Evaluation Question 1

Conventions of film openings:
 

Mis en scene during a film opening will establish the genre, for example, a blade shown in the opening will show that there is violence portrayed in the film itself.
Below is a mis en scene used in the film “se7en” ( on the right) and on the left is my thriller in which we used the same context in portraying the blade as violence.

Establishing the location:

Variety of shots such as a wide shot will establish the location, which will give the audience sense of genre. However, there are very little shots included in my thriller that gives a sense of location, this would make sense since the killer is trying to commit murder without being seen or heard, an establishing shot would reveal the location. In Se7en, there is no establishing shots and we followed this convention also. Lots of close ups are used to portray the fact that the victim is trapped that there is only little space to wiggle in to rather than wide shots which will maybe show that there is escape routes, but in this case, there is none.

 Creating atmosphere:

 Atmosphere can be created using non diegetic sounds (music), in which it gives an insight into the mood of the rest of the film overall. During a thriller, tense music will be required in order to establish the genre to the audience (excitement or tension). In our thriller, we used the non diegetic sounds of tension which links to the genre of thriller/horror, there is a lot of upbeat sounds which include dark sounds of drums and violin to create the mood and dull atmosphere. The same convention is used in the thriller "Se7en".

Here is a prezzi that i made for the conventions of a title sequence

 

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

Here is a Facebook profile of one of our audiences:

Evaluation Question 5

Here is the audiences response of our thriller, after it has been played in the local cinema, they seemed to like our thriller but here are the main aspects that they enjoyed in terms of mis en scene, cinematography, sound, editing and also how it appealed to them on a personal level.

So far, we  have reached our target audience by using the power of the internet in which we uploaded our video on Vimeo and Youtube. We have also created a Facebook page in which we received comments from our audience which we found very useful as it gave us tips on how we could improve if we was to do another project. Our film was shown in the local cinema/theatre, in which our whole media group year saw our making. Our audience was 16's and over and this certainly meets our target audience success.


The video above shows the audiences reactions to my thriller but now im going to talk about my role as an actor involved in my thriller and my thoughts on how feedback from the rough cut from our teachers gave us advice on how to appeal to our target audience. After completing the rough cut, our teacher gave us ideas on how to build on with effects such as non-diegetic sounds to link the audience with more tension and suspense. Also, the clips we constructed together in the timeline, some of the clips were not necessary and needed to be cut down so it matches the 2 minute length mark so it doesn’t bore the audience too much, it is only a title sequence. The shots of each scene should be short and snappy to add tension rather than long clips which will look unprofessional. The intended target audience is of ages 16 and over due to the violence, and to appeal to this successfully we had to closely analyse how we used sound and how we edited it. My role in acting was very important as I had to make the victim look vulnerable and by doing that I had to act powerful.

Here is the venue that our film has been shown in. This is a local cinema in Islington.

Evaluation Question 6

Here is a video that I made on Final Cut Pro:

The question I will be answering in the video is "what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?"

Evaluation Question 7

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

At the start of our preliminary task, we began with discussing initial ideas from our group about the basic storyline plot, genre and actors involved. Since this was our first planning session, we found that our ideas were very basic and not original, we based our ideas on what we’ve already seen and experienced watching thrillers in the cinema. For example, our first idea was to create an action thriller (the first thriller we thought of is The Expendables), in which involved mis en scene such as guns but later on we found out that in order to make a action/thriller realistic, we would need a higher budget and more experience in film making. In the end, our genre was a comedy/thriller in which the setting was in the small kitchen of our college. As you can see the ideas are very basic.

Comparing the planning stage of the preliminary task to my final project, in our final project we generated more realistic, complex and original ideas even though we used some intertexuality, we added our own thoughts to it such as using the setting in the “Under croft” so we could get access with the dangerous weapons (Hammers, blades, saws and wooden bats) we needed. We got our intertexuality from doing massive research which benefitted us. In the Prelim we used intertexuality from the top of our heads as we tried to remember thrillers we have watched in the past. We did little research than we did in our final project and this is why the complexity of our final project is greater. I have learnt that doing research which is relevant to your product has a massive effect in your final idea, in that case, the more research you do, the better the ideas on planning and the final product itself. 

Planning is very important as we can see this, we made a production schedule for our final product. We did not plan a production schedule for our prelim. 

Prelim genre: Thriller/Comedy. During our making of the sub genre of comedy, we found it very difficult therefore we changed the genre. We found out that the certain genres are more difficult to create than others (E.g. a comedy needs good acting).

Final product genre: Thriller/horror. Relying on the experience of creating the prelim, we found out that our acting skills is one of our weaknesses, so we chose a genre that will rely mostly on cinematography to create tension rather than facial expressions. Therefore we chose a Thriller/Horror; also I have had experience with making a horror title sequence in secondary school in which I used some of my knowledge there also. 

Here is the comparison between our preliminary storyboard to our final product storyboard:

As you can see, the final product of our storyboard contains more detail than the preliminary storyboard. The cinematography we discussed in our planning of our final product, we used our knowledge from our prelim and we built on that, we added extra cinematography shots such as panning shots and tilt shots to show movement of an individual. It also looks more professional than a medium shot alone.

Here is the similarity shots between our Prelim and our Final Title Sequence:

During our prelim, we struggled with using the cameras as this is the first time we properly used it. We took time to auto focus the shots and to keep the camera steady in our hands. Over the course, we managed to use the cameras safely and properly using all its components (auto-focus, setting up with tripod and zoom in/out).

Here is the comparison between a non-autofocus shot from our prelim and our auto focused shot from our final product:

We did not any lighting equipment for our prelim, and we found out that some of our shots were dark and we couldn’t see it properly, it made our production look unprofessional. We took this in to notice for our final product and we used lighting equipment.

Here is the comparison between our non used light shot in our prelim and our used light equipment shot in our final product:

The 180 degree rule, we applied it both successfully in our prelim and our final product. We were shown how important this was by our teachers.The 180 degree rule claims that when filming, the camera should stay on one side of an imagery line.

Using sound is an important component in keeping the thrill moving throughout the title sequence, as in our prelim, we uploaded our title sequence to our blog (without sound), and got comments from our peers saying that it would be improved if we added non-diegetic sounds. We then added sound and got better comments. We took the comments into account and we applied it to our final title sequence. Using non-diegetic sounds is used in every single title sequence we have researched on YouTube. Soundtrack Pro made this possible for us to create our sounds. The type of sound used in our prelim is an excitement type, using fast paced drum kit, bass and electric guitar sounds to create that excitement thrill as the genre was a Comedy/thriller. However, we interpreted this as an opposite in which our genre was a thriller/horror, we had to use tension type of thrill rather than excitement so we used dark sounds such as violins and orchestra sounds. From this experience of using sound, we found out that choosing the right non diegetic sounds that suits the genre is what makes the film successful.

During our course of the project, we reminded ourselves that we were making a film opening title sequence, so the titles are very important. We didn’t follow proper conventions in our prelim, in which we made up the production ident, distribution ident and companies. However in our final product, we researched real production/distribution companies in which we researched the ones that will fit our style of making e.g. our project was low budget therefore it would be meaningful that we were distributed by an independent company (which supports real low budget films) and would be unrealistic if we were distributed by a conglomerate like Disney. We superimposed our titles for production/distribution ident but in our real title sequence we used a programme called Motion which gave our production ident a movement image in which it looks professional rather than a normal text ident. The skills I have learnt is to use different types of programmes.

My editing skills improved upon from editing the prelim to my final title sequence. From the prelim I learnt how to put basic titles on the screen, also how to superimpose it on top of a playing clip. However in my final title sequence edit, I used the same skills but also learnt how to change the font of the text, and how to make sure that each title remained in the wireframe zone so it does not look out of position.

Here are some of our title sequences in for our prelim compared to our final product title sequence:

Overall, from across the two productions, I have learnt major skills in film making which consist of using expensive media equipment safely, editing, filming, and how to improve upon skills using knowledge and experience from past work (prelim to final product).

EVALUATION - Group Evaluation

Evaluation of Filming,Editing and Sound by Whitnaay on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.

EDITING - Final 'Hidden' Title Sequence

EDITING - Final Touches

Today, our whole group came to the media workshop to make some final tunings on our film opening.
Throughout the media workshop and actual lesson, we shortened the opening after receiving multiple feedback that we should get rid of the gap in our opening; it made it seem like the opening had finished and when it resumed, it caught people off guard.

 We also fixed our film auto so it was in time with the opening and that the bits where we cut to loop didn't sound really obvious.
When we completed all this we went on 'Motion' to find possible idents for 'February Films and 'Jaman Productions' because we couldn't find the ident of the actual companies on the net.
Once we found suitable idents, we went onto soundtrack pro and found title opening sounds in the cinematic beddings then just exported it and imported into Final Cut Pro.

We showed one of our peers our unfinished video before our final touches, she gave her initial feed back, reaction and analysis of what she thought of our Thriller opening

EDITING - Motion

For our distribution and production ident, we decided to use the programme Motion to do this. This will  create visual effect which makes the ident stand out from the rest of the titles since it is at the top of the hierarchy. In order for us to do this, me (Huy) and Danielle went on Youtube to discover some tutorials that may help us with this. After watching some tutorials we found out how to change the font of the writing (our ident), add a template, and to add other special effects such as glow. We then imported it on to our film on Final Cut Pro.

Making Sound

This is a screen shot of us in the process of putting the music for or thriller opening together. We are using soundtrack pro to do so. 

This is a Vlog we decided to make  on the final day of editing..

EDITING - Compression of Files

This is a screen shot of us compressing a Vlog we are going to upload. This is a useful skill we learnt during our swede project. We realised that we could not just upload a video without compressing it, as the number of MBs is too high for blogger to comprehend, therefore we must compress it in to an MPEG file. We will also have to do this with our final Thriller opening.

EDITING - Initial Feedback

We showed Donna what we had done so far with our openning and recieved her feeback.

- Take out the unneccesary scenes.
- Alter the beginning so it starts with the close up of the antagonist walking inside of the former establishing shot
- Add some effects into the title such as fade in fade out
- Add the actual titles
- Removing the footage that had a slught shake from the opening
- Taking out a lot of the mid and wide shots and replacing them with close ups to create more tension.

EDITING - New TItle

After having our thriller "Undercroft' reviewed by various people, we found that by a unanimous vote, that the majority of people thought that the title was "tacky and unoriginal" so we brainstormed other possible title ideas and came up with

 - Push
-  Hidden
 - Safe/Unsafe
- Basement
- Normal
- Facade

We then decided to change out title to 'Hidden' and got the other two group members consent.
We chose this because, it represented the main character, his past is "hidden', his victims are 'hidden', his true personality and attitude are 'hidden'

EDITING - Order of Undercroft Titles

EDITING - Title Sequence

After finding that we had no more shoot to use for our superimposed title shots, we discussed to either change the titles from superimposed to stand alone or to keep the same shots but reuse them.
In the end, we decided to use both stand alone with images.
We split the images in half and wrote the titles on the stand alone side, because of this, we had more shots that we could use.

Before

Now

EDITING - Fonts

After getting various opinions on our title sequence, taking the feedback, we decided to change the font of our titles and keep all of them a single font which fitted the genre of our film.
From the feedback we got from various students because they were part of our targer audience they thought the original font we used didn't fit the horror genre of the film and looked similar to Times New Roman.

Before

Now