Hello and welcome to my blog. After a lot of time, dedication and effort, I have finally finished the main task of producing an approximately two minute opening sequence to a film genre of our choosing. I have also tracked my progress from when I very first began AS Media Studies using this very blog. Overall, I feel proud of what has been produced and I hope this is reflected through the final piece, my evaluation and my blog. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my opening sequence, 'Hollow Earth' (below) and reading my blog.
Now that we are coming to an end of our main production, the attention is turning to working on our evaluation. Our evaluation will be done by answering seven different questions about our production piece. We have to use a variety of methods to present our questions. The questions which need to be awnsered are:
1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
With this question, I am being asked to show my understanding of the different sorts of techniques and conventions that are presented within film and whether or not what I have used lives up to the standard of those used in the professional environment. As well as this, I will also need to show how I presented this in my production. To do this, I can go look back at my research and see how that affected the final piece. After thought I think that the best way I could present this is through a directors commentary. This would consist of recording a voice-over on top of the finished main piece and in this voice-over I can talk about the certain conventions and media techniques that I used within my piece.
Here is an example of a directors commentary from the film American Psycho:
2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
To answer this question, we need to show how our media piece represented a particular social group using the character within the film. To do this, I will set up a mock interview with the cast member (me) and then have the interviewer ask questions which all together with answer the main question.
For an example of this, I have found an interview with Martin Freeman for 'The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug.' What I have in mind is similar to this but will be more relevant to the question:
3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
For this question, I need to talk about distribution within the media industry and the types of institutions there are. As well as this I need to decide on what media institution would be best to distribute my production as some institutions are known for distributing certain genres, such as ITV1 focus on the general public while ITV2 is more focused on the young. To answer this question, I will be using a voice-over which will then have supporting visuals on screen.
4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
This question is simply asking what sort of audience my production was intended for, such as a specific social or society group. To answer this question I will use two methods. The first method I will use is vlogging so that I can talk about the audience and why the media product was aimed at them, and then secondly I will go on to use a vox populi method where I ask the intended audience to watch the piece and then give their overall opinion of it.
I want to something similar to this for my vox pops:
5.How did you attract/address your audience?
For this question, I need to explain how professional companies manage to attract and address their audiences and I also need to show how I am going to do the same. The best way to do this is by making a poster using Photoshop and then explain how this would be effective.
Here are a few famous examples of film posters:
6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
In this question, I am being asked how much about media technologies I have learnt throughout the pre-production, production and post production. The best way to answer this question would be through a presentation. I will be using PowerPoint as my presentation software. In this presentation I will show all the hardware and software I used throughout the process and talk about the pros and cons of each thing.
7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full production?
For this question, I have to decide on how I have progressed in media from when we filmed the preliminary task, all the way through the main production and up to now. This will include mentioning everything I feel I have learnt since the preliminary task and how this has benefited me. To answer this question, I am going to get back together with the group I worked with in the main production and have a discussion about this, in the form of a podcast.
Yesterday, I spent the majority of my day doing the final process of edting for my main task. The main thing I had to do was add the opening titles to the video so that it fitted the conventions of an opening sequence. However, this is not all I did as there were a few things that needed to be corrected. As I was doing this editing at home, I had some new programs available to me. These were Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects.
Adobe Premiere Pro
After the initial edit, we figured that our production was at a high enough standard. However when I watched it home, I realised that some of the diegetic sound was either poor quality or was not syncronised with the action on screen. Therefore I decided to edit the sound, mainly the footsteps as they were way too loud and not in sync. I also added some extra diegetic sound such as creaking and birds in the background to try and make it more realistic. There were also some visual tweaks that needed to be made, such as slightly lengthening and shortening clips, and in some places the video had glitched and needed to be replaced. As well as this I added some of the titles that would appear in the finished piece which was made very simple by Premiere Pro. Adobe Premiere Pro as a video editing software is fantastic! The ease of use was great and the video editing options were vast. Adobe After Effects
To do some of the titles for the final piece, we wanted to make some of them more dynamic and we thought the best way to do this was implementing the text into the enviroment. After research, I found the best program to use for this is Adobe After Effects. There were a variey of features available to me, however many of these effects were not possible as some features. An example is the feature known as rotoscoping. This feature puts an object from the video in a seperate layer so that you can insert things behind it while the video is in motion. Initially, this was a plan but as the rotoscoping is usually done with a still object and/or with a selection of colours in the picture. Due to the camera moving a lot and there being little difference in colour it could not pick up myself as a layer within the video and therefore did not work. However, there were some features that did work. The one I used was camera tracking. This feature is used to track all motion within a selcted clip and then find 'track points' which you can then link with text, for example. Therefore as the track point stays in place so does the text and moves along with the camera movement. I used this twice, once where it says 'Cinematography, Thomas Ewart.' and I attatched this to the ground and secondly when it says 'Starring, Abel Clarke' and this was made to look like it was written on the wall. This is fairly simple to do and is very effective. Overall, Adobe After Effects is a really good program when implementing video effects into a video. However, as I was a beginner to the program, I felt I was thrown very much in the deep end and it took me a good while to understand what I was doing.
After all this was done, the final piece is now complete. I will be putting it on my blog soon.
After many hours of work and effort, me and my group have now finished our main task. Overall, I am impressed of what we have achieved. However the final product which was produced was nothing like I imagined and this was due to all the changes we made from the initial pitch. There were a variety of reasons for these changes and they were made in all three areas of production, pre-production, production and post production. In this post I will go through all the changes we made and why they were made.
1. The Actor
Initially we had cast Daniel Cadoret, as mentioned earlier in my blog, to play the main character. We did go out filming once with Daniel and he did a good job at presesenting the character we wanted. However after this it became apparant that after this seesion he was unavialable for filming when we needed him due to what he had planned. Of course we respected this as he was only helping out through kindness so if he has other plans he should definetly do them rather than go out of his way to help us. Therefore we had to find another actor star in the opening sequence. As mentioned before on my blog, I was the other choice to be the actor so I took up the role. Overall this didn't affect the overall piece as the audience didn't know this and the only drawback was having to re-film three or four shots.
2. The ending
When we first thought of the initial ending, there was going to be a lot more going on and was even going to involve another actor. However half way through the production process, we realised that there were two problems with this ending. Firstly, the ending would invovlve the character being shot, and if this were to happen it would of closed a lot of doors to who this character was. However the main reason we changed his is due to timing. With what he had already filmed, the piece was already two mintues long so adding an ending which would be just as long would mean our piece would be going gainst the brief of making at most, a two and a half minute opening sequence. Therefore we had to go back to the drawing board and rethink our ending. This took two attempts as the scond idea for an ending was also too ambitious for the little time we had left for it. What we producedin the end, I feel was sufficent to work as the ending and honestly would've been better than the ending we had planned in the first place.
This is the initial ending in stroy board form, with the car pulling up and the driver then shooting
the main character.
3. A couple of shots
Our shotlist was something which, as time went by, we struggled to follow. This was for two reasons. Firstly the shots we had in mind may have been overly ambitious however the main reason was that once we were on set we realised that some shots we had planned would not be as effective as we first hoped. however the location also gave as a lot of inspiration for different shots and some of which wouldn't of worked without what we had available. A good example is there was part of the wall which had fallen away and we took advantage of this with one of the shots. This wouldn't of been possible to plan if we didn't know the wall was like this.
When we first did our storyboard, this is the shot we intended for when the
character hits the creature, and it was going to be a simple mid shot. However, when
we got round to filming we figured that a worms eye shot shot looking up at the character
would be better and have more of an effect.
On Wednesday we visited the British Film Institute on the London Southbank. We visited yesterday as there was an event being held on how youth is interpreted through media and film. The day started with a presentation by Matthew Hall on the growth and change of teenagers and youth over the years as well as how film has shown this. There was then a screening of the film 'My Brother, The Devil.' followed by a Q&A with one of the producers, Julia Godzinskaya. Overall, the day was fantastic as it gave us an in depth look at how media and film portrays the young in society.
The lecture on youth in media.
This lecture, which was presented by Matthew Hall, focused on the way in which film and media present the youth and how that view has changed throughout the years. He started at the very beginning when the teenagers first began to appear. This was because before, children were expected to suddenly become adults with no transition in between. We then carried on to talk about how the new group of younger people wanted to break free of everyday life and enforce their new formed society on the people of Britain. The whole point of the lecture however, was to show how media is used to present this. An example used in the lecture was "Quadrophenia" which is a film that looks at the rivalry between the 'mods' and the 'rockers' in the 1960's. The clip is the same as we watched on the day. It's a good clip to look at as it shows the youth being rebellious and not caring for others in society. We then went on to look at how youth is presented in this day and age, and to put it bluntly, it was bleak. The example we looked at was kidulthood which looks at all the common problems which faces the youth nowadays, such as teenage pregnancy, bullying, drugs, sex etc.
My Brother, The Devil.
After the lecture and a break for lunch, we were presented with the film 'My Brother, The Devil.' which was a low budget film directed by Sally El Hosaini. It was related to what we had done before, as it had a large focus on youth growing up in lower class areas such as Hackney. It did a really good job at presenting youth in a variety of different ways. As well as covering the actual youth, it covered other things that a youth may face in any enviroment such as bullying, sexuality and so on. The film in itself was an amazing film especially with the budget that it had. To the right is a trailer of the film. After the film had finished, One of the producers, Julia Godzinskaya, came in for a Q&A about the film and what the message was behind it.
Overall, I really enjoyed visiting the British Film Institute as I felt it gave me an insight into the message behind media and film and we got to watch a good film with a deep message.
On the fourth and last day of productive filming, we finished off all the shots that were left to do as well as re-shooting shots which were not as good as we first thought. The initial shots we filmed this day were most of the shtos outside of the compund, including the follow shot. As well as there shots, the shots we refilmed are the panning shots of the character entering and leaving the building and the basic mid shot within the building. Unfortunatly we did not film a video diary when we were on set so instead I shall show so you a few snapshots of the shots we filmed.
Recently we have been rethinking the ending of our opening sequence, as what we had planned originally may not work how we hoped. At first, we were going to end ou piece with the main character being shot by a mysterious person in attempt to shock the viewer. However, after some thought we realised this will close a lot of doors to what the main film will be about as it gets into the action to quickly. After consideration, we thought a better idea may be a montage after the character leaves the compound walking through a variety of different areas to emphasise how alone he is. Along with this, we would like the final shot to be him looking over a dessolate, lonely landscape, preferably a built up one to show what the character is going to have to overcome during the rest of the film. By doing this we will have to change the beginning as well. We were thinking that the actor could be walking down the road and hear some strange sound which could well be something alive, and then in the very last shot you would hear the sound again. This will also link with the worm eye shots used for the rat part of the piece, to build a false sense of tension.
I went looking for potential locations for the final scene yesterday, there is quite a large hill which, on a clear day, you can see Oxford in the distance as well as a village in the foreground. This would work well as you can clearly see the obstacles our character will have to overcome. Underneath is a few pictures of the view, its not great as it was a rainy day but I've been there before when it was clear and know that it would be ideal.
Last sunday we went out for our third day of filming. We got a reasonable amount filming done, including the pan at the beginning and the shot which will be used for our prouction at the start. One of our group members, Victor, unfortunatly could not make it on this day. Once again, we made a video diary explaining what we got done.
On our second trip out to the location, we re-filmed all the clips we did before as the actor from when we originally filmed was not available as much as we needed him to be. We also filmed a few extra shots such as the rat scene. Enjoy!
Last tuesday we went out and filmed our first shoot. We got quite a lot done in the time we had available and are hoping to get some more done this week so we have a good amount of time for editing. There is a video in this post explaining what we did as well as what we'll be doing next. There are also some pictures of the filming in action.
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