TASK 7-Prelim and opening sequence comparison

Looking back at your preliminary task what have you learnt from the process of conducting this media product?

We have learnt a lot from our preliminary task in editing, sound, camera usage and mise en scene. When we reached the editing stage we learnt a lot more about final cut pro. Our creative skills when building our set also improved. We made sure that in our thriller we made our set look as realistic as possible where as during our prelim task we didn’t have any props on our set and the only thing on our set was a fireplace. We have learnt a lot since then and we have learnt to address our target audience using props and camera work. We have also developed the way that we have used technologies such as our editing techniques, for example using final cut pro. In our thriller we used muzzle flashes for the fun shots and also putting in gun shot sounds. To make my opening sequence flow I also added fading devices in my thriller.

When filing my prelim we only knew how to operate a camera in a very basic way. We didn’t focus on the exposure so all of our shots ended out to dark. In our opening sequence we made sure that the light was perfect to fit the situation. The light couldn’t be to light as it wasn’t a good situation. We also used a variety of shots that had a purpose in our opening sequence. We made sure that the shot was absolutely perfect for our opening sequence. By doing this we took time over the hot and we were thoughtful of where we were going to put our shots. When filming our prelim we didn’t take time over shooting and therefore a lot of our footage was out of focus and also the shots didn’t illustrate any message to our audience.

 

Upon editing our prelim it didn’t take a lot time, firstly because it wasn’t a very short piece however mainly because we did not have very much experience of using final cut pro. We put our prelim task together very basically not using any effects our putting in any title sequences. The sound was also poorly put together and no background effects were put in place. In our opening sequence we knew a lot more about using final cut pro. We added sound effects such as gun shots which we spent a long time choosing. We also added in a muzzle flash to make the gunshots look a lot more realistic. We made our opening sequence a lot faster and quicker when the action sequences came in. We also made our sequence flow a lot more by using fading effects that were in final cut pro. When adding in our title sequences we used adobe photo shop to choose a font that incorporated with our political/war genre. We would never have done this in our prelim task as we didn’t know how and the technologies weren’t available to us.

When setting up our set in  our prelim was we didn’t add anything in to build on representation or illustrate anything to our audiences. We didn’t add any props into our prelim task, it was simply a fireplace and a door and the only other prop that we used was a cigarette as our prelim task was about peer pressure of smoking. In our opening sequence we made sure that every single prop was well thought through. We had “top secret documents” to illustrate the severity of the situation. Moreover we made sure all of our props in our thriller were put together to incorporate with our genre, which was not the case in our prelim task.

To conclude, I have learnt a lot about developing a media product since I filmed my prelim task. My editing skills meant that I could make that I could make a better and more realistic media product. Our camera work was also used a lot better and all of our shots were well thought through and planned before. The props were also planned to incorporates with our genre and attract our target audience. Moreover the editing was one of the factors that illustrated the improvement from my prelim to my opening sequences. We made our opening sequence fast paced and also effects to make it realistic such as gun shots and muzzle flashes.

TASK 6-Annotations

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This is my thriller with annotations inserted on to it.

TASK 5- who is our target audience

This is our ideal target audience. He is interested in alternative music and is also enjoys watching certain film genres. These genres include political and war films. He would suit our film due to his age as he would understand the film, he also has some historical background which means that he would be interested in watching the film.

TASK 4-how we adressed our target audience

TASK 3-who would distribute our thriller

Which company would make my thriller?

The BBC would be the company that would make my thriller. The reason that I have chosen the BBC as the company to make my thriller is they specialise in films that are historically based. Moreover they have made films in the past with a low budget. The BBC are also famous for making documentaries and our thriller could be seen as a documentary as it is showing what has happened very recently in the Afghanistan and Iraq. It would also be something that the general public would be interested in as it is showing the assassination of a president.

 The BBC has made a wide range of films in the past ranging from the duchess and the kings speech to street dance 2. The king’s speech would probably be the most successful film made by the BBC, it made 2,273,938 pounds at the box office and then the main form of distribution is on DVD. Furthermore the film was then brought by an American film company and then put into the cinemas again in America, which made a huge profit for the American buyer. The reason that the BBC didnt distribute the film in america is they dont have the distribution power to do so we are going to target a different company to distribute our film.

 The BBC don’t tend to make films by a first time director however I believe that our film will interest the BBC due to its historical base and the fact that we are dealing with current affairs will attract them to our film. The way that our film will be distributed will not be in the cinema due to the fact that I am not a very well known director and this is the first film that we have ever made. The way that our film will probably be distributed will be on DVD. If the BBC really like our film it may be put on before a film made by the BBC in the cinemas. However this is very unlikely.

 The BBC don’t make a specific genre of films. I know this form the research that I have done on the topic. They have made films such as street dance 3D which is completely different to films such as Churchill at war which was released in 2008 or the duchess. The BBC have made historical films and also dance films. Our film will suit the films that the BBC have made in the past.

 As soon as we thought of the idea for our thriller, we knew that the BBC would be the ideal film company to make our film. It often makes films with a low budget which would be what our film would be and moreover the actors are not well known, this is the case in the BBC films such as street dance.

Our target audience for our thriller would be teenagers as it involves a lot of action in it and also due to the historical nature of our thriller it would also appeal to a wider audience. This means that it would appeal to an audience people who are simply interested in the topic.

After more research i have ddiscovered that the BBC are not a distribution company. However i have found who does distribute most of the UK films.

 

The company that we have decided will be distributing our film will be 'Sling Shot'. I have chosen this  company as they are the most likely to distribute a low budget. This is perfect for our thriller group as our film is the kind of film that would have a low budget. We also need a distribution company that would be interested in distributing a low budget film.

Another company that we also looked into was 'dogwoof''. This is another company that we were looking to distribute our film. However this company specialises in political films and we are not filming a political film.

Therefore we have chosen to use sling shot as our distribution company.

TASK 2-How we chose to represent social groups

How we chose to represent social groups

we represented social groups in a very diverse way. In our film we have a terrorist and a president. One could say that these two types of people are binary opposites. We chose to represent our terrorist very controversially. When choosing the cast we didn’t want to have stereotypical characters in our opening sequence. There are some negative representations of gender in our thriller as when looking at status there are no females which turns our to be very stereotypical as there has never been a president that is a women in America. We did this due to many TV programmes and films that have also only encorperated a male political system, in GI Joe and even in love actually the person in power is male and so are his staff except for the cleaning people who are female. There are also no other ethnic groups except white people, which also gives ethnicity a negative representation. We decided this through films such as vantage point where all of the  terrorists are muslim and conduct attacks due to their religious beliefs. We also represented age due to the age of the president and his advisor. We also used stereotypical age forms here. Having sad this both ‘body guards’ are not very old at all and the actor who plays the president is thirty-eight and this is not stereotypical at all.

The terrorist is a white Muslim. The fact that he is Muslim is stereotypical and is also a negative representation of ethnicity due to the assumption of many that Muslim people are always terrorists and always the culprits of nuclear attacks. I got the idea to have a white terrorist from the TV show 24, which has a white terrorist in it. This was very effective as not many people think that he is a terrorist, which was what we were trying to capture In our opening sequence. We have conformed to dominant ideologies that all attacks on America are from someone from a Muslim background. In our opening sequence we chose not to cast any women as any roles. We chose to only have a male cast due to a lot of tv programmes and films and also the fact that there has never been a male president. However in our film all of the staff are also male. Films such as vantage point, Independence Day, stop loss and the hurt locker all have a male president and have male staff. We chose to continue this trend in our film. We also chose to have a male president due to the fact that there is currently a male president in office.  Most of these roles are high levels of political status and the president is the most powerful person in the world. That fact that we didn’t cast a female character for any of our roles is negative representation for gender as it is still enforcing the dominant ideology of the 1950s, which was that women don’t have a role in the work force. Moreover currently, the amounts of female jobs are declining due to the fact they are feeling guilty about work. They are also not being employed due to the fact they are unreliable. For example they may get pregnant and cost the government money. This is why we chose to have a male president.

The age groups that were in our thriller were generally quite young. Due to today’s society presidential candidates are becoming younger and younger. We chose to make our president a lot younger as the actor that we employed is only 38. We chose to represent age positively as it shows that regardless of your age you can still have a position with high status and power. We are also disregarding dominant ideologies that you need to be a certain age to get certain jobs. All of the cast in our thriller are all white even the terrorist. Our thriller therefore might put forward that there are no ethnic minorities with any positions of power or at all in our opening sequence. This therefore is a negative representation of ethnicity however we have not directly represented badly so it is both. We also chose to have no ethnic people in our opening sequence as in many TV shows and movies there is mainly white people and we decided to follow suit. In GI Joe all the generals and the president are all white which shows a lack of change since the 1960s.

TASK 1-How does your media product use, develop or challenge conventions of real media products?

 

Editing Task

Editing task

Having completed the editing process I have concluded that it was very challenging even from the start. We used final cut server, which was extremely helpful. Final cut was useful because we could make one person look more important and change the sound if we had made a mistake during the filming stages. We could also put effects on the shots to make them look more professional. We also used editing devices to show continuity through editing devices when we incorporated shot reverse shots. Some of the editing process was very hard when we had to match the sound up and make it perfect so that it wouldn’t look stupid when we put in into HD. As we got through the editing process we found that we were getting a lot better at using final cut which made the process a lot easier.

At the beginning of editing we went through our shots and sorted the shots that we were going to use and the ones that we weren’t. We put these shots in two separate folder and we named the shots in our good folder. We discarded shots because they didn’t create enough meaning for our audience and this was one of our main goals, to target our audience. We had to make sure that every aspect of our film linked to our audience. The shots that we discarded simply weren’t good enough or they didn’t fit the criteria for our audience. We used a variation of shots to outline what is happening in our thriller to our audience. We used eye line matches to show the person who has the most attention in the scene. We then used a shot reverse shot in the conversation scene to show the reactions of each person whilst they are having the conversation. We used a match on action in the ending part of our thriller to show that he is being chased. Using a match on action also increased the pace of the ending a great deal that helped a lot with effect we were trying to give off. The match on action with “Vincent” at the end of our film helped create the meaning of a terrorist attack and in the conversation, the fact that they had a very big and grave decision to make.

The pace of our film was one of the most difficult aspects to perfect on our thriller. We had to make sure that there was the right pace for the right ‘mood’ in our thriller. There were certain shots where we increased the pace to show the severity of the situation or to show the action in our film. In the beginning of our thriller its very slow paced when Steven is looking at the war plans however as soon as Vincent enters the room it becomes a lot faster illustrating to the audience that there is a very tense situation. When they are having the conversation the pace slows down to show that they can come to some sort of resolution for the crisis. As soon as they finish the conversation and the president gets shot it instantly becomes very fast paced to create meaning for the audience. This is that he has just been shot and they now have to act. Throughout the corridor seen it very fast paced. This is so that it becomes a lot more exciting for the audience. The way that we increased the pace of the film is, when editing we cut the film a lot quicker and put more effects In to make sure that these clips matched up and looked smooth in the final product.

We used editing in a lot of ways but one of the most useful parts was making one person more important than the other. We made our cast limited so that it was easier to do this however at the same time it was very hard. We had to make sure that the president got the majority of the camera time as he has the highest social ranking. We made him one of the most important characters by incorporating eye line matches so that the thriller and the situation were seen through his perspective. We also made Vincent very important and illustrated his whereabouts through out the thriller through jump cuts. We did this because essentially he becomes the hero of the thriller. His importance is shown at the beginning when he enters with new war information, which symbolises his importance from the start of the thriller. We also showed the terrorist of bodyguard as a negative character and therefore non-stereotypically represented him as terrorist. We made ‘Vincent’ look like the hero in our thriller through the amount of shots and the fact that he ends up stopping the terrorist before he kills himself. We also make Steven look like a hero because he enforces his opinion to the president and uncover the last part of information from him. The terrorist and the president are binary opposites in terms of their views.

The sounds that we used in our thriller ended up being very effective. I found that the sound part if editing was one of the most challenging aspects. It took up a lot of time and we had to work for a long time to make sure that it was perfect. This included putting room sounds over the scene in the nuclear bunker and putting u we used gunshots and muzzle flashes when the gun was fired to make it look more realistic. We also made sure that all of the sound matched up to each other so that it would look professional in our final product. The part that I found most challenging was matching up the footsteps for the corridor scene. The gun shots helped create the meaning that there was action and the fast footsteps when the terrorist and Vincent are running up the stair increased the pace of the thriller. The door slamming at the beginning of the thriller when everyone reacts creates a very tense scene from the very beginning especially due to everyone’s reactions. Our sounds targeted the audience because they increased the pace and complemented the action in our film very well.

I found the editing process extremely exciting especially at the beginning when we say all of the shots that we had filmed and saw how our hard work had paid off. I found some of the parts very challenging such as the sound part of our thriller. The corridor scene was one of the hardest parts to edit, as we had to make sure that this scene was very fast. We therefore had to use a lot of shots and cut a lot of shots in a short space of time. Another part of editing which was very hard was the sound this is because we had to have some sort of sound in every single part of our thriller. This included gunshots, background sounds, dialogue, footsteps, breathing sounds and movement sounds. Having to perfect this was very hard, but in our final product I think the sound came out very well.

If I were to do my thriller again I would have given it a different ending. I wouldn’t have made it so complex instead I might have had the terrorist die inside the bunker so that it was all in the same room. This would have made it a lot easier to film. Moreover the corridor scene, even though it was the shortest, was the hardest part to edit. With the gunshots the footsteps and the amount of shots that we had to put into such a sort space of time was incredibly difficult.

I found editing very fun and I really enjoyed putting the main body together and the touching it up and making it perfect. I found putting the action sequences together the most challenging however the most fun as well. The title sequence was also a very fun thing to do as we got to choose what kind of font to put on and the amount of time that they were on the screen for. The effects that we had to chance to use were also very useful and very fun to use while editing. I think.  that we worked very well as a team. We identified each other’s strengths from the very beginning. My strength was putting titles on the film and choosing the font and in which order the titles would go. I also put most of the sound on which was one of the hardest parts of the thriller. We worked very well as a team when choosing what shots to use and when we were putting it together when controlling the pace of the thriller.

Our preliminary task was extremely different to this and our thriller was a lot more complex. In our prelim task the sound was very minor and we only had to put it ten seconds of dialogue. The prelim task was also a lot shorter than our thriller and there was a lot less to do. We also became a lot more experience on final cut pro, which meant that we could add different effects into our thriller. I have learnt a lot about editing during this process. I have learnt how to edit in a professional way and create a good media product. We learnt as we were going through editing how to relate this to our target audience. We overcame a lot of challenges such as a lack of shots in some areas and the sound in the faster paced parts of the opening sequence.

shot by shot list

Using Final Cut Pro

Final cut pro was incredibly useful when editing our thriller. In final cut pro you can use effects that include sound fading effects, and effects that allow you to put flashes on the end of guns and so forth. The effects that we used were mainly for sound however we also used the effect of putting muzzle flashes and also putting gun shots over the back of the guns. Final Cut pro allowed us to complete our thriller a lot faster than any other editing system.  The most recent version, Final Cut Pro X runs on intel based mac os computers. The system allows you to log and transfer ideas where it can be edited, processed and output to a a wide variety of formats. It is mainly used by film makers.

Editing final stage

The final stage of our blogging was very intense. We had to try put all of the of the final effects into our film. This included putting in the effects such as the gun shot and perfecting the sound. The muzzle flashes also needed to be put in which was a great deal of fun. When putting the sound on we had to have  a piece of sound for every single second of the thriller. Sometimes this would simply include putting sounds of the room behind all of the scenes that we had in the room. We also realised that when we put it into HD, some of the movements didnt match the sounds. We then had to change the some of the footsteps of one of our actors running down the corridor. To do this we used the effects and sound effects on final cut pro.

New set design

We have a new drawing of our set. This is because we changed the set during the day to look more like a nuclear bunker and also the new set gave the thriller a lot more space. Our new set also had a grey background wall. It gave us alot more space to put more props in as well.

picture shot list

This outlines the shots that used through pictures and was the general outline of our thriller that we took on the day of our shoot so that we could guide the actors. These pictures did not use the real actors for these pictures.

Editing Stage 1

We looked through our footage and it proved to be very good. We had a wide range of shots to choose from and we started by putting the clips that we were going to use into a good bin. We then named these in terms of what kind of shot they were at. We continued to sort out the main body of the movie and make sure that the editing process went as smoothly as possible. We learnt from an early stage that the sound was in need of perfection because we were told that we put it into HD at the end so the sound had to match with movement of the people.

 
I believe that the first stages of editing went well. We found it very interesting and also learnt a lot about how to use final cut pro and use more of the effects such as the cross fade between sound to make it sound smoother and the clips. These effects would come in handy when we do our title sequence later on in the editing process.