Georgia Shepherd AS MEDIA COURSEWORK BLOG

Evaluation Powerpoint

2009-05-11T15:01:00.001-07:00

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Finished Production

2009-04-21T04:44:00.001-07:00

Feedback from the class:

Positives
- Running water v.effective at the start
- Music builds up well, mystery and intriguing
- You can clearly see where title came from - reflections used
- Having no dialogue worked well with the psychological thriller
- Camera work is good and steady where required
- Music is good
- Good variety of shots/ music matches action well e.g. looking in mirror
- Excellent titles. Effective without drawing focus away from narrative
- Jonny's costume, in particular wearing white at the end connotes purity/ innocence.
- Great camera angles
- Great juxtaposition of shots.

Negatives/Improvements
- Jonny's costume could connote his characters role more
- Confusing narrative - going to the fridge

Feedback from the teacher:

Positives
- Demonstrates excellence across all technical aspects
- Dual narrative structure is very effective with controlled choice of shots.
- Match on action is particularly effective with well exectued soundtrack that adds polish to the piece.

Negatives/Improvements
- Costume could have been better considered - not entirly convincing for this style of thriller
-Some shots could of been re-shot/held for longer

Predicted grade at current stage: A

Progress Assesment

2009-02-27T02:52:00.000-08:00

At the very beginning, when our coursework task had been explained to our class by our teacher, i was very half hearted and i wasnt too sure whether id be able to carry the task out to its best ability. Considering i hadnt taken Media for GCSE and some of my fellow team members had, i was convinced that this was going to be really hard for me. I felt I had insignificant knowledge about what our design could be for the task, although i felt i could eventually develop effective skills time was a big matter that had to be dealt with to enable my success in the subject. Thinking on my feet and feeling positive about my ideas was working well, and as we worked on our animatic i felt positive and enthusiastic with the work, and generally enjoyed coming to the lesson. This then helped me alot when it came to producing the opening title sequence media product. From being so unconfident with myself to working really well now i think is really significant progress. I am confident with working on the software and i generally feel as though im part of the task, as before my team member Andy was taking alot of responsibility which was unfair as it is a group commitment not just and individual piece.

Rough Cut

2009-02-26T07:36:00.001-08:00

The views back from our teacher were not to how I expected. He said it was good footage with effective shots which came to a suprise to me as i didnt think it was very good. Although a couple of our shots didnt work well before we went back previously and changed them, and he thought that they were much better this time.

The way in which we arranged our titles to the sequence made our media footage look scatty and unorganised. We arranged them to be at the start of the opening and at the end of it too. Our teacher commented on how this should be changed and where it may look better. So we changed our thoughts and timing and then decided to introduce titles over footage where the audience wont really need to focus on, we thought this would be effective because if we situate the titles where their isnt any main eye catching footage the audience wont miss any suspense produced.

Evaluation Notes

2009-02-23T02:14:00.000-08:00

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

If you compare our media product to another media product you can see that there are similar ideas used. As a group we've tried to design a product in which focuses on real life issues in which men are represented to be the more dominant type to either 'rape' or 'kill' the other sex in this made up circumstance. The media on a whole has demonstrated these issues into peoples minds, and whenever you hear about real life cases about rape on the news the majority of the time men are shown to have been the culprits. Women on a whole are always demonstrated to be the 'weaker' victim who are always abused and drawn into this subject. In our media product we focus on a man who seems not to care what happens to a young girl and who casually after murdering her gets on with life like nothing has ever happened. This is portrayed in media products all the time as we all know to make something look not obvious you stay calm and act like everythings normal.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents youths becoming particularly jealous over someone or something, leading onto violation and being out of control of the situation. It's often seen as when someone has an 'obsession' for someone they would go to lengths to try and make them be obsessed or involved aswell. In other media products you see more older/experienced people taking over womens lives and being violent towards them, and by younger people seeing these actions on TV programmes and on the news so they follow others footsteps. Our media shows how it can be done by younger generations too.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our media product would be 15 + just so that all ages of people can recognise the consequences you will face when taking actions like this. I think this is an effective audience to aim our media product at as we havent got state of the art studios and expensive equipment and enough experience to make a top of the range media product, but people our age will engage into what we have designed which is important for us as we want it to be successful in some ways.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my audience by clearly finding out what are the best themes to include in a horror based film. By watching other films also gave me ideas to include in our planning which influenced visulisations in which i thought i could change and mix around to create an effective idea in the filming piece.

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

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

From the preliminary task I have learnt as an individual that progression is a key skill you need to develop whilst performing tasks. From the very start with the shots on paper I have understood that we may of needed to make additoinal changes, therefore thinking about what will be best for the final product was essential from my own ideas and group ideas. Whilst editing we have done a series of changes where if it looks good anyway, what will make it look that little bit better. By going that extra step further into developing ideas weve made good editing and effective footage.

SHOOT 2 - Saturday 24th January

2009-02-12T04:55:00.000-08:00

Our filming went well again. All the shots that were required to be changed and improved on were completed aswell as shots outside. As a team team we worked well again with dominant filming skills from Andy and input with 'what worked best and not so good' from Charli. However outside lighting conditions made shots impracticable as a result to this as a group we need to re-alocate and find a more of an effective place to shoot due to the inadequate scenary of the wood like area.

SHOOT 1 - Wednesday 21st January

2009-02-12T04:40:00.000-08:00

As a group we managed to shoot all shots. The filming itself went well, and as it was our first proper time of shooting, all of the shots were very steady and a combination of different shots were taken. Andy, Charli and I communicated efficiently and effectively together, this was important as it made our time worth while. Although it was a good first time of shooting changes were then needed to be made.

Feedback from the teacher was that;

1. The slow zooming effect we used at the beginning, needed to be improved in terms of speed flowness. To make this better for next time we decdided to use a different camera to enable better quality. At the start we inclined to use a still pciture of the door and zoom in on the image, as we thought many films use this effect and usually is very effective, however this wasnt the case for us so we then decided not to use this effect.

2. The group's directing of the actor wasn't quite effective, as the shot that needs a little work on would be when our character is ferociously trying to scrub blood aways and off of his hands. He didnt look scared enough and frightened that he had just murdered somone. Therefore this was picked up on.

3. The positioning of camera during close up of the villains hands wasnt quite right for the response we wanted. We needed to make it clearer and more realistic.

4. The tilt wasn't effective it was needed to hold for longer for the audience to get that sort of anxious feeling that we had hoped for. Instead tension was built then cut off to quickly for the audience to engage with the directors interpretation.

Prop List

2009-01-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

2009-01-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

Differences between a 15 certificate and a 18 certificate

2008-11-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

The diffrences are huge. The majority of 15 films is that they have a selective theme to follow, however at the same time must be allowed to show exquisite clips for a 15 year old to watch. Another point is that language has to be appropriate as it could cause inappropriate feelings, occasionly some strong language can be used depending on the circumstances of the however in a 15 certificate film no strong detail is put across screen. Violence is usually used alot in thriller based films, as this i what most people like to endure in thrillers. Film directors have to so careful when using props too, as weapons such as swords, guns, knives are so heavy influenced on modern day society so this is not put upon too much. However the main focus for this category would be threatening, and disturbance, not vital scenes of murdered bodies shown, with weapons being used upon them as this would be unnecesdsary to this wave band.

However, if we look at a 18 certificate thriller film some of the perspectives change, where as directors would include shots with sexual content to a certain extent, giving it that extra 'thrill'. also more weapons are allowed to be used yet again to a certain extent, for exmaple you wouldnt see it being used, but perhaps the shadow of a knife against a wall to indicate to the audience what is going to happen. Violence steps up a little bit and is shown to have a big impact on a thriller. Without these sort of procedures in a thriller, it wouldnt be exciting to watch, it wouldnt have the thrill in which people want to watch.

So there are many differences within reason. Which i think is fair to say, once you turn 18 your an adult, and this is significant as youth these days are influenced more easily into pretend scenes in films.

Animatic

2008-11-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

As before the majority of us who have never done GCSE Media before didnt really have any idea about what an animatic was and our groups first attempt turned out to be a success. Diegetic sound in which we used fitted in very well with the genre of the text. Our pace of editing fitted in well too and the camera work was fine, although some images were distorted.

Some of the images on our anamatic were quite unclear even for us to watch, so next time we would need to take more time in order to draw up our pictures as it's very important to get the storyboard across to the audience researching techniques in how to make a effective animatic maybe a thought to consider. By using a 5 mega pixel phone, made our work not to the best quality it could of been, next time we will definetly use a digital camera so we can capture the image to its full capacity.

First Filming Production Set By The Teacher

2008-11-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

As we had technical difficulties we aren't able to show you a preview of our first filming, as their was faults with the camera. Eventhough this happened we managed to gain some knowledge which will be used in further filming.

The control in which we had of the camera and its technological side was weird at first and quite hard to grasp, but eventually quite easy to use. Some shots of what we recorded were a little shaky and the panning could have been smoother. For the very first time working with my group we got on really well, and were able to communicate and share ideas with eachother and discussed between ourselves what would of worked best.

From our first practice we used ourselves for roles in the acting and as all of us in the group havent taken Drama for A Level, we came to an agreement that we wont use ourselves again, as one we cannot act and two we need to concentrate more on what sort of shots we want and how to change the dialogue in which we want our actors to carry out.

To conclude our editing of our shots between and them individually could of been a little smoother and more effective to the audience but over all our performance was relevant seeing as it was our first task. As we wernt too familiar with the software in which was suposed to be using, for our first draft if you'd like to call it that it was pretty good.

Continuity Task

2008-11-26T13:19:00.000-08:00

When assessed for our work above ^ my group was awarded a level 2 by our teacher. As a class we peer assessed each others work coming up with possible ideas in which we can use to improve our text. Our first main problem of our task was that it was incomplete as we hadnt carried out one of the bullet points of the task set which was to show the audience the character leaving the room. However it was our first main videoing and we wanted tio experiment a different sound track to what might have been quite different. In addition to this the reaction shots of our characters facial expression where quite hard to follow and the audience may have not got a clear understanding what was actually happening, the framing of some shots was off camera angle and made the audiences attention turn way from what was happening. By improving we came up with that next time it would be best to make it obvious to the audience what is actually happening in shot, and by doing this we need to make sure each character is centralised appropriatly in the frame and that it's a well focused understandable shot.

Furthermore to keep consistency with our shots for better marks we need to make them effective and different to the audiences attention.

As a group we worked well together in the planning of our continuity task, we made sure that if we didnt like something we would discuss with eachother and tell eachother what had to be changed. We all looked carefully at filming picking out bad and good points and tryed our hardest to make it as believable as possible. Andy in my group kept a steady hand on the camera making it effective and not shaky, whilst me and Charli focused on keeping the actors 'Amber and James' focused on what they were doing. Even though in some areas the framing of some shots were wrong we can now see what to do next time.

Another point that let us down were the length of the clips, which would comne under editing, meaning we'd need to focus on the way in which we position our clips. In some clips the clicking and sounds from the camera were heard bringing the verisimilitude down as you would never hear this in a professional film, to make sure this will not happen again we need to give the camera a longer time to end its recording, this then would make it easier to remove the clicking noise without having to alter the effect or quality of the clip. The location in which we chose was not exciting or very thought about, we could have come up with a much more suitable location to make it more interesting, this then gives us no other choice other than to chose another location for next time.

Pyscho

2008-11-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Title: Pyscho

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

(Analysis)Camera – distance, angle, movement…
still, no movement of camera aroudn the screen. Stays put. Distance stays the same, and angle of camera aswell.

Effect/Analysis ^
As there is alot of other things happening in the shot the movemnet of the camera has to stay still as it would slowly make the audiences beliefs in the opening very optimisitc. Meaning that they might not be interested in watching the rest of the film itself. But by having calm steady camera movement it makes it easy to follow.

Editing – speed, style…
Fast, one after another, quite hard to follow. Style old fashioned (*1960 work)

Effect/Analysis ^
Quite distracting, although the music follows with the pace of the shots very hard to grasp. Not easy to see as its not clear.

Sound – effects
Very busy, quite loud. Same sorta thing repeated over and over without any sort of break.

Effect/Analysis ^
The effect of this is quite significant as it makes it quite a busy sort of atmosphere. Altthough its quite hard to follow, as the audience they've still got to bear in mind that after the opening is over, it will lead onto a smooth, less busy introduction of characters and location. In some ways this can be quite daunting but most of the time its affective as it increases the audiences attention, from being loud, quick and busy to calm quiet and slow.

Mise-en-scene – props, costume, setting, lighting, colour…
There are no props shown in shot, setting of the opening is a plain black wall like location. Surrounding with grey streaks coming across the screen. Colour is grim, and dark. Showing dullness. Mourning. Death.

Effect/Analysis ^
Sort of colours used, straight away bring to mind death etc, as it helps the audience to understand the purpose of the text.

Special Effects –
As its quite and old film *1960 special effects ar'ent as up to date as they are now in our century.

Effect/Analysis ^
-

Titles – font, colour, placement, over black / over clip…
Titles stick to white. Beneath being a black background, boring but sophisticated.

Effect/Analysis ^
Shows plain device, causing music to be busy but visual imagery to be plain. Confusion occurs and makes the audience want to watch on..

The Godfather

2008-11-26T12:30:00.000-08:00

Thriller Opening Analysis Sheet

Title: The Godfather

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Designer: Steven Speilberg

(Analysis)Camera – distance, angle, movement…
Camera panning around the location of a dark but enlightened room. Variety of different angles. movement of camera showing the whole screen of image.

Effect/Analysis ^
Gives the audience a sense of location, and awareness of what sort of thriller this may be. Shows unsteadyness of the camera influencing the audience to think of action thriller.

Editing – speed, style…
Through the opening it seems slow and toned down, the music has a different style, compared to some of the other films, and the speed of images being shown and titles being names, is dragged out, maybe signfying slow painful deaths, linking to the mise-en-scene of images shown in the opening.

Effect/Analysis ^
The idea of a slow painful death could be a way in which you could describe the rest of the film. Death is a mian cause in this film title.

Sound – effects
Sound effects are to a minimum. The director is mainly focused on textual images to grab the audience attention.

Effect/Analysis ^
To make a thriller effective, you dont need to use sound always, images are a good way of showing meanings and purposes, although the music in the background helps towards it to make the audience understand what sort of film they are watching.

Mise-en-scene – props, costume, setting, lighting, colour…
Images of people, personal objects, a distorted image of writing takes a good 3 seconds to come to still.

Effect/Analysis ^
Lots of images; people making a gun shape with their hands towards their heads, families and just general normal people come to mind. Black and white ink signyfiying discolour - death. Many objects and images in this film opening make it clear to the audience what sort of film they are going to be watching Special Effects – Effect/Analysis ^

Special Effects –

Theres minimul special effects as the director and designer have focused on a bigger approach of focusing on just images to represent the way in which the film is put across.

Effect/Analysis ^
From getting these sort of thoughts from an opening like this iconic. As it helps me as the audience to gain a different purpose of the film. It shows me that not all films can be shown by actors and music, you can use images to represent contrast and imagery in the mind.

Titles – font, colour, placement, over black / over clip…
font of the titles is plain black over a white background which is fuzzy then becomes still after 3 seconds...this sort of imagery is distorted and shaky (could be included under special effects)

Effect/Analysis ^

gives us a sort of clue. Makes us think what is possible in the film. Does the film show technology alot? Or is it a old fashioned based sort of thriller, using the same sort of story line. This comes to mind as old objects are used and shown. Polaroid pictures are shown...etc

Signs

2008-11-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

Thriller Opening Analysis SheetFilm

0:00 mins --> 2:07 mins for just the opening.

Title: Signs

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

(Analysis)
Camera – distance, angle, movement… angle being straight, centralised in the middle. focusing on the characters names. slight movement linking to theme of film.

Effect/Analysis ^
The effect of this is very little towards the audience it shows less writing and colour but this then affects the audience as it makes us think calmly and not think its typical cliche.

Editing – speed, style…
Speed becomes faster in the way in which the titles come up faster, the speed of music also increases, style of the titles and music is the same, however the music is different at the start and at the end.

Effect/Analysis ^
As the music becomes faster this increases the tension caused for the audience and as the pace of titles becomes faster the music seems to become faster making it even more intense. Music ranges from fast to slow, indicating something strange may happen..it alerts us making us aware. The speed of the background music at the start of the opening is completely different from the end. This could be to signify the start and the end of the opening leading onto the introduction of the actual film.

Sound – effects
background music continuous throughout. Ranging with different tempos of music. Relates to the theme of thriller very well. Instantly with the music we can identify what categorie to categorize the film into.

Effect/Analysis ^
Along with all the diferent aspects that comes with the whole opening the sound fits in really well, and links to the theme.

Mise-en-scene – props, costume, setting, lighting, colour…
No props or costumes used in the opening. The lighting and colour of the opening stay the same throughout, theres a continuous blue colour cropping up in every title.

Effect/Analysis ^
Because of the blue colour appearing every time and the titles of people in the film keep coming up, its quite predictable. Giving us a calm sort of tone to the opening. Without this sort of stamina introduced at the start of the film, there would be nothing to look forward to, by carefully watching many of these film openings they all seem to start off plain and ordinary. Which is more effective as it gives the introduction a purposeful meaning.

Special Effects –
Not a variety of special effects are used in the opening. Fading out is maybe the only special effect which comes under editing mostly.

Titles – font, colour, placement, over black / over clip…
Blue background being a spotlight fading in and out. With black font over lapping the blue spotlight.

Effect/Analysis ^
Makes it stand out to the audience, its clear to read. Doesnt really link to the film, as the colours arnt very significant unless you could relate the colour blue to water? But overall just a plain opening.

Lost Highway

2008-11-07T04:18:00.000-08:00

Thriller Opening Analysis Sheet

Film Title: Lost Highway
Director: David Lynch
Title Designer:

Technique
Effect (Analysis)
Camera – distance, angle, movement…
Shaking centred in the middle no other objects seen. Movement of the camera continously shaking.

Effect/Analysis ^
Shaking of the camera gives it a high level of verisimilitude as it makes it feel real and as though you are generally in a car looking through the window of the road. Movement of the camera shaking form left to right makes it realistic. It’s quite different in the way that the director has used this sort of technique to open the film with.

Editing – speed, style…
Editing, and speed becomes faster as the time of the opening of the film begins to end. Style is the same throughout.

Effect/Analysis ^
With this sort of editing and speed of the clip it makes the audiences perspective from calm then eventually nervous, as the tension of the clip fastens and becomes more enticing. The style of editing throughout the opening extract stays the same as it bring the main attention onto the names of the producers and their purposes.

Sound – effects, musical score…
2 lots of music in this opening, one being a mans voice singing quite happily, then the noise of a more jumpy sort of theme.

Effect/Analysis ^
Confuses the audiences imagination into thinking what this opening is trying to tell them, and what is may be like inwards to film itself.
The voice of the man singing is quite weird in a sense that you can’t understand why he’s singing happily.

Mise-en-scene – props, costume, setting, lighting, colour…
Road, road line out, lighting consistent throughout, no change of lighting

Effect/Analysis ^
Yet again there’s no change of lighting of the continuous image of the road, as the directors purpose does not want the audience to be focused on that. The road outlines and just the image of the road signifies speed and movement, and the pace of editing becomes more fast as the extract ends.

Special Effects – CGI, animation…
-

Effect/Analysis
There’s not a lot of animation in this clip, although it may have been effective if the producer would have put a person in front of the wheel of the car to create a sense of character.

Titles – font, colour, placement, over black / over clip…
Plain, not very exciting although there bold (yellow in front of black) within 32 seconds of the opening extract the title of the film appears.

Effect/Analysis ^
The use of little colour is important as it creates a sense of unhappiness depression, and this is shown as the image of the road and speed becoming faster could make us think that maybe someone is running away?
Yellow font in over a black background shows what is more important being the text and names.

Hostage

2008-11-07T03:44:00.000-08:00

Thriller Opening Analysis Sheet

Film Title: Hostage
Director: Florent Siri
Title Designer:

Technique
Effect (Analysis)
Camera – distance, angle, movement…
Long shots throughout the opening introducing location and setting.
Close ups on particular buildings.
Angle of cameras continuously canting, lots of panning around the whole screen.

Effect/Analysis ^
Long shots to identify the sort of time in which it has been set. Buildings, city-like, are creating a sense of business and enclosure. Close ups of buildings could be significant as they may become more important later on in the film. The continuous canting of the camera angle creating loss of control of the film and how it is going to be out across.

Editing – speed, style…
Tracking, fading out of buildings and names of producers. Zooming out from one shot to another linking with the sound. One shot leading onto another shot ranges as some quikly cut and others fade into another. Creating the pace to adjust to the speed of the sound.

Effect/Analysis ^
The tracking and fading out of buildings creates a sense of pace and movement. It’s quite fast so it sort of influences the audience into thinking that it could be an action packed sort of film.

Sound – effects, musical score…
Creepy non-diegetic sound, loud, and raised as the editing becomes faster the sound becomes louder.

Effect/Analysis ^
Creating anticipation to keep on watching. Although throughout the opening it is the same sort of thing. But along with the sound it makes it more watch able.

Mise-en-scene – props, costume, setting, lighting, colour…
Figures in dull grey colours. Guns, dark lighting, shadowing of buildings against others. Very compact as there are alot of objects being used in each shot.

Effect/Analysis ^
Even though the mise en scene isn’t very colourful or brings a lot of attention to the audience, its makes them think the opposite to why it is dull, red skies, shadows against buildings. This then makes them think that something bad is lurking around.
Shadowing of the buildings create in a sense hidden messages.

Special Effects – CGI, animation…
Animation of soldier figures and guns. Buildings. Not much animation in this extract.

Effect/Analysis ^
The effect of using soldier figures automatically creates a sense of death, as guns are shown and the figures are dark grey. It also signifies war and no peace.

Titles – font, colour, placement, over black / over clip…
Bold white titles against red/black backgrounds,

Effect/Analysis ^
The colours of the opening are based on red black and white, dull colours signifying death and torture. White titles are only used for names of producers etc, however title of the film ‘hostage’ is bold red, indicating to the audience that this is the title of the film.

What is a thriller..?

2008-11-06T02:24:00.000-08:00

Certain categories of genres can help identify films according to the codes and conventions into which it has been storyboarded in. It makes it easier for audiences to come to grips with the features that create that specific movie. The Genre thriller has many ways in which you can tell its own genre such as the narrative, the setting is significant as its appearance is always obvious, ranging from a dark setting, church yards, moonlight etc. In every thriller film director’s focus on a range of different codes and conventions to create the atmosphere in which they are looking for and know what will engage to the audience. Its main function is to stir up suspension, eagerness, doubt and build up tension towards the audience.
Directors directing a thriller based film depend on the characters to make it exciting and interesting to watch. Character roles in thrillers are mostly convicts, criminals, stalkers, assassins, innocent victims (often on the run), prison inmates and many more. The themes of thrillers frequently range from terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder. These sorts of themes are what the audience try to work out whilst watching the film. Usually the start of the film is always significant as it gives the audience the impression about what setting and location it is going to follow.