FINALLY FINISHED :)...

Evaluation Q4&5 Media Institution

As part of our evaluation we need to think about how we would advertise and distribute our films. This is a very important part of actually  making a film successful. In order to attract a good target audience we have to be extremely realistic about our student film release and have to   take into account that Candi Studios are a low budget company but we still have up to date equipment and facilities that will make our films look as good as possible. For our thriller movie  (DeadLine) we did decided to use Candi Studios as it is a low budget production company so we have to find ways of advertising it in mnay different ways.

Our film is a student video that will be released over the Internet on Vimeo, embedded onto a blog and may find its way onto YouTube or social net working websites.'The Screen On The Green' on the 5th of April 2011 to an audience of 180. Lets also not forget that the film is then to be released on DVD (the date of the DVD release is currently unknown), and a total of 200 DVDs will be out. 

There is an advantage of us being students and actually having the opportunity to film a Thriller movie. Continuously young people are forever spending hours on ends on social networking sites such as Sites Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook is exceptional useful as young people who my thriller audience is often have hundreds and hundreds of friends on Facebook. Once they upload their video there 'friends' can view it and 'Share' it to their list. This is therefore a continuous cycle that allows the movie to be published and distributed through a social networking site. They can also get comments and 'likes' giving feedback and criticism on their movie.  I have also shared my video on youtube and got some comments and feedback. 

Below are some screen Shots and evidence of our thriller movie posted on Youtube with Comments and likes:- 

Below this shows how many people have viewed this and how many likes and dislikes. 

Below this shows the comment we got back...Mostly Positive comments :). 

An example of some student work on the Internet that has had quite a large number of hits is:

The Internet has been used to launch this movie to a wider audience as it has been published on YouTube one of the worlds most visited music and film sites that have millions of views a day. This Thriller opening called 'Aftermath ' from students that attend hurtwoodhouse performance college made 226 views on YouTube. It has also published through Blogger.com as our media teachers shared the link with us so we could access it accordingly. I think their target audeicne is for about 20 year old as it hold elements that young people may not be remotely interested in. It slightly has elements of crime/psychological thriller sub genres and rally does have some interesting shots. I followed a similar model of launching my film will be shown in a cinematic screening in front of students from the AS media department, i will probably then be able to ask people what they thought about my thriller opening. This also shows how putting in a low budget film on websites like youtube can be quite famous around small sites. 

YouTube is the most popular video sharing site. It reaches a wide audience and with a YouTube page you can receive user feedback and comments on how well the video actually was, you can remain anonymous. However you have to have signed up with YouTube in order to comment or like videos. This makes publicising better and more effective as it keeps being social involved and they can say what they think. 

HERE IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF A MUSIC VIDEO WHICH IS LOW BUDGETED AND HAS MANY MANY VIEWS: 

Below shows how many views it has had...Wow a Lot. As you can see it is very famous and millions of people have viewed it. 

Below shows how many comments it has had...Which is a lot as well. !

Overall even though having a low budget film it can be put on sites like face book and youtube and can be viewed many people. 

Evaluation Q8. Looking back at your perliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Prelim Video:
First time filming with the techniques we were taught.

MISE EN SCENE

Props used in these two images are a Paper, Pen and Phone which was used as a way to  show the character is doing work initial we thought this was a good idea but as we continued research we realised that it didn't look realistic and in a way was comical. Obviously it was suppose to be suspenseful and i didn't think that particular shot suited the genre. 

We learnt for our final film that were had to think about mise en scene carefully and that they are used to create part of the actual storyline. In the first image you can see a closeup of a cup, lipstick and makeup. In a way an innocent girl can be perceived and the makeup is used to indicate her persona and what type of character she is. However the medicine shows a bit of the suspencefull side.  The other shot is of a shot of the calling card being a scarf. This is something where she leaves behind at the end. This mise en scene was much better suited for the story we were trying to get across.

EDITING

The first shot with door and a girl is my first prelim film. You can see we edited this as a match cut of her coming in and shutting the door. This did not turn out very good. The second two images are from our final film. This is a much better match cut of her drinking the water and then places it down back on the table. This was useful as we were stuck for time and only had a 2 mins Maxim title sequence. Looking back at the prelim could analyise that the match cut and editing i have learnt has been very successful. 

LIGHTING

The first shot is from our prelim task, as you can see the Lighting is very bad due to being in a class room. This is very bad to lightening as it is to dark and the lightening portray a successful piece of work. I brought this knowledge and mistake with me along to my final thriller as i remembered that lighting is important and it should be clear who characters are. The JVC cameras helped me with lighting issues (the GAIN button) increased the light tensity and made shots brighter if we didn't have any natural light at that particular shot. As you can see the second shot is much better with the natural light. 

SOUND

Our sound in the Preliminary task was BORING it was just one consistent sound and had no excitement. We did not use any sound at all just the sound from the video. After analysing this I then decided that for the final film we had to make sure that the soundtrack was very tense and suspenseful to create the mood. We ended up creating very unique and catching sound sequence from using the programme sound track pro. From all our audience feedback they all mention that our sound really did fit with our sequence, pace and titles, this allowed me to believe that it was an effective and successful piece. The sound is very important in a thriller movie as it creates feelings and the mood. 

CAMERA

These two shots are from my prelim film, They are actually really bad shots. One of the characters are practically cut out of the shot, this is bad as i later learnt that if this was shown on a big screen for example in the cinema it wouldn't fit in the frame and that part of the shot will be cut off. The second shot has allot of space at the side. Allowing the audience to be distracted and it doesn't look really professional. These two shots show a lot of the background which does not look very good a lot. 

These two shots are taken from our Final film. These shots are much better and do fit the content more. They show that i have learnt skills and my progression has been clearly stated. The first shot is a nice big  extreme closeup of the props, and its nice and clear. The second shot i would describe as an close up. This really captures on how the character looks and also it pays more attention to the face rather than the background which i wanted. This is also quite unusual and wanted a jerky shot so it looks more suspencfull. A variety of shots were used to really show off our skills and knowledge.

Titles and Fonts

In my prelim i did not use any sort of titles. However learning this skill i have used it in my final thriller movie using black screens. We Used fonts that is quite simple white, but quite suspancefull. 

Skills I have Learnt:

During my time i have also learnt that team work is extremely important. My group consisted of 5 people, at times we had some difficulties were we didn't agree on particular ideas and decisions however we always tried to incorporate our ideas together. Meeting up to film in the mornings were hassle and there was always a group member late, but once we all were together we actively started participating and giving feedback on shots that we liked and didn't like so it was a productive filming experience. one thing that i liked about our group is that we always helped one another, constantly reminding each other about blogs that were due or planning that was needed. We usually allocated specific roles to our group members, for example Elias did soundtracks, Mariama and Myself done editing and Sheri focused on the titles and credits.

Being organised is sensual as you have to be very prepared to make sacrifices for example spend time filming out of college hours rather than going out with friends. We had to be on time when we were asked to collect equipment because of the simple reason that time slots were allocated and there are not enough cameras for every single group. This resulted in many people realising our responsibilities and recognising we had to work as a team in order to have a successful film at the end of the course.

I learnt that you had to be very careful with the equipment as they were very expensive and needed allot of care when handling. JVC camera, still cameras, memory cards, Tripod and flip cameras were the basics that i used throughout my filming process.
Overall my experience was great and i would do it all over again, i have some really nice memories and have learnt so much about technology and how to use Apple Mac computers

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There were a lot of differences between the two sequences, and in watching them, we could really see the differences and development in our editing and production techniques over time.My skills with editing have improved massively since the beginning of the course: initially, there were just lots of jump cuts and a various range of shots that didn't particularly flow together. Now i have learnt to use different techniques such as match cuts adding the titles, speeding up the video clip, chanaging the colour and black screens. I think this is a really useful skill to have as it can help me in future references if i want to continue to do this. 

Finally i have learnt that planning before you go our filming is very important as you have to organise who is bringing in particular props for that shooting day. Location for the setting, what time of day you are going to meet because when my group filmed at London Eye (Waterloo) we had decided to go in the morning as it is a tourist attraction so it often gets busy during the afternoon. You also have to do research so you know exactly what elements a thriller holds. As you can see i have come a very long way and has been very successful and determained to do a lot of hard work. 

Evaluation Q7. Technologies

We were introduced to new technologies that we had to use majority of the time. These technologies are some of the things i learnt during editing and doing filming. 

1. Blogger

Blogger. The software that allows us to share our ideas and catch up on work we may have missed.

2. Imac

Macs: This is where we did all of the editing, aswell as using quicktime. 

3. Sound Track Pro

(Livetype, soundtrack pro & final cut pro): Each programme let us do a different thing to construct the film

together.

4. Final Cut Pro

5. Live Type Pro

6. JVC Video Camera 

The JVC cameras: The camera's that let us create the actual film aswell as the prelim. Thecameras helped us achieve a proffesional quality film. The cameras can be complicated to use, we had a lesson prepping us with how to use them.

7. JVC Camera

8. Lights 

The lights we used was to have better quality in a dark room. 

9. Memory Cards 

Memory Cards: They were essential in holding all our film work. They slot into the cameras and directly into the Apple Macs.

Evaluation Q6. Audience Feedback (2).

In order to get audience feedback we decided to use different forms of social media. We posted the video up on YouTube and posted the link to it on Twitter and Facebook so that people can view it and comment on it! 

Here Below are some screen shots of the comments that we got back, which were quite positive! :) 

Below is a screen shot of how many people that viewed our film. Also shows how many people liked and disliked the overall film. 

This is a wordle That i created using the comments we got back and as you can see its all quite positive which we were quite happy about. 

Evaluation Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media products?

This is a thriller title sequence from the film 'Se7en'. This shows the 9 shots.

The use of the establishing shot with the production company on front. This is how seven used their opening with the production company.

The use of black screen used in seven really inspired us. We used this in our film and we did black screens and we added the names of people in our group and the role we did.

We did close ups of objects that relate to the character. We got really inspired by seven when they got really big close ups of objects which looked really good. 
  

Here is another close up of the shoulder. We took many shots that are close up as we wanted to create a good feeling of suspense and wanted jerky camera movements. 

Here is another close up of the foot. This part is convenient as the title comes in when the foots steps down the title disappears.  

Here are San serif fonts. We did black screens and added the names and etc. 

Evaluation Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 Our psychological thriller shows that the character cares a lot about her appearance, this is shown when she re-applies her makeup. Furthermore, the character continues to do what she may do on a 'normal' day such as putting on shoes and fixing her hair and taking the medicine. This really represents her severe mental instability as there not only is there a dead person in the same house as her, they're in the same room as her. Normal people may feel guilty or even frightened for what they have done. But not this character as she is not in the right frame of mind and that is who she really is. 

                                                                        

The act of 'normality' has been inspired by The Stepfather  (2009) The character is carefully changing his appearance and then goes on to make breakfast. This all first tells us that he is all normal then knowing that he has just killed an entire family and they are laying on the floor in the same room as him shows the characters mind and inner self comes out more. This shocks the auidence as first we see a normal guy doing normal things then as the music changes we see bad things appear. Like so in our thriller movie her doing daily girly routine then we see hand layed on the floor all dead. 

Evaluation Q3. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The idea of an ideal viewer for our thriller film is thought to be a female as it is a Romantic-Thriller Genre and also, in her mid-twenties to 40's. 


The reason why i think our film appeals more to females at the age of 20-40 because its an phycological thriller. Also because of how the character is like in our film. When we first see that she is putting her make-up on and etc. 
The type of women i can imagine watching our film is a university student, who really enjoys phycological romantic thrillers and is in her mid-twenties. Also she studies phycology in university and she is familiar with the concept of the characters mind. Also it would be quite easy for her to analiyze and ask her self questions on 'why is she doing this?', 'What has made her do this?' and etc. 

Evaluation Q6: Audience Feedback!

Today we had an audience feedback session. We played our thriller opening and got everyone to comment on it both on paper and on camera. After the clip had ended we began a small discussion on what worked and what did not in our thriller opening. Here is the recording of the discussion:

A Wordle of the audience feedback session