ALL BLOGS COMPLETED!!!

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Evaluation Pt 7

GoAnimate.com: Question 7 by LyaAAh

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I used go animate to answer question 7 of the evaluation.

ALL BLOGS COMPLETED!

This is to show that I have finished all the tasks that were set for us to blog including all of the evaluation questions.

BLOGS COMPLETE!

I have completed all of my blogging tasks including the questions for my evaluation!

Evaluation - Question 7

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

EVALUATION

QUESTION 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

EVALUATION

QUESTION 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

EVALUATION

QUESTION 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

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EVALUATION

QUESTION 4- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Final - SENSES

Evaluation pt 6

This is  final cut pro video to show question 6.

Evaluation - Question 6

Q6: What have you learn about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

 
GoAnimate.com: Evaluation - Question 6 by aa41797

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EVALUATION

QUESTION 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

EVALUATION - Question 3 on Prezi

Evaluation pt4+5

Evaluation - Question 5

Q5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation - Question 4

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question 3 - Evaluation.

Evaluation - Question 3 on Prezi

EVALUATION PT 3

Here is Question 3 of the evaluation which I have done on powerpoint and uploaded to photobucket, this is about the production companies and it is viewed as a slide show.

   

EVALUATION

QUESTION 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Representation often rely on stereotypes - recognisable characters which are instantly understandable to the viewer. Stereotypes can either be represented positively or negatively, for example a blonde bimbo or a black criminal. A representation involves a conscious decisions, for what they decide and what we see. 

The social groups I have represented in my film opening are women which heavily contradicts how are they portrayed in regular society. Women are generically portrayed to be housewife's and very feminine and not at all typically associated with crime. In our psychological thriller opening, our main character is a psychotic woman who has a fetish for other women's hair. All of our victims in our opening are also women which is quite typical of them to be victims of crime as that is how they are portrayed in society. 
In our opening we have represented women in a negative way as they are represented to be psychotic criminals, however some may interpret this as a positive representation as it breaks the barrier of women not usually being the criminals and stereotypical main character in a thriller film. 

Evaluation - Question 2.

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation is the way in which media portrays social groups in society. For example, stereotypes are a perfect way to show how society connects certain beliefs to different social and ethnic groups.

This image shows how society immediately associate black working class teenagers with crime and street violence. This is an example of representation. 

The representation we have used in our thriller opening is that we have used all female characters as the main protagonist and victims. We have presented the psycho (the main protagonist) negatively as we have depicted her to be a woman who is mentally deranged and has an obsession with short hair. Additionally, it could be said that we have depicted the victims in the film opening negatively because we are making assumptions that females are easier targets and are targeted more often in society. Also, this representation can show the vulnerability and weakness of women in society. I think that our film opening supports the representation of women in real media as they are usually the ones who are targeted because they are more weak and vulnerable. Overall, our thriller film opening focuses mainly on the gender representation of women in society. 

EVALUATION

QUESTION 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


There are many conventions of a film opening, which helps the audience determine the genre of the film and who it's aimed at. The conventions include, mise en scene, editing and camera shots. For a thriller film opening, the conventions used will help to build up suspense and create the tension needed. The most effective camera shots used for a thriller are close ups of props and facial expressions which we have included plenty of in our opening. 




The conventions of a title sequence for a thriller film opening, goes as follows:

1. Production Company: Logo/Indent
2. Production Company: Text
3. Other production companies (distributors)
4. Film title
5. Actors/cast
6. Casting
7. Costume
8. Music Supervisors
9. Music
10. Edited By
11. Production Designer
12. Director of Photography
13. Executive Producers
14. More Executive Producers
15. Director

Shown from our rough cut is how we have followed these conventions in our thriller opening.

Another thriller film opening that also follows these conventions is The Stepfather. 

However, in comparison to the shots of ours, The Stepfather includes the production company's ident, and the production companies as mine has only been taken from a rough cut which we later improved on. 

EVALUATION PT2

Question 2:

How does media product represent particular social groups?


Representation is how the media is able to put people into categories by using mise-en-scene (which is props, clothing, surrounding environment.), camera (positioning of the camera, the shots of the characters) and sound (if its sound of birds or rock playing). In our film opening our representation was of women, as the main character and the people attacked were all female of different ethic backgrounds.


The mise-en-scene used for the main character was a wig, gloves, bag, scissors. The camera work used was extreme close-up of her eyes, medium shots of the side of her face, long shots of her looking through the whole in the wall. Close-ups were used when the two characters that are used in the beginning turn around and see their attacker. The physical attack that we see we do not see her face but we see close ups of the attack. Sound used was diegetic (cars driving by, scream) non-diegetic (whoosh air, impact crashes, walking, scissors. Music- drone suspense, drone ethereal and drone dark and scary).


The social group that we used was a black female attacking other females during the course of the opening. We represented them in a negative way as they are attacking people for hair. We never show her full face just aspects of it. Jealousy is a big aspect in the world today which we incorporated into the opening as women are very concerned with appearance, this has taken the point to the extreme of actually attacking women for their hair.

Evaluation - Question 1.

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

The conventions of thriller film openings are created through the use of mise en scene, editing and camera work. Usually, thriller film openings use camera work to create suspense and tension. Varying the angle and shot types like having close ups, extreme close ups, high angles and low angles engages the audience and creates a sense of ambiance in the opening. Also, the editing comes into play as an essential element too. In order to create suspense transitions and video effects are used to emphasise certain aspects of the openings.

Our film opening have supported the conventions of thriller film openings as we have been able to maximise our use of our footage from using the JVC camcorder. Also, we filmed footage from different angles to create tension and suspense. We have also shot close ups, extreme cose ups and other shots.

Our film contains similar conventions of other film openings. For example: 

We have successfully followed the conventions of psychological thrillers as our storyline contain aspects where the psycho is obsessed with hair and she stalks women.

We have decided to follow the conventions of any title sequence.They are usually presented in the following order: 

1. Production Company: Logo/Indent
2. Production Company: Text
3. Other production companies (distributors)
4. Film title
5. Actors/cast
6. Casting
7. Costume
8. Music Supervisors
9. Music
10. Edited By
11. Production Designer
12. Director of Photography
13. Executive Producers
14. More Executive Producers
15. Director

Other than title sequences, the types of film openings were also considered during our course of planning. There are four types of film openings including credits over a blank screen, stylised, discrete and a traditional film opening with titles running over the screen. Thrillers all have different types of openings to fit their sub genres. For example, Pelham 1,2,3 has a stylised opening sequence because it is an action thriller. Stylised openings allow the editor to change the pace of the title sequence. Another example would be Seven which is a horror thriller. They used a discrete structured opening to show the sinister side of the story. We have decided to present our title sequence over a blank screen to show the psychological aspect of our thriller. The blank screen was used to show the psycho's mental instability and some blank screens were used to show a flashback.

EVALUATION PT1

              

Evaluation on Prezi

Here is question 1 of the evaluation which I have done in the form of a prezzi, I have explained the title sequences, conventions of a title sequence. Also the pace, transitions, colours and fonts.

Editing - SoundTrack Pro 2

After adding sound effects to our opening, we decided that we needed some instrumentals so that the footage flows more. Therefore, on soundtrack pro, we decided to add in dark orchestral sounds to link the footage together.

Production - Footage.

This footage shows a part of our process of production whilst we were editing on Final Cut Pro.

Senses - Mini evaluation.

After posting the rough cut of Senses, we realised that there just wasn't enough footage as it was only 53 seconds long. We realised that our opening needed to be at least 2 minutes long. Therefore, we found that we needed to add more footage so that it will be at least 2 minutes long. Overall, we genuinely didn't have enough footage. However, because we filmed a scene on the bus which was initially supposed to be a main part of our opening, we could add in some footage from that scene to make it longer. Also, we decided to have the credits roll over a blank screen to make our footage longer.

Last Day - SoundTrack Pro

 As discussed before, we have decided to use the first 10 seconds from 'Initiation' to build up tension in the opening of the thriller. We are aware of the copyright of the song and therefore we decided to slow down the pace of the song so that it is original and it lasts longer into our thriller. We also faded the song in and out to make it smooth. We added the song on Final Cut Pro so that we could edit the track. 

 

It is the last day of editing and these screen grabs show the process of adding on foley sounds and a soundtrack to our final thriller opening. We have used the following sounds:

• Natural sounds - City
• Natural sound - Room
• Whoosh air
• Impact crashes
• Heartbeat
• Walking 
• Screams
• Clothes
• Scissors
• Drone - Suspense
• Drone - Etherel
• Drone - Dark and scary

All of these sounds contribute to building tension and creating suspense in our thriller opening so that the element of thriller is emphasised.

Last Day Of Editing

Here are a few shots of editing the day before our deadline.
As shown we have included a few other shots we weren't going to use initially to ensure the duration of our opening was a minimum of 2 minutes.
Today we'd also had to edit our title sequences to make sure they were within the green box guideline. This is so it is visible when it's shown to an audience.

Soundtrack Pro

This screen grab shows the process of adding foley sounds using Soundtrack Pro. We have decided to add sounds such as footsteps, natural environmental music in the background, screaming and cutting of the scissors. These all contribute to creating tension and suspense to the thriller opening.

Editing - Final Cut Pro

Here are some screen grabs we took to show our process of editing on final cut pro. It shows how we have used video transitions like cross dissolves and fade in and fade outs to make our footage look smoother.

Day 2 - Filming

After our initial filming process, we decided that in order to make our opening more effective and stronger we filmed some extra footage so that we can include it in our sequence. They were mostly close ups and extreme close ups. This is because this would reinforce the thriller elements within ouro opening. Also, as the screen shots show, we decided to film from different perspectives so that we have varying view points to choose from.

Rough Cut

This is a rough cut of our thriller opening. There are many aspects that put us in a strong position. For example, the pace of the footage makes the opening more effective and creates more suspense. Also, the layering of footage with the different transitions allow us to experiment with the pace of the opening. However, there are other edits which we need to carry out. For example, we need to add some more footage into this to add depth and to make it more fluent and effective in creating suspense and tension.

Day 1 - Filming.

These are some images that we have taken during the course of filming and preparations for the filming of our thriller opening. The shots of Lyah and Chanel were taken when we were filming at West Ham - the attack scene. We decided to try out different shots to see which would give the best result. This included trying to film from the psycho's (Chanel) perspective. However, we decided that this would look really unprofessional and messy so we chose to shoot an over the shoulder shot using the tripod to make it steady and balanced.

The other images were taken at Chanel's house. This was the last scene of our thriller opening. We had to prepare the props for the scene which included images of short hair taken from newspaper, magazines and the Internet and also extracts of hair cut from extensions and wigs.