Lisa and Bella AS Media Studies

Lisa's Evaluation

2010-03-16T01:46:00.000-07:00

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

I wanted to follow the conventions of film in order to keep my 2 minute movie opening as realistic as possible. Before even setting out to the task, I did a lot of research in order to see what the codes and conventions are for classic horror films. I watched a lot of horror movies to help me get some more ides of how I would produce a similar product.
In most horror movies, somebody usually gets killed, or injured, and typically, this character is nearly always a young naive looking girl. The story then unfolds as people proceed to understand more about the killing and try and find out who is responsible for it.
By adding the basic ingredients for a horror movie such as scary music, fast editing and special effects in order to make it look scarier, I think my film was quite successful, taking into account that this is only my second media project.
Now ready to begin filming, we took shots in places in which were similar to those of which are in actual horror movies.
We took a clip from the beginning of a movie, which indicated the company which distributed the film.

After this, I realised that because of the plot of our storyline, I would have to find a way to define different times. By looking at the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they use black and white film to represent an earlier time, and color shots for present day time.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre:

My Film:

I like this shot as it is a high angle shot of our main male character and it also shows that it is set in the past because of the black and white edit for the clip. This was inspired by an idea from the Grudge:

I wanted my movie to be very gripping and immediately strike the audience as interesting and possibly put them out of their comfort zone. I added in credits for the producer and actors etc, which is legit for a movie opening. This is a way keeps it interesting in my opinion. I also managed to use a non-linear storyboard by integrating two stories which play as cross cuts over one another.

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?

During the making of my media project, obviously there were many different things I had to take into account. My chosen genre was initially horror, and the classic horror movies have a naive teenage girl who is in some sort of trouble, which usually involves life threatening situations.
To represent her age was quite difficult as I only added 2 characters in my 2 minute opening, and I had to find some other way of representing her age with as little dialogue as possible. I thought the opening would be much more effective if there was no visible dialogue and if I felt the need to insert speech, it would be done in a voice-over.
By using different costumes to represent the characters ages, I think this was quite effective and it was a bit easier to define their age group.
For the girl, I dressed her in a black dress for the flashback killing scene to represent the darker side of her and make her seem angry. For her second scene, the running scene, I really wanted the audience to see a different side to the character and did this by making her wear white and neutral colours to show a softer side, more naive.

To add more innocence to the young female character, I created the voice over speech in a way that would make her seem like she is scared to add a sense of vulnerability.
By using fast editing in between all of her shots, for example her running scenes, it adds a feel of urgency which makes it seem scarier.

For the male character, by dressing him in a suit made him seem like a controlling person, and this is exactly what I wanted. He had to have something about him that made him creepy and also this was to show a reason for the girl killing him in the first place.
When the male character speaks, I had to make sure that his voice and physical actions represented the kind of character I had wanted him to be which was controlling and dark.

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

By considering that the genre of our movie is Horror, I tried to think of media institutions that associate with this kind of movie. I then looked up on the Internet lots of very famous scary movies and continued my research as to which companies distributed those kinds of movies. This is my example of which movies may be interested in distributing our movie.

Dreamworks – The Ring

New Line Cinema - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Nightmare on Elm Street

Warner Bros – The Shining

• Who would be the audience for your media product?

Teenagers and young adults would probably be our initial audience because this ages group are the most likely to watch a scary movie. I figured that the best way to find out who would prefer to watch a movie in my genre would be to ask people of different ages and get a average age. I also found out the main reasons why people would choose a scary movie to watch over another genre. They think that scary movies give you a good rush by putting you out of your comfort zone, and making you think a lot. By making the audience feel uncomfortable it entices the audience to keep watching to see how the movie will end.
I did a small study to see which kind of people enjoy horror films and why. Out of 20 people, the majority of people that enjoy scary movies are between 15-26. Reasons for watching scary movies? The viewers explained that they like the thrill of watching a movie that makes them feel uncomfortable and scared. They would prefer to be put out of their comfort zone voluntarily as a change from regular movies as watching a scary movie is almost a different experience to watching films.
They also said that even though they knew that something bad was going to happen in the plot, they still wanted to watch it so that they could see how it ended and if it was a good ending.
It was also a good idea to combine different genres into my film, in order to keep it interesting and to attract people from a wider audience. For example, I think my movie could easily come under genres of ‘teen’ and also ‘horror’, so people who enjoy these genres of movie, would want to watch this one.

• How did you attract/address your audience?

By using some interesting music to accompany our film, we thought this would help build suspense in our story which hopefully would attract audiences who were interested in knowing the continuation of the story. We also used as many different shots as we could and varied our angles too, again to stop our film being boring.
We addressed our audience as if they weren’t there and focused on the action in our storyboard instead of audience interaction. We wanted to cause a feeling of suspense more than anything so we looked at things that added to this, e.g. sound effects, music, gripping story.

In order to attract our intended audience, I had to make sure that the genre ticked all of the typical boxes that genres like teen and horror usually have within their storyline. I added a little romantic and more personal character problem and also added a murder scene which intrigues the audience immediately.
By being inspired by other horror movies, to get good ideas for shot angles and shot types, I found that these made the editing and filming seem much more aesthetically pleasing for the audience.

To address the audience, I decided that instead of doing regular speech in acted out scenes, I would use voice over’s to help tell the story. I thought this would be more effective and in a way, slightly more personal. Plus I thought it was a bit more original and more interesting for the audience. Also by using captions to explain to the audience who the characters were played by, lets them know who they are.

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

Whilst the process of making this film was taking place, I learnt many things related to film making, media and also some things to do with HTML’s. Also, by being forced to re-shoot some of our footage I realised how much physical work has to go into it, after having to re-edit in all of the new clips and getting rid of the old ones.

By constantly using search engines to do research like Google and YouTube I learnt found pictures and also trailers. From this I learnt how to post links and also how embed videos.

I also found out how upload videos too, but I prefer to embed clips because it is a lot quicker. You embed a clip for example from the source YouTube, and paste the embed HTML link into the blog post and the video appears on the blog and is played initially through another source.

Whilst editing my film I used the program Premiere Elements. This took a while to get used to at the beginning, as I was just learning about how to use the different tools and different ways to edit my clips. In order to create a file small enough to upload onto my blog, I had to export the film from it’s original format into a WMV file. This was to reduce the size of the file by making a slightly less high quality film, but small enough to upload my final film up to the blog. This format of the clip was just a new file and I still kept the original format.
By backing up my clip onto a flash disk to back up our information in case the computer crashed, which I learnt the hard way when my monitor froze and I had to restart it but the files didn’t save. I did not enjoy re-doing my coursework and re-editing everything.

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

To begin the subject of media studies, the class got told that they would have to do a preliminary task, in order to have a go at using the media equipment before we actually started our coursework piece. Our task was to create a mini-story of a person opening a door, entering a room, having a short conversation and then leaving the room.
Since I began my preliminary task, way back at the beginning of the year, I think I have learnt a lot about how films should be produced and filmed, and this helped hugely in the production and editing of my own film. I learnt from the initial mistakes my group made from the preliminary task and by working harder together as a group I think the project has ended up quite well.

By learning to plan ahead and schedule when to do what tasks and who should do them, it kept the group on task and efficient. Although there were some problems at one point throughout the journey, the clip did come together in the end. The re-filming part was quite annoying as it was a couple of months after the initial filming that we had previously done, and obviously physical appearances had changed, but I think we managed to make it work and not look too bad
.
I learnt that in order to make the product better, I would have to listen to a lot of constructive criticism from peers and teachers. This was extremely aggravating at times as it had felt that I had just finished a task and would actually have to re-start it all over again.
When I finally handed in the final film, it was the best feeling ever, just to have it out of the way. The positive feedback I eventually got was very encouraging and I have very much enjoyed this project.

Comparing my coursework piece and my preliminary task, I think the quality of my filming and editing has improved immensely. I have become more confident with the equipment and have had a lot more practice and more ideas on the subject of film-making.

• How did the feedback you received help you make a better film opening?

From many different people, at lots of different stages of the making of my movie, I received a lot of constructive criticism in order to improve the quality of my movie opening.
For example, on the first publication on the blog of my final piece, there were comments to help me change the shots that didn't quite fit correctly.

* SHAmedia Productions said...
I think it's very well done! The only thing that I would change is the bit where Kim is running across the field, it looks weird because you had to speed it up. But everything else is very good. Good work!
2 February 2010 01:17

This particular comment helped me change the running scene where the foot shot looked a bit unrealistic because it had been sped up. Instead I cut this clip out, and added a little more dialogue at the beginning to help explain the story and not have unnecessary shots.

* Gabi + James + Simon said...
I really enjoyed the beginning of your film so far and I think the concept is really well done. Here's a list of the few things I noticed that could be changed or improved:- 00:26 - The actor looks as though she is running unnaturally fast, is this deliberate?- When the titles appear on screen all of the sound disappears, maybe it should fade out or continue.- 00:57 - The phone needs a ring tone.- 01:35 - The shot of the actor breathing should go on for a little longer as I think it flashes up too quickly.Well Done,
Gabi Paterson
26 January 2010 01:40

This comment was extremely helpful as Gabi managed to break down the parts which didn't look very good and give me the correct times in the movie so that I could edit them accordingly.
Again, there was a comment about the running scene, so this reinforced the previous feedback I had got on it and I was then definately sure it would need to be changed. I also had the chance to use the music a different way by adding two different songs. I was unaware previously of the sound disappearing whilst the credits appear on the screen. This was helpful as I would of probably just overlooked this.
However, the phone shot was deliberately quiet as it is supposed to represent the character ignoring the male figure on purpose. I don't know if this comes across but this was the general idea.

Looking back to the preliminary, the feedback that I recieved then really helped me to develop my major task movie opening. To begin with, the preliminary task was a lot more difficult as I was less experienced, but with all of the constructive comments I recieved, it was much easier for me to improve my film opening so that it would turn out better than the preliminary task.
Comments I recieved for the video of the preliminary task:

* Kim & Jenny said...
Jenny wrote: Just after vidur has sat down, the lighting in the room changes which is a continuity error because it does not look like the footage was filmed on the same day.
5 November 2009 03:59

* SHAmedia Productions said...
The preliminary task is good, the only thing that wasn't good was that the camera was wobbling sometimes and it was a bit dark when Vidur looked through window. But apart from those little mistakes the task has been well done.Henri
5 November 2009 04:12

* Gabi + James + Simon said...
It was good and especially the part at the beginning with the music. When you filmed the parts with the close ups of the characters the camera started to shake and in parts the lighting was different but apart from that it was good with a wide range of camera angles.James
5 November 2009 14:38

These were quite easy to get on board with as they were simple things in which I learnt more about how to control in the making a process of the major task. I was a lot more careful when it came to lighting, which may seem very simple but it has to be precise and you have to make sure that even during a shot-reaction-shot clip, the lighting must be the same otherwise it doesn't look like it is a conversation. This was a continuity error, which I don't think I had a problem with in the major task.

Another problem I had was the walking shot at the beginning. It was an extremely shaky shot and it looked very careless. In my final task there was one free-hand shot where I couldn't use the tri-pod as it was a moving shot. I think that it was a much better shot and was very smooth however in comparison to the first time I tried it. It took a lot more takes to get it right, but I think it was definately worth it as the shot is a good one.
Also, to keep the camera still during the other shots I took, a tri-pod was my new best friend and helped me get still shots which were effective and interesting.

2010-03-11T04:21:00.000-08:00

Evaluation Questions

Annabell Pohl

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

Our media course work is about a 2-minute opening of a Horror movie. Our product took many ideas from different genres of films to create. Ideas from the unborn and The Ring were central in forming the baseline of our script and our storyline.
I drew out a storyline that fit into the pictures above and tried to represent all the horror materials I could find that would fit in and which can work perfectly with our film opening. The Fear Factor that I put into the movie contributes to the forms of the conventions of real media and media, which is not that normal like other media products. The ingredients of a horror film are, that you have to take care, that the hole story, is scary, that ou could see blood and that the people are screaming sometimes, also that the people are in panic situations and also that they maybe have a very dark for live story, these things making a horror film to something what is horror. In our 2 minutes opening film, we created a story, about a boy and a girl which habe been in love one yeart ago, but then he left her. But she doesn’t wanted to respect his decision so she made a plan and killed him in the bottom floor of a big house. Also a very good thing is, that she talks, and at the end she can’t understand, that she killed him. You can see flashbacks and her panic in the situations. I challenge this quiet good, because I produce the story with my group made and she has much more expierence then me, so it was much nicer, because she could tell me, how to do special thinks and she helped me with the editing, she explained it to me. Also I really liked it to made the costume design in our opening film and the designing of the outlines with our names.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represents the social group, which wants to see horror movies and wants to get the thrill of watching something that frightens them, I think it is for the group of genre with the ge 16-25. I used it with a special though, because I though that nobody from the older people would look at our little media studies opening film which is 2 minutes. So I decided that we just made the genre group for younger people also more teenagers. Also thefilm is with very young actors, it wouldn’t work, if a older person says, wow I really understand the hole film. It is more a teenyhorror story. But I think it wouldn’t be bad, if a oder audience would watch our film, because we tried to made something special, and what not so many people use. So we would be blessed, if someone of the oder people and of couse also all the younger people would say to use, that your film is very good. The using of the mise-en-scenes was not all the time so good, because the annoying think here is, that you don’t have such a good filmset and you don’t have the opportunity to use everything what you want.. But we managed it, and we used some good things for our film. The editing was not so easy for me, because of these, Lisa my group made has done the most of the editing because I never worked with the program before, so I looked at her, how he was doing it, and so I learned a little bit when I was looking at her doing it. And the editing in our film is very good, I think, Lisa done a good jop. The cinematography in our film is very good, we used some good pan shots, tilt shoty, and also very good zoom shots. Also the using of the flashbacks was a very good idea, the cinematography use in our film is not that bad, I really like it. All these things which we have done in our film, and how we worked represent my character absolutely well.

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

By realizing the genre of our movie is Horror, I tried to think of media institutions that associate with this kind of movie we also used. Then I looked up on the internet lots of very famous horror movies and continued my research as to which companies distributed those kinds of movies. On the top, I have some good examples.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I thinkour audience would be people who really enjoy it to watch horror movies and movies, which made you be so scary, that you think you can not look it anymore but exactly this mix of a little bit to much and exactly right made the perfect horror movie, so we tried to make this. And we made this for a audience with the ages maybe 16-25 not so young and not for people who are not that young and understandable like the younger generation. Also we think that not that much oder people would watch the movie, or wouldn’t be so perfect for the oder audience, because we used very young people, teenagers who are acting in the movie so, I would say, that the audience would stay more by the younger and fantasiefully people, who can think them into the movie and could understand the story. And also, the bloodscenes, aren’t so good, if you show them little people, so the age just for people with the start of the age 16.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I tried to attract the audience by using the simple method of suspense through our opening two minutes. We used Kim and Henry for our movie, and we though that they would be the perfect characters for our movie, because they aren’t like all the other peolfe and they could fix in the parts of each role best. And you counld not see openings like this and we though that this would be the best, if the people could see from the start of the beginning, that the girl would be the person, who kills the boy at the end, because they have such a big fight. This was good of attracting our audience as the titles tell a bit of the story already and gives ideas that this could be a horror movie. We have used genre and we used the elements of our genreto attract an audience in a special way, we tried it, that the genre would be perfect for genres with the age 16-25. Like I list of a question before. And I think our genre attract to our audienceabosolutely well, because you can’t se everywhere a film like ours. The address information’s hich I can give are, that we made all the stuff on our owns and we created the story, and the 2 producers, me and Lisa are famal, so the address of our movie is from two femal people. I think our our film is formal, sometimes maybe a little bit with to much bad words, but that has to be there, it wouldn’t be so interessing and it wouldn’t fit to the horror genre of our fim ,I we haven’t used it. But you can see from the clothes which our acotrs are wearing, that the class is formal. And we used a little bit of the teenage language.

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

Over the last few months working on The opening flm, ESCAPE I have personally learnt how to use our editing software, Premier Elements, on our school computers and use Audacity, which is a music-editing software to compile tracks and edit them down to the right size. As I was the member to make all the titles for our movie I did practice a lot on Adobe Photoshop to re-construct the titles of the credits that are in our movie. Finding new websites on downloading music that wasn’t copyright was a big achievement on our behalf and use that in our movie to create effects and soundtracks. Also I learned things, how to name shots, like pan shots, close up shots, or different thins like high angle shots, I never heard these thing before, since I started to work in our media class, it has helped me very much, to have a teacher like Mrs. Downes, who is always there, if you have questions, or things, you don’t understand. The technologies we used have been good digital hardweare, but not the best, so we didn’t had the opportunity to make a film, where you could see everything absolutely good and we couldn’t manage it, to make a film, who you can’t see any shake, because we always haf to hold the camara. The software on the computer was not to bad, we could manage it very well, to use it there. But the editing program, was sometimes absolutely not that good, because you have to reseave everything all 15 minutes. After a while it is absolutely annoying, also the computers aren’t that fast, so you have to wait very long till they are uploaded. The uploading was not to bad, but I could be better. The downloading form the internet was very easy there we hadn’t got any problems also we didn’t loaded much stuff from the internet, just 2 songs. The embedding was also not a big problem for us. The internet searching was also a nt big problem, because we always use the internat also in our freetime, so you have experinces with it. The program youtube helped us very much, because you could see examples of films, also there was another program, which I can’t remember, which helped us very much, for seeing how to make a film opening also the block of course, because we could looked at eachothers work and the work from the upper six media studies people.

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

Looking back at the time we as a group did the preliminary task I can confidently say that I have improved a lot. Also you could see such a big differents, between the opening film now, and your prilmiminarytast before. Now we used much more stuff, like better shots, better locations, better actors and much more things, like not real blood and a real story, which looks much way more like a real film then like a tiny bit of learning how to do it. Also the working with the program, like editing, or searching for songs, and good actors are much better in this part. So I can say, that I have improved so much and I also understand much more, what to do, and what the teachers and the people in my class thing about.

How did the feedback you recieved help you to make a better film opening?

It helped me very much, because when you have second opinions about your work, you can do the work, who isn't so good, better.
We had very good feedback from Mrs. Downes and Mrs. Black, they said about our film, that the running foot shot is a little bit to dodgy and the sound editing is clumsy the meaning at start is unclear and the music choice at killing is very 1980’s.
Also Mrs. Downes said, that the caption colour red on black is very difficult to read. And she said, that "Escape" is very like the caption and it shouldn't start at more.
However we had very good and helpful advices and feedback from Gabby Paterson, she said, that Kim Paxton,she's playing the main caracter in our film Escape, looks like she is moving to fast in the running scene on the big field.
Also that when the title comes up all the disappears come up, maybe it should be fade. A little mistake we did as well was, that we forgot to let the phone ring,Gabby reminded us about it and we changed it.
Also everyone told us, that the music is a little bit to fast and not absolutly perfect for the film, so we changed the music in a very good and absolutely perfect song for our film.
The film we maket, was also at the beginning a little bit to short, so we did some other things in some parts, were we thought, we could make it a little bit longer and more interessting for people who want to see our film.
After we got these feedback we changed all the things and we got new feedback for our film.
Gabby Paterson said this time just positive things, that she really enjoyed the beginning of your film and that we have created a quality film which looks convincing. She said, that she especially liked the music which we used throughout the film. Also she said, that it helps to build intensity in the scenes and compliments the genre of our film. She is a fan from our scenes which were flashbacks in black and white as it enabled her to distinguish between the past and present.
We good however feedback form a person, who forgot to put their name under his post, but however he things the film is well made with very good music but however there are a few things he didn't liked e. g. the running in the field which looks weird for him and he said to us, that we should add a sound effect to show the mobile phone ringing. Which we did streight afterwards.We also get some feedback, which isn't written in our block or documented.
Some people also told us, to make some changes. On some parts, when they were walking behind us and could see a little bit of our film.
sometimes, we also asked people, if we could cange something.
That helped absolutly much for making a better film with Lisa and so we could improve a lot and make the film to a better and cooler one, with better musinc, with slower running and with the phone ringing and lots of other little thing, we had to change.
And so, we have produced and maked a quiet good and quality film.
By our preliminary task we also get some helpfull feedback, but we could't change that much, we just did the preliminary task, to improve for the big film project which called Escape.
Jenny wrote: Just after vidur has sat down, the lighting in the room changes which is a continuity error because it does not look like the footage was filmed on the same day.
Henry wrote: The preliminary task is good, the only thing that wasn't good was that the camera was wobbling sometimes and it was a bit dark when Vidur looked through window. But apart from those little mistakes the task has been well done.
James said: It was good and especially the part at the beginning with the music. When you filmed the parts with the close ups of the characters the camera started to shake and in parts the lighting was different but apart from that it was good with a wide range of camera angles.
This prelimanary task was really good do practice and to get feedback. That really helped us and we couldn't make the same mistakes again in the real and important film named Escape, that was really helpfull!
And you can see such a big difference between the preliminary task and the real film.
Its really cool, to see this success!

Evaluation Questions 3.

2010-03-08T04:14:00.000-08:00

Creative Tools

1. How did digital technology enable you to develop creatively and are there examples of the technology obstructing or preventing your creative flow?

During the course of the year, we learnt how to use different software such as Photoshop, Premiere Elements and how to use a blog.
We began with a preliminary task and we had lots of feedback telling us things that we could improve on. During the process of making our main task opening, by getting constant feedback from peers and teachers, we were allowed to use trial and error in order to make our work the best of our ability.
By using internet search engines like Google to find information and YouTube to find trailers and movie openings for inspiration, this widened our knowledge of movies in this genre and really helped us progress to make our film.
In this project, it was the first time we had used a web blog. By posting constant updates of our progress and documenting everything we did, we were able to receive constant feedback in order to keep our film to the best standard. We learnt how to upload videos onto a blog and how to embed them into posts so that they would appear on the blog homepage.

We had to find non-copyrighted music on the internet to accompany our film. A large problem occurred because we couldn’t find appropriate music that didn’t have a copyright on it. We spent a lot of time experimenting our clip with different songs that we had found and eventually ended up with 2 different songs.

Thinking About Audience – making meaning

1. How did you respond to the initial brief with the audience in mind?

When we were told what our task was, we wanted to either go for a teen romance genre or horror, as these two most appealed to us.
After talking about it and writing down a lot of notes, we decided that a more interesting genre would be horror as we found it easier thinking of a story for a horror genre. We tried to add twists in our story, with hints of different genres such as thriller and teen romance, in order to expand our audience.
We also had to decide on which age group we were directing our film to. We decided on a middle sort of age, of 15 because of the storyline.
However, we had to keep in mind the rules of our school and this restricted us in a few areas of things we could and couldn’t do. We couldn’t have any nudity, sex or drugs etc.

2. How did your analysis and research into the type of film you selected impact on the creative process in pre-production?

We looked on the internet to find ideas to help us work on a film with the genre of horror. By researching famous horror films and watching the openings of them, we had immediate ideas of how we wanted to lay out our film.
Obviously, there had to be certain limitations of what we could and couldn’t do. We couldn’t use that many special effects as that is quite advanced and we do not have the resources to do that. Also about locations, we had to make sure we had the correct permissions to use certain places around our school campus in order to film. Also, we, again had to take into consideration the school rules of no sex, drugs or nudity in order to keep our film as respectable as possible and also to not get into trouble!
When we were storyboarding our film, we had to take all of these things into account so that we didn’t have to change much if we did encounter some problems further on in the project.

3. In filming and editing, how did you ensure that the meaning would be apparent to the audience? What creative decisions did you make in planning, rehearsing, filming and editing that were influenced by your sense of the audience and possible layers of interpretation?

The first cut out of our film was a little bit unclear to the audience, as we heard from the constructive criticism we received. By choosing a complicated storyline which has flashbacks in it, we had to make sure that this was very obvious for our audience so that they could keep up with the story.
For example, the speaking parts at the start and end of the clip were initially unclear and didn’t really make sense as the dialogue was quite vague. After getting feedback, we made this better and changed the speech and we think that now it makes a lot more sense. In ways, now it is a little too obvious and gives away the story, but as an opening 2 minute sequence, it is easy to interpret.

4. How did the audience respond when you trialled aspects of your film? Are there a variety of possible interpretations of your opening sequence that will depend on the cultural situation of the viewer?

When we received our criticisms from our class/teachers, obviously there were a range of different opinions. Realistically, you can never have a room full of people who all share similar interests and like all of the same things, so we had to remember this whilst looking at the feedback and not get too offended by some comments.
For example, teachers are a bit older than students, so they may not be that interested in horror genres to do with teenagers. But the teachers are interested in the technical levels of our piece so we made sure it was to the best of our ability.
We also had to take into account that there are many different religions and cultures so some of these people might not agree with our storyline, which is completely understandable.

Final Video, with changes.

2010-02-23T01:32:00.000-08:00

After making the adjustments, here is our final film. TAKE 2.

Final Changes to Video

2010-02-23T01:13:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa Mitchell ;-

Annabell were given advice as to how to improve our video by our teachers. This is how we changed all of these faults:

- The running foot shot is a little bit too dodgy.
We removed the shot of Kims feet. We had originally sped up the clip as the filming of this was a bit too slow. We understand that it did look a little weird and it looks better without the clip.

- The sound editing is clumsy.
We have fixed the sound and tried to make it flow more throughout the film. We have also added in another song.

- The meaning at start is unclear.
To reinforce out storyline, we added a different clip of speech at the beginning which we hope will make the storyline a little bit more clear, but not give away too much.

- The music choice at killing is very 1980’s.
The new song that we have added has been split to an appropriate place, in which it relates to the killing shot in a better way and no longer sounds very 1980's. We did not want this, so we cropped our original song at the part that we didn't like, and used another one.

2010-02-18T03:35:00.000-08:00

posted by Annabell:

Mrs. Black and Mrs. Downes gave us some things which we have to improve.
these things are:
- the running foot shot is a little bit to dodgy

- the sound editing is clumsy

- the meaning at start is unclear

- the music choice at killing is very 1980’s

And now we are working again on the film, to improve these things.
Hopefully we could change the things into something better.

Evaluation Questions 2.

2010-02-08T04:28:00.000-08:00

1. How did you manage the group dynamics, equipment and resources, interim deadlines and the necessary collaborative nature of film making?

The group dynamic wasn’t all the time so easy, because of Annabell’s sickness and sometimes, because both in the group had different views of some situations or decisions. But we managed it to have the same decision at the end of the each lesson. The equipment was easy to manage, we both share all the editing, filming and all of the wanted deadlines. We worked together as a team and we have been always together for all things we have done. And we finished all tasks together as a team.

2. What health and safety and logistical problems did you solve?

We followed all the rules from the school and haven’t done some special stunds or high angle shots. We kept the filming and the action simple but very effective. We worked with a knife and used it responsibly. Also we always had the right basic for each situation, where we needed anything. We managed it, to become the right level in our film.

3. How did you organise your human resources – the people involved in the production?

We used two characters who named Henry Yueksel and Kim Paxton. They both are in our media studies class so it was much easyier to organise all the filming stuff and the right times, were we can go to film all the film. We also always managed it to work with them in a constructive and organised way. They always had they costumes and they where reliable all the time. Two very authentic persons. That has done our film production much easyer.

4. How did you manage actors, locations, costumes and props? Remember that deciding NOT to use a particular strategy [e.g. not to use any props] is also a creative decision.

We picked a girl and a boy to play the main roles of our characters to follow our story in the right way and with a good structure. We picked two different locations on the plot from the Gordonstoun School. A field and and Gordonstoun house. We have chosen the field because it is absolutely empty and you can’t see anyone walking and also you can’t see any cars or other not useful stuff. Also because there is absolutely much space for filming a girl who is running away from her bad thoughts and her angriness. And we chosen Gordonstoun house because we wanted to have a location who is empty, clear and with no stuff in it. And also we wanted to have a long way, where the character could walk very good, without seeing, what is behind his back.
We chosen the knife because it is the weapton for murder scene.

5. How did storyboarding and creating a shooting script work in practice? Did you make creative decisions to depart from the original plan? For what reasons and with what outcomes?

Our storyboard was at the beginning absolutely to short and uninteresting. So we put in some more special shots and interesting scenes and special effects. We also needed to add more reaction shots and shorter clips to make the film more interesting and special for the people who watch it and also for ourselves. We made a lot of creative decisions and we even add an estra scene, because our film was to short.

6. Although time management may seem a less exciting aspect of the creative media practice, it is possibly the most important – how did you manage your time, and with what success?

It was difficult to manage time to filming ect, because Annabell was sick for 2 weeks at the end of the first term. But during this time period all the film we had done prevestly was all edited when she came back to the lessons. So we both didn’t get behind with all the work, we both worked in different ways, Lisa has done more of the filming and the editing and Annabell has done more of the costume design and the production and the planning of the acting in the film. Also we have always spoken about the situations we have decide to do, because that don’t bring someone to have big arguments. We finished everything together as a group and that always by the right time.

Evaluation Questions 1.

2010-02-08T04:25:00.000-08:00

1. At a micro, technical level, how well did you observe the conventions of continuity, the language of film and the grammar of the edit?

Before filming our major task, we started with a preliminary task to practice using cameras for the first time and to help us understand the importance of continuity in a short film. Bringing this knowledge to our major task we were able to make it look as if everything was set according to our storyboard and was on the same day.
Using many different angles and camera shots we explored many aspects of the different areas of film. We used props, effective accompaniment and were able to create our characters through dialogue and costume.
We were able to experiment with different editing skills which we used in our film. Effects such as ‘Fast Blur’, ‘Black and White’ and ‘Ghosting’ were shown in our editing.

2. How many mistakes did you make, and did you improve in the main task having made errors in the preliminary exercise?

In our preliminary task we didn’t have enough footage which resulted in us re-shooting on different days which was bad for our continuity element as it was obviously not shot on the same day. We had used zoom-ins on some of our shots which made it look bad and also a lot of free-hand camera which resulted in shaky shots.
Lack of lighting ruined some of our preliminary shots and the fade in and out of music was very bad.
In our main task, music and sound effects fading in and out was much more effective and our continuity was a lot better. We still needed to re-shoot some of our shots but they don’t look as if they were shot on different days as we kept all aspects of the original shots the same as in the re-shoots (e.g. props, costumes, location).
To reduce shaky shots, we used a tripod so that the camera was still whilst filming. Our lighting was much more effective in our main task as you could always see the character clearly.

3. At a more symbolic, macro level, how does your fiction film reflect or challenge the conventions of the genre or type you are working in? Will it fulfil the ‘contractual’ nature of film genre or will it subvert expectations deliberately?

Our chosen genre is horror, and we tried to find as many ways to represent this by using props and the way we filmed our shots.
We researched other scary movies and saw what was recurrent in each one, and we used this to help the planning of our own horror movie opening. We saw that lots of people in horror movies die, so we created our storyline reflect this aspect or horror.
Something twisted happens with our storyline, like in most horror films. They want to intrigue the audience. This is typically horror genre; we set our film in flashbacks, as in a bad event happened in the past but karma is catching up with the present.

4. Are there any elements of deliberate pastiche or parody, where you ‘play’ with the genre’s codes and history? Are there any intertextual moments where you hint at a reference to another film?

A pastiche is something borrowed for one or more other sources, and a parody is a humorous imitation of a literature piece e.g. black adder.
Our film has neither a pastiche nor parody. We decided not to play around with the genre’s codes and history and stuck to the basics of typical horror genre.
We thought that the storyline we had decided on would be a lot more effective if it was done seriously without humour or something borrowed from different sources.
We kept ours original and made up our own ideas for everything, including sound effects, captions, shots and storyboard.

5. What kinds of audience pleasure are you trying to provide, and how confident are you that you have delivered on this promise?

Mine and Annabells’ film was set as a horror. Our plan was to create something chilling and I think that this was quite successful for our first film. After taking things from typical horror movies into consideration, we were able to construct our own murder scene, build a climax with our running scene and build up tension throughout the two minutes with rock music as the accompaniment and a scream to add to our sound effects.
We tried to keep our shots as interesting as possible and also gripping to watch. We want it to be aesthetically pleasing to all audiences.

Final Video

2010-02-01T04:18:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa ;- After a lot of hard work finding music, re-shooting some of our shots, we eventually completed our film. Here it is;

Evaluation of Major Task

2010-01-28T03:37:00.001-08:00

Response to Feedback

2010-01-27T01:57:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa Mitchell;-

In response to the feedback that Annabell collected yesterday from friends and our teacher, we have successfully finished the editing of our movie opening.

We edited our chosen song according to the sound effects and ambient sounds that we had initially decided to use, by lowering the music when the sounds were playing and fading them back in when appropriate.

We slightly changed the colours of our captions as they were too difficult to see on the black background.

2010-01-26T01:50:00.000-08:00

Feedback:

Mrs. Downes;
- Caption colour red on black is very difficult to read
- Escape very like the caption shouldn't it start at more perhaps?

Gabby:
- she looks like she is moving to fast
- when the title comes up all the disappears maybe it should fade?
- phone needs to ring
- so sound?!
- should be longer

Annabell:
- no sound when he walks into the secound room
- a to fast movement from Kim's head
- to much black background
- (he's back?!) sounds a little bit weird, because you can't see anything
- Escape more forward to the ( he's back sound)

2010-01-22T02:35:00.000-08:00

evaluation questions:

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

- you can see, that the product is made by students. It is not like a very good film from an very good producer.

· How does your media product represent particular social groups?

- it presents social groups in a very nice way, because with the block you can see, that it is very good, when you work with another person on it. It shows, that we are a social group in our media class.

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

- maybe the persons who thinks that our block and our media work is good.

· Who would be the audience for your media product?

- all the people who like to watch a scary and horror story.

· How did you attract/address your audience?

- with the other stuff which we have posted on our block. with the ideas and all the other stuff.

· What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- that it isn't so difficult to make a little trailer. At the beginning everything is very difficult and new, but after a while you get used to it. And you start to undestand the program.

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

- the trailer, which we have produced in the last 6 weeks, you can see, that everything is much more professional and we have a different screnery, better actors and a very good story. Everything is much better and very interesting.

19.01.2010

2010-01-19T01:39:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa Mitchell ; -

Today, after going through our film, we have cut down our caption pages and have decided to get some more footage tomorrow of our main character Henri to add a bit more to inform our intended audience about who he actually is.

We are also planning to update our original storyboard as many of our shot ideas have change since our initial plan.

We are still in desperate need of a background song to accompany our video footage.

Feedback

2010-01-14T04:27:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa Mitchell ;-

After getting feedback we have begun to edit the film that we have. We have realised that our captions take up too much time and therefore makes our clip boring. We are going to do a little bit more filming inside Gordonstoun House in order to make the clip amount to a total of 2 minutes without using too many caption shots and shortening the ones we already have.

I think our story is clear enough but more filming definately still needs to be done.

2010-01-14T03:52:00.000-08:00

Fedback:

-sound levels need to be sorted
-sound at 00:3:14 missed
-very difficult to rea the titles/ on screen to long
-sound requiered behind the action track 1:01:19
-1.09 sound needs adjusted-hissy-
-the captions are too long on screen
-"Escape" needs to be centred
-need to be able to use photoshop

Finished Editing. Part 1.

2009-12-03T03:49:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

Due to bad weather, I could not film the final shots for my clip today. These shots are supposed to be filmed outside, the running shots of Kim.
So to keep myself busy, I instead completed all editing of the film I have so far. I added all of the caption pages in, and I added a title page as well.
I made sure that all of our sound effects and music was in the appropriate place and that it matched the clip that was playing.

All that I need to do now is to add the rest of our clips and to sync the music and sound effects with those shots too.

I also need to think if I want to use music for the remainder of the clip instead of having so many silences. It might end up being effective having the silences but I will decide this later on when I have all of my clips on the timeline on Premiere Elements.

Editing;

2009-12-01T01:58:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

Today in the lesson, I edited all of our clips and added those titles I had decided to make. This makes sure that the titles are shown on top of the video playing which makes the film look so much more professional.
They all look similar to this one.

More Inspirations

2009-11-30T04:18:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

I have been watching some movie openings and I have taken some Screenshots of the clips that I particularly thought were appealing to our chosen genre.
In 'The Ring', I liked this shot here of the extreme close-up of this character. I would like to use this to emphasise our main characters facial expression to help show the genre 'horror'.

I like this shot because of the two main points of focus. It is self-explanitory that she is watching the T.V and she looks scared. I also like the fact that the T.V is the main focus and the characters focus is a little more blurred.

Here is the clip that these shots came from;

I then began to watch 'The Grudge'.
I particularly liked this first screenshot because the character that is walking is blurred and the main focus of this shot is actually behind him. He doesn't seem to notice that it is there.

And this next shot, the character looks back and the main focus of the previous shot is no longer visible. This is adds to the movie genre horror. It makes the audience question and build up suspension.

And I like this shot a little further on in the clip which we would like to use if possible. The over the shoulder shot, but from a lower angle.

And here is the clip.

Titles

2009-11-30T03:56:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

I have decided to edit our title pages. (Editing,directing etc).
Instead of having different photoshop images for these titles, I thought of blending them into our video shots and fading the shots into a black screen, leaving the title for a few seconds before going onto the next video image.
I think this will look more professional than doing the images.

Student Film Opening

2009-11-30T03:47:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

I was doing some research on some previous AS Media Studies blogs and film openings and I thought my group could use some of these as some inspiration for our own opening.
I especially liked this one because the sound effects were extremely eerie and I think they fully captured the genre of 'Horror'.
The only thing I would have changed in their sequence would have been the title at the end, because it seemed a little weak and in contrast to the powerful opening and editing skills, this was a little disappointing. We will make sure to keep our film fluent throughout.

Editing;1

2009-11-25T11:01:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

Today in media class, I used this time to edit the footage that we have already.

Some of our clips were too long, so I cut them so that they became shorter. Also, some of the clips that we took were a little shaky at the beginnings and ends, so I cut these faults out of the final piece so that it looked more professional.

Then, to make the actual footage seem more appealing and interesting (also to fit it to the genre of 'horror') I changed them into black and white instead of being in colours. The clips that we have so far are only of the flashbacks and our original idea for the flashback shots were to make them look physically different to the present shots. Black and white is a good way to do this.

I also made them look a lot more creepy by adding a fast blur to them, ghosting effects and linking them together in a suitable order.

I made 4 different pictures on Photoshop that would show the titles for our movie openings.
I added;
-directed by
-edited by
-costumes by
and
-filmed by

and the appropriate names following.
These linked onto the timeline where they were appropriate.

I think that I will remove the 'filmed by' slide and create a title page for our actors, introducing Kim Paxton and Henri Yueksel.

To conclude today's lesson, I used a video camera with the lens closed, to record Kim's voice, as this was Annabell and I's idea for sound throughout the clip. I recorded Kim's breathing and also two lines of dialogue which will later fit into the sequence after we have pieced together all of the video clips.
I still need to get the song that we had agreed on using for our title page, but that shouldn't be a problem to get.

So far, I am very pleased with the progress of our major task and we have been sticking to our storyboard quite well.

2009-11-18T01:34:00.000-08:00

Today I have designed our layout for the titled film. We want to name it "Escape".
But thats only the beginning of the layout. Maybe we want to change a little bit more, the baground has to be in a different colour.
I have done it with photoshop.

1st Day of Filming

2009-11-11T15:01:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

Today we took our two actors, Kim Paxton and Henri Yueksel and we prepared for our first day of filming our major task.

After a lot of running about, getting permission to film in our location and permission to borrow a knife from the refectory (and some ketchup for 'blood'), we were ready to get started.

We went to Gordonstoun House and set up to film. Our characters wore the appropriate outfits and we had the correct props.

We did make some slight alterations to our storyboard as we found that some of our shots didn't work as well as we had planned.
All of our filming done this morning was a very good start and we have gotten all of the footage we need for the 'flashback' parts of our clip.

I think the follow-up of this work will be to edit these 'flashback' clips into black and white, and remove our audio. Also, some of the clips we have decided to keep have to be cut a little as they are a bit wobbly at the start.

Changes

2009-11-05T04:19:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lisa;-

We have changed the characters for our film.
Kim Paxton will now be playing our leading character;

Henri Yueksel will be playing the male character;

The weather was bad today and we didn't have costumes for our characters but we will begin filming on Monday, in G House.

M.P Productions

2009-10-20T01:55:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lisa;-

Using Adobe Photoshop, I created a false Production Company Logo. Annabell and I agreed on using the name 'M.P Productions' , which uses the letters of both of our surnames.

After choosing an image, we created a Logo.

Here is the screen shot of the process;

And here is the final saved image that we will use in our Major Task;

We are quite happy with the final outcome.

2009-10-20T01:04:00.001-07:00

costume design for major task;

I decided on simple, light coloured clothes to signify that she is a victim at the part when she is running away from him. Maybe dark blue coloured jeans and a white shirt. She'll wear her hair open so it blows in the wind.
The make-up is light, she only wear a little bit mascara and rouge. You can see the mascara coming down from her face, because she's crying.
By the shot when she kill her boyfriend I decide that she is wearing a red or black party-dress with black high-heels and a very dark make-up ; smoky-eyes and red lipgloss because it shows more her evil side.
The boy will wear black jeans and a white shirt so that you will be able to see the blood.

Dialogue and Audio

2009-10-20T01:04:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lisa;-

Today, Annabell and I used our time to create the dialogue for our major task. This is solely because the weather outside was not on our side and we could not do filming on location today.

The way our storyboard is set up, we have shots 2 and 12 with black screens and the audio is speaking.
To do this, we will record audio tracks of our actress speaking.
We also need to record audio tracks of her breathing to play in the background of our 2 minute piece as this is the main suspense builder of our clip.

For shot number two, we are going to use the line;
'What have I done?'
A rhetorical question that intentionally with scare the audience and hopefully make them want to continue watching. This will be followed on with tracks of 'scared' breathing, which is irregular, and we will also use silence too.

For shot number twelve, we have decided on the line;
'He's back for me.'
This will be followed by a silence and a black screen which hopefully will have a jump cut to our Title page with some music that we have chosen.

The title we have settled on is 'Escape'.
Music behind this shot will be a track created and produced by a personal friend.
'I met the sun' - Hawaii Jupiter

This fits well and will hopefully be an interesting contrast to the silence and breathing throughout the first two minutes.

Planning Major Task

2009-10-19T03:58:00.000-07:00

Synopsis;
A teenage girl has a horrible past. She has killed her overly-obsessive boyfriend one year before. She tried to forget him and that she has killed him, but he didn't forget her and now he has come back to be with her forever and make sure she doesn't forget what she did to him in the night. We will try to do this by fast editing, to make it more interesting and more scary. By editing all of our shots in Black&White, I think this will add to the scary story that we are trying to portray. By making our opening scene very catchy and quite confusing, we think that this will draw an audience to want to watch it, and we will try to do this effectively by cross-cutting shots and having fast editing.I am hoping that our filming goes as well as we plan it to so that our opening can be better as possible. We will be starting this very soon, but we wait for a little bit more nicer weather(Aka. Not raining) to film in. Our indoor shots aren't actually needed until later as our outside on-location shots are our priority for filming at the moment.

Locations;
Location-wise, we will only be using two different ones.One will be outside in a field, and we want this to give an eerie mood our opening, as it will be quiet and empty, making the audience ask questions.The second will be in Gordonstoun House, in the long empty hallway downstairs. With the correct lighting and filming/editing skills, we could definately make this location very spooky and this is why this place fits our movie genre perfectly.

Actors;
For our main character, who is female, we have chosen Phoebe Ritchie. For our 'victim/killer' we aren't quiet shure, who we want to choose, so we search for the right actor.

Mise-en-Scene;
We want our backgrounds to be extremely simple to add to the eerie feel of our opening. Possibly by using make-up on the girl, we can show that she is upset, by smudging her mascara or something, becuase she is runing away, and then she is crying and all the mascara is running down her face.

Props;
For props we will need:-A knife-some sort of substance for the colour on the knief, maybe ketchup or something else.
Our opening will be in black and white so it doesn't matter, what we choose for an substance it will be all black.
We want to keep our opening as simple as possible, so as not to give away our entire story in the first 2 minutes, but enough to make people want to watch more.

Storyboard

2009-10-15T04:11:00.001-07:00

Posted by Lisa;-

I drew up a storyboard showing all of the shots we are planning to do for our major task (Horror movie opening).

Even as a draft, I think our planning looks quite good and if we do it correctly and the filming goes according to plan, it could be very good.

Here are some pictures I took of the storyboard I drew up;

Planning Major Task

2009-10-12T04:22:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lisa;-

The film opening that we are planning has a mixed genre of thriller and horror. We are going to focus mainly on using the element of making our audience want to watch the rest of the movie (if there was one) and build up suspense.

Synopsis;

A teenage girl has a horrible past. She killed her overly-obsessive boyfriend exactly one year before. She tried to forget him, but he didn't forget her and now he has come back to be with her forever and make sure she doesn't forget what she did to him.

We want our movie opening to be fast and keep the audience wanting more. We will try to do this by fast editing, to make it more interesting. By editing all of our shots in Black&White, I think this will add to the scary story that we are trying to portray. By making our opening scene very catchy and quite confusing, we think that this will draw an audience to want to watch it, and we will try to do this effectively by cross-cutting shots and having fast editing.
I am hoping that our filming goes as well as we plan it to so that our opening can be as good as possible. We will be starting this very soon as we need the 'good' weather (Aka. Not raining) to film in. Our indoor shots aren't actually needed until later as our outside on-location shots are our priority for filming at the moment.

Locations;
Location-wise, we will only be using two different ones.
One will be outside in a field, and we want this to give an eerie mood our opening, as it will be quiet and empty, making the audience ask questions.
The second will be in Gordonstoun House, in the long empty hallway downstairs. With the correct lighting and filming/editing skills, we could definately make this location very spooky and this is why this place fits our movie genre perfectly.

Actors;
For our main character, who is female, we have chosen Kim Paxton. For our 'victim/killer' we are going to use Henri Yueksel.

Mise-en-Scene;
We want our backgrounds to be extremely simple to add to the eerie feel of our opening. Possibly by using make-up on the girl, we can show that she is upset, by smudging her mascara or something.

Props;
For props we will need:
-A knife
-Some sort of dark substance that could pass as blood. (Our opening will be in black and white so it is irrelevant whether the substance is red or not, it just has to be dark and as realistic as possible)

We want to keep our opening as simple as possible, so as not to give away our entire story in the first 2 minutes, but enough to make people want to watch more. (If it were a real movie).
Our idea is a very gripping, chilling story and if we pull this task off correctly, I think it could be extremely good.

Video

2009-10-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lisa-;

Here is our final video for our preliminary task!

End of Preliminary Task

2009-10-07T01:02:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lisa;-

We have come to the end of our preliminary task and overall I think my group worked well together from filming, editing and acting. We stuck to our original plan even though we did cut a lot of the scenes we had initially decided to put in our sequence. We cut it down with the good shots we had and we completed the task.
I was mainly doing the editing of our film, also I filmed a few of the shots of Vidur and the conversation. Kate also did a lot of filming. We had to cut lots of our footage but it was better to have the selection of lots of clips instead of the very minimal.
Annabell wrote out the dialogue and acted in our piece. She gave good ideas into our task and we all took these into account. Overall, I was quite please with the outcome of this task.

---

Q1: At a micro, technical level, how well did you film the tasks required - match on action, continuity filming, shot/reaction/shot and exchanging dialogue?

A1: Whilst filming the preliminary task, I think we approached the task and completed it very well as a group. We have continuity throughout the sequence and the way that our finished film looks, it looks like it is all happening at one time. I think at some points our shots could have been a bit more stable with use of the tripod but this is something we won’t make the mistake with during the filming of our main task.

Q2: How many mistakes did you make, and what have you learnt about filming?

A2: After filming, we noticed that we had a lot of pauses before and after the actors began or ended the scene. This hesitation looks obvious, so we had to split the clip to get rid of that. Also, we had a problem with one of our dialogue clips of Annabell, as the audio was not working so we had to cut the clip where it was appropriate. I also learnt about the 180 degree rule which I think we applied but I was a bit unsure about this after Vidur walked inside the building.

Q3: If you had to do the task again, what would you do differently?

A3: First of all we would take some practice shots to get a feel for the way we would begin the dialogue in the shot and everything. This would probably take less time if we had taken the time to try it out first. All of our shots were kind of a first time so there was no rehearsal. This may have been a good idea.

Q4: Describe how you edited the footage, and any problems you encountered.

A4: I edited the footage using Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. I used fade in and fade out effects to begin and end the piece. The only real problem I encountered was the audio in one of the clips which we ended up cutting in the end anyway. We could have re-filmed that shot but instead of wasting time and in order to meet the deadline, we had to cut it instead. There were no other major problems with editing, only the fact that the computer was so slow and it took ages to load up each separate clip making it very frustrating to edit!

Preliminary Task

2009-10-07T00:50:00.000-07:00

1)n At a micro, technical level, how well did you film the tasks required – match on action, continuity filming, shot/reaction/shot and exchanging dialogue?

We had a few complixations within exchanging dialougue of shot reaction shot. Sometimes the timing of when it was time to record their acting had come a little to late. Other than that everything was all according to plan. The camera shots Lisa and Kate used were fine however when I was looking through the film that she had edited, I didn't so approve the way she camerad Vidur shoes. The camera seems to be very unstable-(unbalance) doesn't look professional however I can't blame her for it would hard to do a tracking shot.

2) How many mistakes did you make, and what have you learnt about filming?

I haven't make big mistakes, becuase I was only the actor in the film.
Okay, sometimes, I was sitting there and then I was thoughting, oh, you have speak to early or to fast, but the rest was very easy. And there wasn't many mistakes to made.

3) If you had to do this task again, what would you do differently?

I would change the setting and dialogue. It would be based on "relationships". An arguement between a boy and girl argueing about who cheated on who and him finding out that she's been playing with him all a long. The volume of the voice would be louder, the shot reaction shot would be faster,-(When frustration occurs of him looking through her phone), the music would be carmer. As he say's "give me 20 good reasons why I should stay" by Thirsty mirc, the background music slowly rises up with what he just said. As the song hits to a medium stage the two of them will be camerad individually. She'll be sitting in different positions-(shot, shot) on her chair and he'll also do the same however on the ground. The music will be edited on the computer. Why I want to film them in the same room, being in different positions of different shots is to show both of their frustration and how body language is portayed. There will be two cameras used on the both of them.

If I was to do it again I'd ask to edit it or both of us to edit it. If I was to struggle ask Lisa to help me do it with her. I would do the editing along her helping me out. So far I only know how to cut a scene. I want to know how to put the music on, change the volume to soft sound to a loud sound. What type of feature to use when an opening scene is about to come up e.g. A sqaure, fading etc. I had been watching many short opening films of how a conversation is started and the type of feature they use to go to a next scene. This intrigues me very much and I'm hoping and keening to learn more.

I feel I haven't gained an understanding how to edit a film on a DELL computer. What I've benifit from in this project is exploring the many different camera shots. There many I wanted to use however they wouldn't had came to fit with our project. For example a "pan"

4) Describe how you edited the footage, and any problems you encountered.
I can't describe how I edited it for Lisa felt that she was cable enough to do it herself. We all had different roles. My role was to write up the dialogue with Kate and do acting. Lisa's job was to film Vidur and edit.

1/10/09, Thursday, begin filming

2009-10-01T04:01:00.000-07:00

Today my group began our filming. Without the help of Lisa's organisation of the type of shorts taken during filming, the plan wouldn't had been as successful. My task was to film Annabell working by using a variety of different angles such as and Lisa's task was to film Vidur. The filming took place at our own pace. The reason for this was to not waste time.
1. Fading in mid-shot of girl sitting down at the desk, taking out her books and things to work.
2. Close up shot of her pressing play on her ipod. (At this point we will use sound effects, and the song of our choice is the 'Pink Panther' theme tune). The type of sound effect is
diegtic/ambient where the only sound playing in the film is the music played by her earphones.
4. Whilst lisa does a tracking shot of Vidurs shoes and walking towards the building, I use a cross-cutting, then flicking to a closer shot of Annabell working.
6. We did many attempts to do an extreme close-up of Annabell's eyes. This is to show the audience of how much she is concentrated on her work.
10. Reaction shot of Annabell looking up at the boy. A close-up shot of her facial expression is used to show her body langauge.
11. She thens presses pause on the Ipod where an extreme close-up is taken. The use of music is not idenitfied yet. The sound is pre-recorded. Here I took many shots from different angles of her eyes. This was to show her body reaction to how relieved she was too see Vidur walking out of her site.

Overall our group found this task simple however my oraginsation didn't go as the group planned. When it came downloading the film shots, many of the small clips were more than we needed so Lisa, kindly deleted the ones that weren't relevant to our clip. My disorganisation was because I had mistakenly filmed 'Lisa's task', "shot reaction shot". This is were two people are having a conversation and the camera shoots at the character individual.

Filming with different type of shots is very Intriguing to me, however my ideas had led to shooting to many shots, having some that were relevant and some that were irrelevant

Written by Kate McIntyre

Task 1;- Page 11

2009-09-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lisa;-

I watched some films under the genre thriller, horror and mystery to get some of the ideas I had for our main task for the coursework. (Movie opening titles). By using lots of different movies in these genres to help me get ideas of how I could set out our groups' opening sequence, I have been given a lot more ideas on things like;
- The storyline
- Some possible camera shots I would like to try out
- Ways to show the credits
- Music and sound effects I would like to use

I got a lot of inspiration from the AS pieces from last year, the ones who did similar genres to the one my group has picked.

I like the way the movies used actual film companies at the beginning. For example, 20th Century Fox. This gives the sequence a little more 'reality' and is, I think, a good way to open the project.

I then looked at the idea of having someone (the actor/actress) holding the video camera while running. This adds a bit of tension as we could also use sound effects at this part to enhance breathing noises which is adding to the horror genre. I also think it looks really effective as you can see the background moving behind them. It's as if we are with them while they are running.

I then liked the idea for cross-cutting to another character from the running shot. This gives a sense of mystery, introduces a new character, and enhances the plot. An extreme close-up grabbed my attention from one of the films made last year. It was of one of the characters' eyes.

To show location, I liked the beginning of 'Mercy', a Year 12 product last year. It begins looking up at the trees. I liked this as it made it a little bit eerie since the location looked so empty and quiet. I thought this linked in with my groups chosen genres; horror, mystery and thriller.

Here are a couple of other screenshots I took of the 'running' scene that I liked. The camera shots are ones that I want to take into consideration for our project as I found them effective and I thought they looked quite good.

Dialogue

2009-09-30T02:19:00.000-07:00

The dialogue of our script consist of only two characters including Vidur and Annabelle.
Vidur: As he sits down on the seat facing oppsite her he begins to talk. 'Hey...watcha you doing there', in a casual I'm so cool attitude.
Annabelle: As she continues to write on her paper, she says to him without any eye contact, 'nothing its not your business'.
Vidur: 'So...what do have next lesson'?
Annabelle: 'I've already told you once, it's none of your business and twice, leave me alone'!
Vidur: as he sighs he then says, 'oh come on your being boring'.
Annabelle: 'Look, Vidur, can't you see I'm trying to study here alone...by myself'. As she says this she will look straight up to Vidur having a close up shot of her facial expression. 'by mself' will be closup of her eyes then mouth.
Vidur Turns away and says, fine I was just being friendly.
Annabelle: As Vidur closes the door behind him, she then turns her ipod on and says, 'finally'.

Preliminary Task

2009-09-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lisa;-

Our group began work on our preliminary task* today in our Media Studies class.

*[Preliminary Task - Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match-on-action, shot-reaction-shot and the 180 degree rule.]

We basically began by throwing around ideas of what our storyline would be. Finally, we decided on starting our scene with a girl, Annabelle Pohl, sitting down to do some work at a desk. A boy, our chosen main character who will be played by Vidur Bharatram, is basically walking outside the class, and see's her through the window and is obviously interested in her, so he enters the room. Vidur straight away goes and sits right next to Annabelle and begins to talk to her and 'hit on her'. Annoyed at this, the girl will tell him to go away 3 times as he desperately tries to start a conversation. Feeling rejected, Vidur will eventually leave the room.

As we are still working on the dialogue for this scene, here are the ideas we came up with for out shot plan.
1. Fade in mid-shot of girl sitting down at the desk, taking out her books and things to work.
2. Close up shot of her pressing play on her iPod. (At this point we will use sound effects, and the song of our choice is the 'Pink Panther' theme tune).
3. We will do a tracking shot of Vidurs shoes, walking towards the building.
4. Using cross-cutting, we will then flick to a closer shot of the girl working.
5. Another tracking shot of the feet, showing that he is getting closer to the building/door.
6. Extreme close-up of girls eyes to show that she is working hard or is busy.
7. We will then take a shot of the guy outside the door, peeking in the window.
8. A shot from inside of the boy peeking in the room.
9. Shot of the door handle being opened from the inside of the room.
10. Reaction shot of girl looking up at boy.
11. iPod pause. Extreme close-up. (Possibly repeat previous iPod shot? Music stops)
12 We will then use a long shot to show the boy walking in the room and sitting down next to the girl.
13 Close shot of boy. 'Dialogue'.
14 Close shot of girl. 'Dialogue'.
15 Close shot of boy. 'Dialogue'. - shot-reaction-shot
16 Close shot of girl. 'Dialogue'.
17 Close shot of boy. 'Dialogue'.
18 Close shot of girl. 'Dialogue'.
19 Long shot of boy standing up looking sad and rejected. He walks towards door.
20. Mid shot of boy walking out of the room.
21. Mid shot of girl shaking her head, and looking at her iPod again.
22. Close up shot of iPod. (Different choice of music)
23. End credits.

With lots of room for change that is our first draft of the preliminary task.