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

                  Foundation Production Question 6

 

During the construction of our media product, me and my group made sure we fully knew what was we doing, so do this we had to do a lot of research. We used many nessesary modern technologies and search engines. Example's of what we used was:

• www.google.co.uk
• www.yahoo.co.uk
• www.bing.co.uk

Without these search engines, it would of made our research a struggle and would of been hard to adapt our ideas for our film opening. Using these search engines we wouldn't have got inspiration from other films with the same genre as ours as when we did some reaearch we looked up certain film such as 'Scream' to see what sort of camera shots they used and sounds. Not only that, but we also looked up news reports that would sound good within our product.

 

Youtube was a huge help with out research as it allowed us to look up newsreports and sounds that were copyright free so we knew that we could use it within our work. We started off by looking for scary pieces of music that could help build up the tension within our production. Once we found suitable music we moved on to the news report. Luckily enough we knew what to search for as we knew there was a news report about a man who killed lots of women and we thought that would work perfectly with out story line.

 

 For out production and post production process we had to use Premier Pro Version 6. This helped us allow our production to come together. It also allowed us to:

• Put out shots in together to keep us organised
• Take out bad shots that either didnt work or we didnt like
• Cut down shots to make the product flow better
• Create titles to indicate the examiner who we are and what out product is called
• Add sound effects to our shots
• Add special effects e.g. Slow motion

Premier was a huge help in getting to where we wanted in our product as our film genre was horror. So we needed to make sure that tension was built up right to the very end where something tragic happens. So by using premier we could see a timeline of our shots that helped us keep organised and to see all at one time where we needed to put specific things such as sound, fade to black and titles.

 

Blogger has been also a huge help for me and my group as its allowed us to express our ideas without forgetting them. If we talked about different ideas of maybe different camera shots we would make sure we would put it on the blog so we could show what we was thinking as well as actually doing.

 

 

How did you attract/address your audience?

 Foundation Production Question 5

In our film opening we attracted our audience with the use of editing, sound, cinematography and the story line. We created our own specific style which we got inspiration from the film 'Se7en'. We took inspiration from the distorted images and close up of objects to hint to our audience that our film isn't going to be normal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE Here is the link to see the opening sequence of the film 'Se7en'.

Our editing compared to Se7en editing

As you can see from this photograph that we have taken inspiration from the film 'Sev7n'. By doing this has allowed us to show off our skills through the editing as you can see in the left hand picture we have overlayed to shots and changed the opacity to give the effect that something isn't quite right. This attracts our audience as people wont want to see a film that doesn't have good camera work or good editing so by focusing on these skills will attract our target audience.On some of our shots we changed the colour correction to a blue/purple tint so that it gave more hints that this story isn't going to be a nice one. The use of colour correction in our film opening can also influence the audience of our film, we chose to use cold colours, such as red and orange to give the film a scary tone to it. Red is normally linked to death so by using these sort of colours can help forebode what will happen within our film.

Another way we have attracted our audience is by the way we have used a middle class setting and characters. As you can see by our opening film that the girl is in casual clothes but not to the extreme you would think she is poor, this allows the audience to relate to this character which will attract young adult females and males. By using a middle class setting and characters links with the Integration and Social Interaction topic of uses and graphication theory. 

Integration and Social Interaction

• gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy
• identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging
• finding a basis for conversation and social interaction
• having a substitute for real-life companionship
• helping to carry out social roles
• enabling one to connect with family, friends and society

This links with our opening sequence as our audience has a gaining insight to circumstances such as murder and a break in of a property. It also shows how to partly carry out roles of a baby sitter to show you must take care of a child.

We want to release our film onto DVD so by doing things like the editing and photography to attract our audience will help us with out sells on DVD. As I am a photography student myself i have made me and my group a DVD cover so that we could compare to other DVD's such as saw.

DVD Cover

Saw DVD Cover

As you can see from this picture, I have created a DVD Cover. What I have done is got a picture of our scary man and then blurred it in Photoshop so that it doesnt give away who the evil character is. I blurred it to symbolize the fact that you never really see his face and its unclear who it is. I added the title of our film which is 'Reprisal' and made it in red to represent blood and death which links in within our film. All of these characteristic of this DVD cover link with our genre which will attracts audiences.

Who would be the audience for your product?

Foundation Production Question 4

 

The audience for our groups product would be aimed at elder teenagers, approximately 15+. Young people often enjoy watching horrors as they enjoy the thrill of suspense and love the adrenaline.  However, a too young age would find the film too frightening. Other films that are similar to my media product such as 'Orphan' have an age guidance given of 15, I feel the film would fit into this category and would therefore be accessible by the target audience.
I feel that the film is aimed at both genders. Males stereotypically prefer horror as well as action films over romance films and females would enjoy it because of the excitement around being scared. As both genders would enjoy the product, people in relationships could go and see the film. There is often a romantic scenario of couples helping each other through a horror film so perhaps couples would enjoy the film.

 
Audience Demographic Profile:

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Educational background
• Social class
• Economic status
• Location
• Accessibility

According to the 'Audience Demographic Profile', our film would both attract, and would be suitable for young people, such as older teenagers, and people in their early 20s. Gender does not have a particular relevance in relation to the target audience as horror films do not have a defined gender taint, unlike a romance, which would usually appeal to females, or a sci-fi, which would usually appeal to males. Similarly, in regards to ethnicity, our production does not have a clearly stated targeted ethnic group, which therefore mean that any young person, of any ethnicity, and of either gender would be able to enjoy this film. The audience we would attract would use other types of media such as magazines, television, social networking ect...

 



What kind of media Institution might distribute your media product and why?

Foundation Production Question 3

In our group we discussed about what sort of media we should choose that would be suitable for our genre. This is because they will have experience in finding a fitting audience.

Choosing what kind of media would disturibute our product was a hard situation as we needed to focus on if they have experience with our genre, if they would be sutitiable and if they had done other films with the same genre as ours. After a long descussion within my group we decided to go with 'Twisted Pictures' as we re searched into them and they focused on horror for the films they have distributed before. Here is a website I looked on to to find out a bit about the company http://www.imdb.com/company/co0137447/ this website told me what films they have done before and what they are working on in the furture. Most of the films they have done contain similiar story lines and effects our opening contains which is why we think Twisted pictures is a good company to distibute our film opening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2GHo0Hmx1k - Here is the link of the clip for their company which we will include within our opening sequence.

 

Twisted pictures have done films such as: The Saw films, Dead Silence and Catacombs. Even by the name you can tell they arn't a genre of romance or comedy, which is why we think its a good idea to choose this company to distribute our product. I have seen many of the Saw films so I know that this company has had experience with working with out type of genre. Films like saw contain the same sort of colours and editing techniques that we have to create a scary effect on the audience which is why Twisted Pictures is good for our opening sequence.

 

 

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Foundation Production Question 2

Our media product represents the social group of teenagers, it doesn't really differentiate to a specific sex as its aimed at both. The teenage girl in our film opening shows a typical stereotype as she is on her phone texting while watching television which is what most horror movies do as they create a contrast by having something very normal compared to something very strange and out the ordinary. The fact our teenage girl is babysitting (we know this from the text she receives from her mum) shows a stereotype as teenage girls are always babysitting for their neighbours ect... Other films that use this stereotype of teenage girl baby sitting is 'Paranormal activity 3'    

Shot from paranormal activity 3

Shot from our sequence

Here is a picture from Paranormal Activity 3 where the teenage girl is baby sitting, as you can see in the center of the image that there is a ghost like figure behind her and it is clear that she is unaware that this is behind her. This links with our film opening as in the last scene the teenage girl is running herself a bath and the man is standing behind her. The shot we got allows the audience to see that the man is behind her but the teenage girl in the film is unaware that she is there.

Here is another example from the same similar social groups for our sequence. I wanted to show other examples to show how our film opening is similar to other films of the same genre. As you can see by their facial expressions that something isn't quite right, which gives the audience a sense of suspension. This is what sort of reaction we wanted because we wanted out film opening to be quite dark and scary and make the audience on the edge of their seas.

In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
Foundation Production Question 1
 

In our first cut of our film opening we used the convention of the handheld camera shot which is a commonly used camera technique in the horror genre. It is done in our film to make the audience feel as though they are there to make them feel even more unsettled which is what a horror film needs to do, it also restricts the audiences view to see things around as it looks as if the camera is the characters eyes. An example of this being used in another media product is in the film 'The Blair Witch Project'.


Example of our handheld shot

From The Blair Witch Project

These two pictures are example from our sequence as well as a well known movie. We wanted to compare them to see if there was a significance in standards and from looking at them, in my opinion you wouldnt be able to tell which is the movie and which is our work which shows the level of standard our camera work is.

The scary character in our film is very mysterious and dark as you cant see there identity.We did this by focusing on the costuming as we wanted to get it just right so that we knew that i would work in our film opening. This makes the audience want to know who this character is and why they have done what they have. This creates a tense atmosphere which is what we wanted as our genre is horror. Films like 'Scream 4' use masks and capes to disguise the scary character to give the same effect.



Dan dressed as her character

A snapshot from the film 'Scream 4'




The pictures above show costumes from our opening sequence and a costume from the film 'Scream 4'. We wanted to compare outfits to see if ours looks just as scary. We have been asking around the school and showing our opening sequence to people and asked if they think Dans outfit looks scary and most of the people we asked said it was as they could make out his face but you could see the shadow of his eyes making him look evil and malevolent.

Changes that need to be made

Before Tuesday 15th there are a number of adaptions we need to make to our production piece, some which we can do individually and some we may want to do as a group.

• Add Titles - At the moment we have added our 'BDCM' production logo into our piece but we still need to add in our 'Twisted Pictures' logo to come after, and also the names of the directors need to be added in.
• Delete Running Scene - We found that this part of our production makes it almost unrealistic as we have seen the killer once already so it is unlikely that we would see him again so quickly. We have decided to crop most of the running scenes out of our production but will perhaps keep a small section to show where the story is going after the opening.
• Adapt Sound - At the start of our opening we hear a news report playing in the background explaining how a murder had taken place. In one section the reporter says 'the killer is still out there'. To develop our ideas further we are going to try and take this line from the report and put it towards the end of this scene where our girl has been killed, this will amplify the importance of the killer still being out there.
• Re-Shooting - We have some re-shooting to do from our piece, all in our scenes with Ellie. We found that in our piece at the moment, Ellie gets up and goes upstairs with no motive behind it, to add to the horror theme of our production we are going to re-film this and instead have a noise come from upstairs so that Ellie has a reason to go upstairs. As well as this, we though it looked a bit unrealistic when she see's the man at the window and walks out still calm. We are going to change this by re-shooting Dans sections and instead of him standing directly outside her window, maybe have him lurking in the shadows, or walking across, so that it builds suspense but isn't too artificial.
• Recording Sounds - We don't have much recording to do, but to bring our idea together in the re-shooting we will need to record a loud bang or noise which will sound like its coming from upstairs so that Ellie has a motive to get up and check outside.
• Film Establishing Shots - As well as re-filming we also have to film new shots to establish the setting of our film opening, Mollie has planned to take the camera home and film outside her house and walking towards it, this will create a sense of location for viewers.

We have already made some changes to our production piece since our first final cut and feedback, including:

• Production Logo - In our first final cut we didn't have any titles in our piece, we started off by adding in our BDCM production logo which we have put at the start of our opening.
• 'Reprisal' - Another title which we didn't have in our production piece yet was our main title of the film, we decided to put this at the end of our first section where the girl dies so it shows that that part was an insight in what is to come. We downloaded a font which the group decided on from a website that Mollie found, we then put this into Premier and used the gradient tool to edit the title so that the bottom half of the word was a deep red, making it appear as though blood was dripping from the word, we found this looked effect with our filming and music.
• Cropping The Music - In our feedback we were told our music was to full on, however it was only the strong start to the music that made it unrealistic and to much, after this strong start the music fitted well with the rest of our opening. To fix this, Dan and I worked on cropping the beginning of the music so that the strong bell sound from our piece has now been taken out, leaving the rest of the music to build the suspense. We then found that as previously the music had fitted nicely with out title, going to a different tone when it came on screen, it was now a bit off time, we changed this by changing the lengths of the clips to make the music fit again.