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?

Final - SENSES

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 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 - 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.

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.

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.

Shot List For Senses...

Scene 1:
1. Extreme close up of Psycho's (Chanel's) eyes.
2. Pan of side of Psycho's (Chanel's) eyes.
3. Over the shoulder shot getting on bus.
4. Close up of Psycho's (Chanel's) feet.
5. Long shot of Psycho (Chanel) sitting behind Victim on the bus.
6. Close up of Victims neck.
7. Several close ups of Psycho's (Chanel's) hands. (smelling hair, with scissors, touching hair, cutting hair)


Scene 2:
8. High angle shot of woman walking. (P.O.V)
9. High angle medium shot of Psycho (Chanel) walking (P.O.V)
10. Close up of woman's head on the floor.


Scene 3:
11. Long shot of Psycho (Chanel) looking at the wall.
12. Medium/long shot of Psycho (Chanel) taking off wig.