale of the estate; because of this we used a establishing long shot to show one of the building’s in the estate. Our music was chosen because it was quite fast paced and fitted into the tempo of the running scene.

• The genre choice of thriller meant that we had to create suspense in our 2 minute opening, we did this by having a mysterious deal in the first scene, followed by a running sequence of the main character, he also sees someone else who was involved in the deal dead, which gave a more dramatic feel to the sequence.
• From our genre research we looked at the opening sequence of ‘Shank’, which was filmed at the same location as ours. This showed us that we needed to incorporate the location in with the opening sequence as it was important to show the audience where he was living.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Question 2

• Our social group that is shown in our opening sequence is a young, white, working class adult, who lives in a council estate area. Our protagonist is represented negatively as he is involved in a drug deal which is seen as socially unacceptable due to it being illegal.
• This is seen as the traditional stereotype of a young working class male from a council estate area. Our mise-en-scene emphasises this stereotype by the costume our protagonist is wearing, like tracksuit bottoms and hooded top.
• In contemporary society these items of clothing are viewed as only being worn by juvenile delinquents. Our film is clearly trying to represent British culture and conforms to the tradition traits of masculinity.
• Our sequence shows the wider issues of London society, as it shows that illegal activity happens a lot in London especially with young male adults, our opening sequence shows how serious the problem is.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question 3

• Our film opening would be distributed by a small independent company, as it is not the sort of film that is considered a tent pole. This is due to it being low budget and a British film. I think that Pathe UK would be a good distributor as it has a wide range of films from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ to ‘Adulthood’.
• This would be a good distributor to use as it has done youth crime films before and has realised there is money to be made from it. I feel they would distribute our media as they have seen personally similar films succeed so would see our film as a good investment.










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

Question 6
• I have learnt how to blog from this coursework. We used our blog effectively and collaboratively by using blogger.com to post individual blogs and group posts to display research into other films, our own ideas and thoughts on our film opening and PowerPoint presentation.
• As well as this we could scan questionnaires and also include pictures and video. This meant that we had a range of media on our blog. The blog helped to keep all of our independent and group work together in one place, which made it very easy to discuss our film opening. Through commenting on each others posts we discussed our research and agreed what we thought would work best for our own film opening.
• I was the camera man on our shoots, which meant I had to know how to use the camera and the tripod effectively. As well as getting the framing of the shot right, I also had to think about lighting. For the scene inside we used artificial lights to make it dark enough to seem mysterious, while still being able to see the protagonist.
• Continuity editing seamlessly puts the narrative together, we had to think about this a lot in our opening, as in the running scene we had to make it look like he was running continuously. This was a challenge and we had to work hard in order to achieve this.
• We tried zoom in our early shoots, which we then looked back on and realised it did not work well with our camera, we thought it made our film opening look tacky so we tried to not include much zoom in our final opening.

Our soundtrack was taken from a copyright free CD given to us by our media department.This was very useful as this meant we could get copyright free music to use as our soundtrack for our opening sequence.

I also used Premier to edit our footage. I used image manipulation to manipulate the image. I also used the cutting tool to cut out things from our footage we did not want in our final opening sequence. Also we used black and white which was easy to do in Premier. We used this to show the major difference between the two scenes, the one in black and white being a dark illegal activity, where as the running scene is in colour.

AS - Evaluation Questions

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

Our production has used some, and challenged some of the conventions of the thriller genre. The way we have used the conventions is when our action fast paced scene comes in our opening sequence we were able to apply a very fast paced cutting rate to our sequence to allow for the plot to speed up within this scene.We have tried to use titles, plot, characters, mise-en-scene, sound, camera and editing to convey the film in the way in which we think it should be shown.

Characters

We have stuck to the conventions of the thriller genre with a protagonist who is male. Within most the the thriller films a male plays the protagonist as the target audience is mainly male meaning that they may be able to connect with the person in the film. The protagonist of our opening is a little younger than the target audience and goes against the conventions of the thriller genre. This is shown in films like Casino Royal (Cambell, 2006). Although there are some films which accompany us in this us in going against the thriller conventions, for example Kidulthood (Huda, 2006).

Mise-en-scene

We believe our Mise-en-scene to be very good with half of our opening being at the Heygate estate in London. The Heygate estate had previously appearing in the film Shank (Ali, 2010) and we believed this place was the place we want to film. We chose it because we needed somewhere that looks decayed and poor. We believed this to be the place that would convey that image.

The costume we chose for the protagonist we believed to be conventions within the story we are trying to convey. We have put the protagonist in tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie as we believe this is what a person with little money in a run down estate in London would wear.

As you can see in this picture the wall next to the protagonist is decayed ans we wished to portray a picture of poverty.







Props

In our opening we had little space to add props to our scenes and there was not much shot time. Despite this we managed to put in some things at the start to show how poor he is. Firstly we have put in fake money, as this is fundamental to our storyline we think this is very important. The last prop we put in was a packet of cigarettes. This, we believe shows the fact that he is lower class as we believe that more lower class people smoke than middle or upper class people smoke.

Sound

When we got to the stage of finding a non-diagetic soundtrack for our opening sequence we found that the options we had we very limited. We looked for a good soundtrack for a very long time and then we stumbled across something that we decided could fit. For our soundtrack we needed something that started of slow and clam and then climaxed into something that was fast and frantic. The song we found for our soundtrack we believe did this very well.

We used our diagetic sound as a device to create more tension. It would put many questions into the mind of the viewer and this in itself would help us to create the tension and excitement we wish to create with our opening sequence.


Camera

We think that the majority of our camera work was very good. We believe that we were able to show the narrative the way it was meant to be shown because of our camera work. We used a very wide range of shots from long shots to close ups.

We used the longs shots to establish a setting. Also to show what kind of area the estate was to live in. We believe our camera work did this very well and allowed us to be able to convey what we wanted it to very well. This shot is very conventional in thriller films to show a location or setting.


For the reactions shots from the protagonist we used close ups of the face. We did this to show the reaction when he got the phone call and when he saw the dead person lying on the ground. We did this so the audience could see the shock on the protagonists face and to understand what kind of life he is leading at the present time. We also included moving camera shots. We did this to try and let the audience feel included in the film. This would have helped the audience identify with the protagonist.


Colour

Colour was so important in our film. We used colour to distinguish scenes and time and dates. We also used it as a character. We used black and white scenes to show flash backs from the protagonists life and this makes it feel as though it is old as old films used to be black and white. 

We also used a very low brightness on the other shots. This is to show how dark the protagonists life is and how he does not have a very bright future. We think this is used very effectively as the audience think he is saving people yet his future still looks very dark and he may not be able to get back onto the straight and narrow.

Editing

Our editing was another important part of our opening sequence. We had to show the difference between times of the day and different days. We finally decided on making the flashbacks black and white to show they are older and we put the present day into normal colour. We also started off with a montage, we did this because we though having a flashback that used continuity editing may give too much of the storyline away and so we decided to go with a montage.

We also had to put all of the running scene together using continuity editing and this was a challenge but I think we were able to do it well in the end.

How does your media production represent particular social groups?

Our media production represents one social group and that is young white working class males who live in London council estates.

We show this social group very negatively. This is because we want to show that he has done something Wong and now need to help save his family. We are showing that this social group are not going about daily life in the "right" and legal way. In the sequence he see's a the person he did a deal with dead on the floor; he is giving someone fake money. This is not showing his social group in a positive way. This is slightly conforming to the conventions of a thriller as most thriller have protagonists who take the law into there own hands. Our film opening is conforming with the dominant ideology of males being the protagonist in thriller films as the person who goes from "rags to riches". We showed the protagonist to be very poor with the fact that he is in torn clothes and cannot afford new clothes to wear.

He is also shown to be poor by the council estate that he lives in. It is run down and is not kept to a nice clean place. The windows are all smashed and the wall have graffiti on them. This is showing male working class social group to all be people who are poor and live in dirty council estates like this one.

The social group that is shown in the production is a lower class younger males in the and this we believe to be who we wish to watch the production. This maybe a problem for us as some people in the target group may think this is a judgement on the way they live. It shows the protagonist to have fake money which also, they may think this is a judgement on them. This could affect our chances of having our production distributed and shown. This could effect on revenue and it may not be as effect. This picture shows the fake money he is shuffling to give his friend and the ripped tracksuit bottoms.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I believe a independent media distribution company like Momentum Pictures would distribute our film as we don't have the Hollywood effects of a blockbuster film or the technology to compete. Also Momentum pictures specilise in thriller films made by independant film makers. We also had a limited budget and this means our technology and expertise are limited this means we cannot compete with the level of editing or the expert camera men they will be able to get.

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

I have learnt a great deal about the technologies used in the process of making our opening sequence. Firstly I have learnt about blogging. This year blogging was a new experience for me. I had to learnt how to post things in a "blog friendly" way and to try and not structure it in a way that would not be aesthetically pleasing. Also I had to add colour to my posts highlighting key words and making headings bold. The blog helps us too colaborate with eachother and help eachother communicate with eachother. It also allowed us to comment on eachothers work and upload videos and prezi's to our blog.

Next was learning about the cameras and what they could do. We used a cameras the school gave us which allowed the teachers to show us what they could do and the kinds of effects we could do on the camera. I also had to learn the rule of thirds and the 180 degree rule. This would help our production and I think allow us to make a good production. The camera we used to film our production was a Sony hdr-fx1000e and the link to it is Here. This camera helped us to do very good quality sound and very good shots. This shot shows how the quality can show from the camera we used as it gets all of the estate in very good quality.

Our soundtrack is from a copyright free CD that the department gave us and this is where we found our music from. We got two soundtracks and we think that our sound is one of the better parts of our production.

Finally I had to learn about all the editing software and the effects we could do in it. This didn't take me long and I was very soon into the swing of editing down all of our content to what we needed it to be. I also decided to learn about Adobe After Effects to help us with our production and I did make some effects but we decided against using them due to different circumstances. In premier I learnt how to use; Image manipulation; Image control; Key frames and key framing; Chroma key; Focus; cutting footage; Opacity and many more. This helped us to create a good production.

Group- Planning for final audience research.

We have decided that the form of our audience research will be us conducting intervies after the showing asking the following questions:

Questions we want to ask:

1) What genre would you label our film?

2) How did you identify who the hero and villan is?

3) Explain briefly what you think is happening in our opening sequence.

4) What mood do you think our soundtrack creates?

5) What characteristics are present that tell you this is an opening sequence?

6) Would you pay to see the rest of the film?


People we want to invite:

Josh, Callum, Marcus, Marco, Matt, James and Dom because they fit into our target audience as males are typically more interested in drug related thrillers than women. Also, they are within the 15-24 age range and we think our film appeals more to these ages as the characters in our film are of the same age range.

Questionnaire

This questionnaire we gave to people after our big pitch we included all our ideas for our opening sequence. The results to this questionnaire are presented earlier in the blog under 'Audience Research'.

The questionnaire looked like this:

LB- Progress Report 8th April

Progress Report What needs to be done: We are completing the titles and finishing the whole opening sequence, we are just adjusting the sound levels and then we will have completed the construction stage.

YM- Production Log 07/04/2011

Today we:

• Completed the titles to add to our opening sequence


• Recorded the other half of the conversation shown in the opening sequence


• Uploaded the audio onto premiere

What we still need to do:

• Ensure the blog is completely finished, ready to be marked.

YM- Production Log 06/04/2011

Today we:

• Showed our opening sequence to our teacher and wrote out the feedback


• Put the music track we have chosen into our opening sequence and cut it to fit the footage perfectly


• Re-edited a few shots in the middle of our opening sequence

What we plan to do tomorrow:

• Finish the construction of our opening sequence


• Ensure the blog is complete

YM- Final Feedback

We had our opening sequence evaluated by the teacher for final opinions and we were given several things to look at and re-do:

• Fade from black into money shot


• Key frame money shot


• Cut soundtrack out in conversation


• Make sure titles fade into the next scene


• Hear the phone call (phone ringing) at the end of the sequence

LB- Progress Report 5th April

Progress Report: Today we have been carrying on looking at music and we have found an audio that we think will fit in our opening sequence, so we are trying to incorporate it into it. We got a full length track from a CD which is copyright free. We are also looking at titles and are close to putting them into our opening sequence. We have also continued to develope a couple of our shots. What needs to be done: We need to finish editing our opening sequence and put the titles in.

YM- Call Sheet and Risk Assessment

Before we could go out on a reccie, filming, etc we had to fill out a call sheet and a risk assessement.

The call sheet helped us to know what we needed to do, by recording the shots that we had to do and the characters involved. We also recorded the equipment we needed to take with us to make sure we had everything we needed.

Our callsheet looked like this:

The risk assessement was used to identify the risks we could face for both us and the equipment. We recorded each risk we figured we could come across and made a note on how we could overcome it.

YM- Production Log- 4/04/2011

Today we spent the lesson listening through sound effects and backing tracks to start finding sufficient audio for our opening sequence. We had a lot of CD's to go through, but managed to find a few tracks that could possibly work. We will continue looking in our next lesson. We also thought about our titles in the opening sequence. We looked at where we could place them and whether or not we want them to appear on screen during the action or to appear as a sequence at some point in the opening sequence. We came up with a couple of ideas which we will be looking at experimenting with in our next lesson.

AS - Genre Research

Car Chase With Kirill
The Bourne Supremacyat MOVIECLIPS.com

This clip is the cutting rate we wish to try and do with our chase scene. Also the music is building the suspense so we wish to have something like this in our opening sequence.

LB- Progress Report

Progress Report

Today we are editing our opening sequence into our rough cut.

We also are experimenting with soundtrack.

The footage from yesterday's shoot is being put together and is looking effective.

The audio on our running sequence is poor and we need to work out how to make it sound realistic.

LB- 30th March shoot feedback

Shoot 30th March

Where?

Heygate Estate, London.

When?

30th March.

Who?

Alistair, Luke, Yasmin.

What was successful about the shoot?

The shoot went very well and we got all the shots we needed. We got lots of interesting shots that we feel will look good for the scene, because of the major increase in cutting rate for the running scene we needed to get a large collection of shots, which included some establishing shots of the estate. We got a great tracking shot of Ali running, we did this by mounting the camera on top of a suitcase in order to achieve this.

What was less successful?

The audio in the running scene is poor and we need to improve it.

How important was your storyboard in the filming process?

The storyboard was important as it helped us to plan what shots we were going to use. However we did allot of shots we hadnt put on our storyboard as we didnt have a propa idea of what shots would look like till we tried them out on location.

What will you be shooting next and when?

This was our last shoot so now we have to concentrate on the editing process of the construction.

AS - Progress Report (Editing) 30/03/2011

Today we continued to do the editing of our footage. Today was quite hard as we have the footage that is quite long and it is going to be hard as we have to reveal bits of the storyline. This is a challange we have to look to overcome.

AS - Progress Report (Editing) 29/03/2011

As i said in my last post on the blog we were discussing about changing the storyline slightly.

We have decided to do the second flashback as he runs out of the chair. We did this as we though it would give us more effect if we have a slow paced flashback and then go into fast paced, quick cutting rate with the running.

Progress update.

Your blog is looking very good, there are quite a few omissions but Yasmin you appear to be on top of this. Yasmin you are posting some excellent detailed posts and I see no reason to take off any marks from your planning grade. Well done. Alistair, you are largely invisible on the blog recently, if you are taking on the job of editing, you must log what you are doing for each school session, homework should also be completing some of the tasks on your todo list. Also I would like to see you swopping roles, as all of you should be able to use the editing software competently. Luke, your presence is also largely invisible on the blog and I am not sure what you are doing. I asked you specifically to do the Preliminary task comments but these were completed by Yasmin. I see no evidence of homework. You need to be doing some serious work in the next two weeks otherwise your planning grade is going to be seriously compromised.

AS - Progress Report (Editing) 25/03/2011

Today our editing of our footage was continued.

In this lesson we did not get much footage editied as we are trying to discuss about maybe having to rearrange some of the story to encapsulate the story line within the two minutes.

We did however get our first 20 seconds completed. This is part of one of the flashbacks we have in our film.

YM- Storyboarding

What is the purpose?
The purpose of a storyboard is to organise ideas we have come up with in the order we wish each shot to appear in the opening sequence. This organised structure makes the process of filming easier and more efficient as it's easier to know what we need to do and keep track of what we are doing.

Completing the Storyboard and challenges:
Ali was in charge of putting the shots we had come up with together into an organised structure and copying this order into a storyboard template.
The main issue that arose was how neither he nor and of the members in the group can draw, and we fretted that this could affect the outcome. However, it did not and the finished storyboard was good.

How useful was the Storyboarding?
We had the storyboard with us on set and looked at it while dicussing how we were going to go about the filming. However, once the filming began we didn't refer back to the storyboard and instead filmed how we felt worked better.
It was useful in the way that it helped start us off however as filing progressed we discovered that things worked and didn't work and filmed to our own accord.

AS - Anematic

This is our anematic, we have made this to give a brief idea of how our title screen will look. We will try to keep to this while we make our film opening.

AS - Progress Report (Editing) 24/03/2011

Today we continued with the editing for our footage.

We have started to get it into order and we have the first 15 seconds into a rough cut. This has helped us to see what we think the rest will look like.

We have started to use effects like Chroma Key and Image Control. We have used these to be able get a film noir effect we have decided on. 

YM- Production Log 24/3/2011

Progress Made today:

• Post On Costumes and Props
• Questions on Audience Research
• Began Editing our footage

This weekend we are finishing our filiming in London.

YM- Costumes and Props in our shoot

In our shoot, our protagonist is seen to be wearing run down clothes that appear to be old (ripped trousers, plain jumpers) to emphasise just how rough the protagonist is living due to the drug deal that went wrong and to reflect the disasterous situartion he finds himself in.

We are using miniml props to show how little the protagonist has, emphasising the state he has found himself in. There is a single table with a half-empty bottle of beer and cigarette wrappers, and a chair which the protagonist sits on.

AS - Progress Report (Editing) 23/03/2011

Today we started to edit together our footage. We are all going to be working together on the editing for this work.

Good Points:

• We managed to get most of the first minute of footage onto the editing suite.
• We have alot of footage to choose from.

Bad Points:

• We have underestimated the amount of time we need to get across the start of the story. This could cause us to alter from the original concept a bit. 
• Choosing from our footage is very hard as it is all very good.

YM- Preliminary Task Feedback

Brief for the Preliminary Task:

1.Continuity editing: vary distances and angles, pans, steadicam, handicam, cutaways (motivated cut to cu).

2.180’ rule: ensures correct perspective, shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot. When could you break this rule and stop the audience becoming disorientated?

3.Two lines of dialogue: consider diegetic sound. Conventional of genre? Enigmatic? Part of narrative?

4.Opening door: framing, cus?

How did you create a creative interpretation of the brief?

To start with in pre-production we sat down and worked out how we could put a short piece together that included all the elements in the brief. We found it was easier to think of a storyline first so that we could picture the elements of the brief in our piece as we talked.

During the editing stage, we added a soundtrack that we thought to be conventional of the genre but also fits with the narrative. We cut and edited several shots for the continuity editing, particularly in the Point Of View shot.

What was successful? What wasn't so successful?

We found that some of the camera angles we tried out worked a lot better than we anticipated. This gave us more confidence to be a lot more experimental with the camera angles while filming our footage for our opening sequence.

The acting was an element of our preliminary task that didn't work so well. This highlighted the potential problems in our opening sequence as thriller movies are expected to have strong acting to make the storyline believable and engage the audience, and added pressure to find actors for our opening sequence.

YM- Feedback on shoot- 19/03/2011

Where?
Our location for this filming trip was Ali's garage. We decided this setting provided the right feel to the film as it was small and dark.

When?
Saturday 19th March 2011

Who?
Ali, Yazmin, Luke.

What Was Successful About the Shoot?
We managed to shoot all the interior shots we aim to include. We also discovered that the lighting was murky which gave us more scope to work with.

Special Shots We Used:
Soft focus into focus shot. This looks extremely effective as it mimicks the action of the protagonist who is woken from sleep at the sound of his mobile phone ringing.

What Was Less Successful?
We found filming one of the flashbacks didn't flow as smoothly as we anticipated and were unable to get a smooth shot. We did get enough footage to use for this shot however a lot of editing will be needed to make it useable.

How Important Was Your Storyboard In The Filming Process?
We didn't really use our storyboard when filming as we knew what we needed to do interms of shots. Also, many of the shots we anticipated didn't work so we had to rearrange and add shots in to make sense of the storyline and to make the footage look better.

YM- Production Log 18/03/2011

Tasks done today:

• Introduction to the evaluation for Wilderness Woods
• Comments on moodboard
• Images on film Noir posts
• Highlighted key words in posts

YM- Production Log 17/03/2011

Tasks completed:

• Uploaded the pitch on to the blog and added explanations
• Wrote up feedback we recieved from the pitch
• Edited the post containing the preliminary to include the brief we were given
• Commented on some posts

Tonight we will:

• Look at individual posts to ensure key words are highlighted
• Make sure all personal posts are finished

YM- What Needs to be done to complete the blog.

This is what needs to be done to keep the blog updated:

- Upload the Pitch we presented to the class
- Write up the feeback we recieved from the pitch
- Write the brief out that we were given for the Preliminary task under the video
- Write an introduction to the video evaulation we did at Wilderness Woods
- Upload the footage we put together from Wilderness Woods
- Adapt the presentation and layout of technical analysis to fit the requirements (all of us)
- Update the original concept development with that which we presented in our pitch
- Upload the anigmatic we did for the storyboard
- Post a post about our storyboard
- Add images to Film Noir posts (Luke)
- Highlight all keywords in posts
- LUKE- Resevoir Dogs post needs to be developed
- Genre Presentation feedback
- Call sheets and Risk assessments
- Questionnaires
- Comments on posts