Evaluation: Video Interviews

To show what we have learnt we decided to video myself and Jess being interviewed to answer a few of the questions involved in the evaluation, below is the video of the interviews that we answered;

In the video above, I stated that our film stuck to the traditional conventions of the thriller genre as it showed signs of suspense, shock and voyeurism. I compared it to other films that have been released such as What I did Last Summer due to the teenage element and Social Network to the involvement of social networking site Facebook which is used in the film. I have also stated that the unfair representation is what has motivated us to make this film.

I have also spoke and compared our film to when we filmed our preliminary exercise and how we have improved our skill with certain technologies and how the group's media work has improved on a general level. I stated that I believe the camera work of Jess has improved a lot and the shots and the zoom that we have used in the film reflect much better in comparison to the preliminary exercise. I also stated for amateur acting, the characters in the film had done a sufficient job in order to make the film look realistic.

Jess then explained what technologies we have used in order to enhance and construct our film. Jess mentions the use of the video camera, the blackberry, the blogger, survey monkey and youtube in order to research and plan and make our thriller film. Jess explains the skills we have used in order to improve our ability in these programmes and how we have used them effectively to make our film possible.

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

Preliminary Task;

http://www.youtube.com/user/mediagees2010#p/u/5/HOcQ6eA2IlE

Final Draft

http://www.youtube.com/user/mediagees2010#p/u/0/UHPQaNlPNMk

Since our thriller, I believe we have progressed and learnt a lot, I think a major improvement has been the editing. I felt that with our preliminary task we were quite raw and seemed to dwell on footage to long creating long and tedious cuts. I felt in our actual thriller, we increased the pace of the scenes dramatically and created more suspense and tension this way.

I believe another improvement we made was with the expressionism, I felt that in our first task I was not used to having the camera on me all the time and struggled whereas in the film I seemed to not notice it as much and just try to make the scene look as real as possible. I feel my only error was when I was meant to be acting 'dead', my eye appears to move but this was not too noticable thankfully.

I think major improvements were also made from Jess with the camera work who seemed to make the film seem a bit more 'real' with the way she followed the action well. In our preliminary exercise you will notice that the zoom is pretty poor but we worked around this and the film seems to run smoothy in our actual thriller.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

What have you learnt about technologies from the

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5) How did I attract my audience?

After planning and researching how we wanted our film to look, I feel that our film can hold the audience's attention as the characters in themselves are interesting and would definatly attract the audience to keep watching the film to see what would happen next. The film engages with the audience because the way the characters in the film come across will be easy for the our target audience of the younger generation to relate to. We have also used certain techniques such as cliffhangers when both characters are killed at the start to intrigue the audience to find out more and the reasons in why the killer has done this. The use of the young actors is definatly an intergal part in making the film accessible to the younger generation as we feel it is more of a fair representation into how the younger generation actually act compared to the media's perception.

Below are examples of younger actors in other media productions;

Our film also uses the technique of confusion and leaves the film on a cliffhanger, the killer Louise seems to have no real motive to kill me or Shelby which leaves the viewer intrigued to find out what happens next. This is our main ploy to get the viewer to watch on further and see how Louise and the use of Facebook relates to the film. Below is comments we got from people who watched the opening of the film;

Josh Craske age 17: "I found the film rather confusing at the start but found the suspense was built up enough and the killing at the end is rather exciting and makes me want to watch more."

Joe Barwick Age 16; "I didn't really get what was going on and I wouldn't watch on, I wanted to see more of the killer as she was secretly quite attractive instead of the rather unappealing main actors who were not that good on the eye"

Sophie Barwick Age 22: "I rather enjoyed the film and found the actors very attractive, this alone would be a reason why I would watch on. I also found the way suspense was built up and the way facebook was used was another bonus into why I would continue to watch. Quality film !"

Liam Fritzl Age 14; "I found the film okay but not sure I would want to watch on as the actors are a bit mature and don't act like typical teenagers. However, I do like the use of facebook as it is easy to understand for someone like me as I'm absolutely obsessed by facebook. 

Sent - Final Draft

This is our final draft of our film Send, we have uploaded it onto youtube and it has been downloaded to be graded. We have also uploaded it onto our facebook profiles to see what our fellow class mates think.

4) Who would be my audience for my media project?

Before starting my thriller, I decided to do some background research on what my audience wanted to see, to do this I created a survey on a website called surveymonkey which helped me require what my target audience would want me to produce in my film.

After I had a discussion with my group, we decided that our target audience would be mainly young adults and teenagers so this is who we aimed our survey at my posting the survey on our Facebook and twitter pages. My results showed me various reasons why the teenage generation enjoyed thrillers and also expressed their preference to be physiological thrillers. We also got a mixture of answers from both genders to help us represent both genders equally in our thriller film. Below is a screenshot of some survey monkey results I acquired.

We also asked some of our fellow students what came to mind when they thought of a physcological thriller, we then used the responses to make a wordle using another new piece of equipment to show what responses we got from our target audience;

Thinking about our target audience, I would predict that the teenage generation would be the most likely to watch our film as they would be intrigued to how they were represented as our film relates mainly to their generation. It also uses the social network site Facebook which most teenagers can relate to and understand. I also think that teenagers would want to watch our film as they would recognise the dress sense and understand what was happening in the film better than an adult might be able to.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute my media project and why?

As I had little knowledge on the media institutions and companies, I had to do some research into finding out what film companies would perhaps be interested into producing physiological thrillers. Below are my findings;

My first findings was a rather famous production company called Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. This film company produce many successful films each year and has done for consecutive years now, they have excellent advertising schemes and are well respected in the media industry.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation have produced many hit films recently such as 'Avatar' and the 'Simpsons Movie'. On the other hand, while this film production are very successful, they are realistically too big for us and are known for producing high budget films with lots of complex special effects and would probably not want to produce a low budget film like ours.

Another well known film production team I found was Universal Studios who have produced physiological thrillers in the past. Again, they may be too big but have shot a few low budget films before so there would be a little more hope then Twentieth Century Fox.

Universal Studios have produced many good films also such as 'Frankenstein' and 'Drag Me to Hell' which would obviously give our film an incentive to see if it was produced by a big company such as Universal however they are known to be tight with funding and I predict our film would probably be too much of a 'risk' to fund.

A more realistic film company that might produce our film would be 'Dimension Films' who only formed in 1992 which means they are more recent on the scene and doesn't have such a high reputation. They are known for making franchises of films to make a mockery of the original film, they may want to use our film as they are in connection with two companies which helps our film massively being funded by two companies.

Marketing

Other ways that production companies get their films are out are by advertisements such as trailers to give their target audience a glimpse of the film in the hope that this will draw them in to watch the rest of the film. They also use posters and billet boards in order so that everyone sees their film wherever they go. Below are examples of how production companies do this;

Here is the trailer to Pirates of the Carribean 2;

2) How does my media project represent certain social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social

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

Our film highlights a key issue of cyber bullying as the killer sends a message via the popular social networking site facebook. Facebook has been linked to the film social network but that is how Facebook become so popular however we used this the site in a different sense to show how the key issue of cyber bullying in schools comes about which is a hot issue with the government at the moment.

Social Network - The Facebook film

Facebook logo

Below is a real live case study of this occuring;

A Fake Facebook Rival

This year in Clinton Missouri, charges were filed against a teenager who allegedly created a fake Facebook account to serve as a competition against a young girl who was interested romantically in a male student. The account was created by another girl who wanted the boy all to herself, the suit claims. As a result, the targeted individual underwent significant levels of stress which affected her studies and her ability to attend school regularly. The case is one of many that feature phony accounts on Facebook or MySpace that are used to harass young people or stir up trouble among friends.

Cyber Bullying has become a worldwide problem because of the difficulty to track its occurrences. It some cases it has been accepted as humor, but when is it taken to far? When a child has taken her own life because she was cyber bullied, we know it has been taken way too far.

Cyber bullying has been present in the 2008 presidential election with the slurrying of both presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. Even the vice-presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden have been victims of this abuse. These slanders wouldn’t technically be considered cyber bullying, but are loosely related. Senator Sarah Palin has received the worst of it with the creation of videos mocking her interviews on Saturday Night Live. NBC reports over 7 million views online, with millions more watching it on YouTube and Google video.

http://www.cyberbullyalert.com/blog/2008/10/stories-of-cyber-bullying/

Comparisons to our film

I would possibly compare our film to 'I know what you did last summer' due to the revenge and teenage element, below is a clip from this film;

Sent - 1st Draft

Below is the first draft of our film, it has many corrections that need to be made which will be made in the commencing week and I will then post the final draft of the intial opening 2 minutes of our thriller;

In this first draft, I believe that the facial expressions are mostly good and the idea of what is going on is pretty clear with a few minor adjustments maybe needing to be altered. I also believe that the plot created in the film is rather clever however the execution is not 100% to perfection and may need urgent re filming. I also felt that the zoom in on the 'message has been sent' was clever and showed that the actual planning of this film was good.

I feel the improvements that need to be made to this film is that there needs to be music supplied throughout which there is yet to be and there are a few shots that need to be re filmed to fit into the whole storyline. I was hoping to have had this film finished by now but it seems that we need to provide a few adjustments to make the film equivalent to a 'C' grade standard and that will need to be done this week. I feel sound is our main area of expertise which has let us down and a committed week of work will make sure that we have finished this to a decent standard.

Filming the Evaluation

Today, we filmed some answers for our evaluation of how we felt the film went and I will post the video on shortly. Again, I did a lot of the work in front of the camera to enhance my interview skills as well, we answered 3 questions which showed a variety of ways of techniques we had learnt to answer the evaluation.

Final Editing

Today, we did our final editing on the films and decided that the close up of Shelby's didn't replicate or look like the venue where she is supposedly killed so we deleted this from the scene. We also had to shoot a last shot of Louise looking on angrily at me and Shelby in order to link what is going on in the film to show what is going on in more detail.

Constructive Criticism

Miss Thompson has advised us to apply more close up shots of me and Shelby when we are direct messaging each other as this will show closer facial expressions and hopefully make the viewer feel more like they are in the film too. She also advised us to consider whether we as a teenager which is our target audience would watch this film.

Editing - Party Scene

Today, we have filmed and edited the party scene, we have also started to add the music we got from moby gratis and soon hope to be finished to show Mr Johnson & Miss Thompson for first corrections. I'm content with the music and feel the editing is good but expect there to be constructive criticism from our teachers.

Editing - The woods & the killings

Today, we have edited the woods scene and the killing scene, since the party scene is our first scene we have had to work around this as this is yet to be filmed so we have not applied any music or audio to the scenes yet as we are not sure how this will fit in. I will post when we have added music and audio.

Pictures from the Party Scene

These are the few pictures we have of our filming from the party scene.

Jess, Rosie & Shelby

The Lads

Filming - Party Scene

On Thursday, we filmed the party scene which we filmed at my house also with the help of my friends who helped us out. After realising we only had just over 12 people, we decided to film it as a casual gathering as that was easier to film. We made it look like a home video for effect to make the atmosphere fun and keep a calm atmosphere. We did this as the camera work on this scene was a bit wobbly which would explain it better as home made videos are not known for their perfect camera work.

Conventions of the Thriller Genre

Conventions of a Thriller Film

1. A crime at the core of the narrative (often murder, but not always)

2. A complex narrative structure, with false paths, clues and resolutions

3.A narrative pattern of establishing enigmas (problems) which the viewer expects to be resolved

4.A protagonist who is systematically, disempowered and drawn into a complex web of intrigue by an antagonist.

5.Extraordinary events happening in an ordinary situation

6.Themes of identity

7.Themes of mirroring

8.Themes of voyeurism

9.Protagonist with a "flaw" which is exploited by the antagonist

10.   Titles often reflect an aspect of the protagonist/antagonist's psychological state

11.   There is often a scene near the end of the film in which the protagonist is in peril

12.   Mise-en-Scene which echoes/mirrors the protagonist plight

Sound Effects

We have also had to consider sound effects in our film also, the sound effects we have decided we need is laughter at the party scene to create the party atmosphere. We have also considered having the sound of the wind to create a relaxed atmosphere in the park scene and our main sound effect will come in when the killings happened as we obviously can't actually hit someone with a weapon so a sound of thudding will happen off screen to create the impression that the victims have actually been hit. I will post sound effects when I find them to keep you posted on the latest on sound effects;

Pictures of the First Day Filming

The woods where we first filmed.

Me & Shelby in the woods

Myles the Tripod man

Louise in the bushes

Jess the Camera Girl

Louise with the weapon

Me & Shelby in my house

Myles with his beloved tripod

Louise the killer in her hiding position

My Account of the First Day Filming

We started filming in the woods at first where me and Shelby had to do several takes of walking through the woods while Louise stalked us in the trees. This was a challenge as making conversation while being filmed was not something I was used to. After several takes and several outtakes, we felt we had shot enough shots to edit this scene.

We then went to my house where we filmed the killing scene, we first filmed Shelby getting killed in my bedroom while we then filmed me getting killed on my computer downstairs. In this scene we encountered a acting blunder where camera girl Jess decided to demonstrate how the killer Louise should hit me with the weapon but got caught in the moment and followed through by actually hitting me with the weapon, we suggested she stay behind the camera after this. We now have to film the party scene as we continue to edit in class in order to make our deadline coming up.

Filming

Last week we started our filming for our thriller, we filmed in the woods behind our school to create a gloomy illusion to build up suspense. We then also filmed the killing scene in my house but are yet to film the opening party scene. Below are pictures of the cast in the scenes we have already filmed;

The Woods where we filmed....

Shelby with her favourite actor...

Tripod Man Myles

Killer Louise hides out in the bushes...

Camera Girl Jess

Killer Louise with her deadly weapon.....

The Main Actors - Me & Shelby

Louise hiding out behind the bed now.....

Actress Shelby & Camera Girl Jess

Art of the Title

To investigate ideas for our blog we had to research www.artofthetitle.com where we saw ideas from highly rated films such as Superman, Casino Royale, Forest Gump and others;

Understanding Mis en Scene

In order to film well, we must understand all types of film language, below is an example of my views from Mis en Scene:


Mise-en-scène

Mise-en-scène means, 'what is put into the scene or frame'.


Elements of Mise-en-scène:

Settings and props
Costume, Hair and make-up
Facial expressions and body language
Lighting and colour
Positioning of characters and objects within a frame

Settings

Settings can be used to manipulate an audience, it can be used to build up a certain expectation, and then the actions in the setting may take a different turn to these expectation, like a horror story taking place in a modern clean house would be more disturbing than a horror story taking place in an old abandoned house.

Props

Props are objects in the setting which play a part in the action. For example, a glass which contains poisoned wine.

Costume

Costumes can be an instant indicator of a character's job, personality or social status. It can also show when the film is set, and may also provide clues to the part the character plays in the action. Certain costumes are identified with specific genres.

Make-up

In the early day's of film, make-up was used to highlight facial features as black and white film stock couldn't register detail very well. Make-up in films now is usually used to add to the character's costume, and often, like the costume, is used to show someone's personality, social status and job, as well as further help get across the genre.

Hair

Like Make-up and costumes, Hair can help show someone's social status and personality, and can help get across in some cases the genre.

Facial Expressions

Facial Expressions are an indicator of how someone is feeling. Small changes to facial expressions also help to show how the character feels, if a smile is held for too long for example, it gives the person a more sinister look, and we know that they are up to no good. Eyes play a huge part in reading facial expressions, if the character's eyes avoid looking at a particular person, we know for some reason they can't bare to look at that person for example. Also, The eyes can be used to grab the audience's attention as it is usual for use to follow someone's eyes line to see what they are looking at.

Body Language

The way in which people move and hold their bodies indicates how we are feeling and thinking. For example, if a character's fists clench, they turn red, they start shaking, we know that they are angry.

Lighting

Lighting can be used to give a realistic look or bring out the dramatic nature of a scene for example, and different lighting styles can be identified with different genres.

Lighting can be used to

Highlight import characters or objects by drawing our attention towards them with a bright light source
Make a character look mysterious by shading section of their face or body
Reflect a character's confused state of mind by
alternating bright and dark light in a strobe effect
Show the time of day