Thursday, 28 April 2011
Title Research - Rasmus Klingstroem
Fight Club
The film's title sequence is a 90-second visual effects composition that depicts the inside of the narrator's brain at a microscopic level; after which the camera starts to zoom out, eventually getting to the outside of the narrator's head, and into the introductory scene.
Realistically, this is not something we could achieve with our media production, it would require too much special effects which we wouldn't know how to achieve, as well as it is unlikely the college, or each of us has the programs used to create this splendid piece of work.
However we can take some things from this piece, although the overall idea cannot be reused by us, we can take the initial idea of an object, blurred, coming into focus, turning out to be something completely different to what the audience had expected.
The actual title of this title sequence does not seem to be the main focus, whereas other title sequences build up to the title, or have the title centered, and persistent on the page - Fight Club has the title on the sequence for less than 5 seconds. This shows us that unique title sequences can also be quite effective, the audience clearly saw the title, but were more intrigued with the special effects, and what they were suppose to represent, and what this was leading towards.
The soundtracks used helps the feel of the movie - as the movie is titled "Fight Club" the audience would be expecting high a high action thriller, and having music to contradict this would serve against the creators.
The lighting ideas from this piece could be used by our group in the sense that desaturated scenes could help portray the mood of a specific piece. For instance, having a dark, and grim themed introduction would work best with desaturated colors to help show the audience that this is not something which should be happening.
Seven
The entirety of the title sequence for this film is used to make the audience ask a large quantity of questions as to whom the characters shown are, what their intentions are, and what they are intending to do. It also makes the audience identify with the character seen before much more than when they were viewing it - simply because of the disturbing nature of the title sequence.
Although this is unrealistically going to be used for our product, it is good to get different opinions about big films released from Hollywood, and what they interpret as being a good thriller opening.
The soundtrack over the title sequence helps to portray the chaotic nature of what is happening during this sequence, backed up with a unique text type.
The placement of the text throughout is sporadic at best, sometimes it's difficult to see, sometimes it's in awkward positions, but all this helps the audience get a feel for the story, and the title sequence.
Soundtrack used in this opening sequence is non-dietetic yet adds to the mood and enigma created by this title sequence as the use of cinematography with restricted narration allows the audience to think for themselves as to what is happening within this sequence.
Lastly, the music helps to create a tense atmosphere nearer the end as it progressively builds towards the ending climax of this title sequence.
Misery
The title sequence of this film is far simpler than the other two i've reviewed (to an extent). The title sequence itself is quite different than what is normally used within thrillers and horrors - using a red color for the font.
The soundtrack used in the title sequence is contrapuntal as the music is quite upbeat but as the scene progresses thing start to become more tense with the build up of weather and the close ups on the characters face allows the audience to see distress in his facial expression so will be anticipating something bad is going to happen.
A long drawn out title sequence is something which is definitely do-able by our media group for our product - unlike the other two title sequences that use a lot of special effects, this one doesn't, either through choice, or the fact that it was created in 1990.
The text is quite simplistic in comparison to the other two in this post, and thus makes it the best candidate to take ideas from in terms of applying text to our piece of work.
Monday, 4 April 2011
Monday, 28 March 2011
Evaluation - Rasmus Alexander Klingstroem
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
With the creation of this media product, much of the current adaptations of thrillers were used to influence the scene's creation and concept - through watching the opening sequences of several including; No Country For Old Men, 44 Inch Chest, Disappearance of Alice Creed, and Old Boy.
Old Boy Opening Sequence (K Drive)
When looking at the previously linked clip, it is clear that this had an impact on our finished production. This is shown through a couple of key elements throughout both clips;
Although some things were changed, such as the fact that our product had the title sequence after the slow, yet dramatic buildup whereas "No Country for Old Men" had it prio to this scene.
Our media product does not challenge generally accepted concepts, instead it takes these concepts, such as desaturation, and tries to achieve what these big blockbusters have - to encaptuate an audience, specifically an audience seeking a thriller product.
A third example of a thriller movie which affected some of our decisions when making our media product would be "The Birds (1963)".
Although this particular movie sequence had little effect on our overall product, it did have an impact on the type of atmosphere we wanted to create. This particular clip has no voiceover, and no description of any kind - which makes an audience wonder; "What type of movie is this? What am I going to be shown, blood, violence, gore?", and that is the type of experience I had in mind when choosing the types of sounds for our first scene. Whereas other movies or title sequences have voiceovers, or other ways to tell an audience what is happening, or movie instead had very simple, but effective sound effects; some from GarageBand, and some recorded ourselves, an example of which is the groaning from the victim seen dragged through a field in scene one.
The nature of the POV seen in scene one I believe develops forms and conventions of real media products. I believe this is the case as I have not seen very many thrillers start their opening sequence with POV from the perspective of the victim in this manner, and thus makes this movie stand out among the droves of films using the same media conventions without deviation.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Some groups have been specifically chosen and represented in a certain way to envoke a certain feeling from the audience. The generic teenage girl being abused/harmed has been used on thousands of occasions in many different genres of films, from horror to thriller, and even to sci-fi - yet this type of representation has not whithered and is still widely used today, and this is why we used it for our production.
The use of another type of victim could've envoked different feelings from the audience, when we wanted to envoke very specific feelings. An example would be that if we used another group, such as a young white British male, could've supressed an audience or some within the audience from feeling sympathy to the extent we wanted. An example of where this is the case is the thriller opening of "Goodfella's".
As you can see, the audience is not provoked to feel sympathy to any great extent for the man in the trunk - this is due to the nature of this character, and how unimportant he is in the entirety of the plot. Our production on the other hand required the audience to feel sympathy and understanding for the victim's circumstances, and thus needed the steriotypical; young, white, female to play the part of the victim. This is shown through camerawork, sound, and editing - much of what is shown to the audience in the first scene is of the victim struggling to get away.
Editing
When you look at the editing that was required to give the sense of struggle for the victim, it is quite tedious, these were the things that needed to be done or considered;
The camerawork was vitally important to maintaining the representation of the victim. the victim needed to look weak and defenceless throughout the first scene, if this was not achieved then the audience could become disillusioned with our media product.
It may seem easy to maintain consistency due to the nature of the first scene because of the POV - however, making sure the camera and the victim were lined up enough so the audience was still asking questions, yet aware of some of the surroundings of the victim was hard to achieve. Some of which was improved and fixed in the editing process.
Sound
Maintaining sound quality throughout was not hard to achieve - using Final Cut Pro made this a fairly easy task. However we did encounter certain problems with regards to the heartbeat heard throughout the first scene, it appeared that GarageBand did not allow for tempo changes to pre-existing sounds, and thus the heartbeat needed to be exported into Final Cut Pro in order for us to give our scene the correct feel throughout; of panic, and fear.
The antagonist on the other hand, does not represent any specific social group as his face is never shown in our product. We felt this needed to be done to give the antagonist a mysterious element, and to force the audience to ask questions, as is the nature of all thriller movies - if the answers were given in this short two minute product, then there would be no need to view the rest of the movie as you'd know whom the victim is, and who the antagonist is.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
When looking into the different ways of distributing our media product, there are several ways which look very appealing to us, as it is an independant low-budget film. Companies such as 'Columbia Pictures' would never distribute a film made by unknown directors simply due to the low profit rates of such films. Our best choice, if we were to get someone else to distribute it for us, would be a company such as 'Soda Pictures'.
They are a UK based company that has released several independant films, and has had success with a few films including; Frostbite, Into Great Silence, & Old Joy.
http://www.sodapictures.com/
However with such large quantity of popular film releases, this company will be unlikely to handle our distribution due to the fact we are unknown directors.
This is why we were thinking of premiering our film at the London: Future Shorts and the London: Valentine Film Festivals - this would be done as non-subtitled versions as it is shown to a UK audience, and otherwise would require more money, which a low-budget movie wouldn't have.
From there we'd make the movie a viral video which would be downloadable for a small fee, £4.99 - this would be done to entice customers into buying the video, and building a reputation on the internet for having a good viral video.
From there, we'd consider trying for a cinema release, with the popularity of our viral video behind us, we'd hopefully get 'Soda Pictures' to distribute our film at a national level - if not european, on a small scale.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The targetted audience for our media product would be teenagers aged between 12-21, this is due to the nature of our film, the characters within it, and the plot in general. I would argue that the targetted audience would generally be females between this age group, mainly because of the narrative within the media product - jealousy, revenge, and anger are themes that mostly attract a female audience. Whereas the type of thriller that attracts young male teenagers are those with a lot of blood, violence and fast paced action.
How did you attract / address your audience?
The audience was attracted through the use of the internet, using both my own, and Alea's facebook to try and get some comments on our video which was posted on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=361_PdMPlTk
Having our media production on a worldwide level, via Youtube, we've made the first steps to making our product a thriving success.
Secondly, some of the comments we have recieved on Youtube has been very positive about our production which gives me high hopes about what this production could potentially achieve, both on a national level, and international level.
The fact that we've also attained a comment from a person of German origin, shows that this film is already getting watched internationally.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
I personally feel I have learnt a lot since the preliminary task. When doing the preliminary there are several things I would not have considered which I now know must be included or considered every time. Such as; Depth of Field, Lighting decisions, Framing, Timing, Pace, and Length of shot.
Camerawork and Editing
Much of what was done with regards to Camerawork had been planned out carefully throughout the development process of this media product - this is shown in both blog entries and the Animatic video. Length of shot was very important when thinking about the scenes, as the product had a very specific time limit, the film could not be filmed with careless disregard for the length of each scene.
Secondly, Continuity - although continuity was carefully thought about for the preliminary, we had to consider it to a far greater extent with our final piece. With the preliminary, we chose a very small room, with no reflective surfaces simply so we wouldn't have to deal with reflections of the camera, or other persons. The final piece did not have this luxury as we filmed inside someone's house, and thus had many reflective surfaces such as tables, pictures, and mirrors which had to be avoided, and camera placement had to be considered carefully.
However, this does not mean that our final piece was faultless - the second scene clearly has a problem with reflective surfaces, dispite our best efforts to avoid such, we can clearly see the camera in one of the pictures, which was only spotted during the editing of our film.
There was much which we could not achieve in the preliminary which limited us greatly, firstly, we found out that using the standard cameras supplied by the college we could not achieve any sort of movement from the camera, as we had problems with bluring, and the white-balance reseting itself. These issues were resolved when we had to produce our final film as we had access to the HD cameras which fixed the bluring and white-balance problems - as well as the fact we were allowed outside of the college to film which allowed us to work a lot more freely with what we could and could not do.
Sound and Mise en Scene
Unlike our preliminary, we had to edit sound seperately from the main visual piece and add them to the final product, this presented a new set of challenges because we did not need to do this for our preliminary - although it was overcome fairly easily through the use of a much better piece of software, namely: Final Cut Pro.
The use of, and addition of pre-made sounds from Garageband made our job much easier as it allowed us to focus a lot more on the editing of our film instead of having to find out ways of implimenting real sounds and making them believable.
Mise en Scene wasn't really expanded upon from our preliminary, some of the same costumes were used, and our focus was mainly on the camerawork and editing to make our film believable for the audience. However this is not to say that we ignored Mise en Scene completely, costume was mainly only considered for the antagonist as we needed his face covered to keep the mysterious element intact for the audience's benefit.
Overall, I believe our group has developed quite a lot since the preliminary, considering ideas and using media concepts which we otherwise did not, including; framing, depth of field and using a varity of different styles, and I am quite proud of the final piece.
With the creation of this media product, much of the current adaptations of thrillers were used to influence the scene's creation and concept - through watching the opening sequences of several including; No Country For Old Men, 44 Inch Chest, Disappearance of Alice Creed, and Old Boy.
Old Boy Opening Sequence (K Drive)
When looking at the previously linked clip, it is clear that this had an impact on our finished production. This is shown through a couple of key elements throughout both clips;
- The desaturation
- The fast paced cuts
- The use of wide open spaces
- The slow buildup
Although some things were changed, such as the fact that our product had the title sequence after the slow, yet dramatic buildup whereas "No Country for Old Men" had it prio to this scene.
Our media product does not challenge generally accepted concepts, instead it takes these concepts, such as desaturation, and tries to achieve what these big blockbusters have - to encaptuate an audience, specifically an audience seeking a thriller product.
A third example of a thriller movie which affected some of our decisions when making our media product would be "The Birds (1963)".
Although this particular movie sequence had little effect on our overall product, it did have an impact on the type of atmosphere we wanted to create. This particular clip has no voiceover, and no description of any kind - which makes an audience wonder; "What type of movie is this? What am I going to be shown, blood, violence, gore?", and that is the type of experience I had in mind when choosing the types of sounds for our first scene. Whereas other movies or title sequences have voiceovers, or other ways to tell an audience what is happening, or movie instead had very simple, but effective sound effects; some from GarageBand, and some recorded ourselves, an example of which is the groaning from the victim seen dragged through a field in scene one.
The nature of the POV seen in scene one I believe develops forms and conventions of real media products. I believe this is the case as I have not seen very many thrillers start their opening sequence with POV from the perspective of the victim in this manner, and thus makes this movie stand out among the droves of films using the same media conventions without deviation.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Some groups have been specifically chosen and represented in a certain way to envoke a certain feeling from the audience. The generic teenage girl being abused/harmed has been used on thousands of occasions in many different genres of films, from horror to thriller, and even to sci-fi - yet this type of representation has not whithered and is still widely used today, and this is why we used it for our production.
The use of another type of victim could've envoked different feelings from the audience, when we wanted to envoke very specific feelings. An example would be that if we used another group, such as a young white British male, could've supressed an audience or some within the audience from feeling sympathy to the extent we wanted. An example of where this is the case is the thriller opening of "Goodfella's".
As you can see, the audience is not provoked to feel sympathy to any great extent for the man in the trunk - this is due to the nature of this character, and how unimportant he is in the entirety of the plot. Our production on the other hand required the audience to feel sympathy and understanding for the victim's circumstances, and thus needed the steriotypical; young, white, female to play the part of the victim. This is shown through camerawork, sound, and editing - much of what is shown to the audience in the first scene is of the victim struggling to get away.
Editing
When you look at the editing that was required to give the sense of struggle for the victim, it is quite tedious, these were the things that needed to be done or considered;
- A smooth flow between cuts or camera angles
- A consideration for consistency
- Continuity maintained
- Making sure the audio fitted appropriately
The camerawork was vitally important to maintaining the representation of the victim. the victim needed to look weak and defenceless throughout the first scene, if this was not achieved then the audience could become disillusioned with our media product.
It may seem easy to maintain consistency due to the nature of the first scene because of the POV - however, making sure the camera and the victim were lined up enough so the audience was still asking questions, yet aware of some of the surroundings of the victim was hard to achieve. Some of which was improved and fixed in the editing process.
Sound
Maintaining sound quality throughout was not hard to achieve - using Final Cut Pro made this a fairly easy task. However we did encounter certain problems with regards to the heartbeat heard throughout the first scene, it appeared that GarageBand did not allow for tempo changes to pre-existing sounds, and thus the heartbeat needed to be exported into Final Cut Pro in order for us to give our scene the correct feel throughout; of panic, and fear.
The antagonist on the other hand, does not represent any specific social group as his face is never shown in our product. We felt this needed to be done to give the antagonist a mysterious element, and to force the audience to ask questions, as is the nature of all thriller movies - if the answers were given in this short two minute product, then there would be no need to view the rest of the movie as you'd know whom the victim is, and who the antagonist is.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
When looking into the different ways of distributing our media product, there are several ways which look very appealing to us, as it is an independant low-budget film. Companies such as 'Columbia Pictures' would never distribute a film made by unknown directors simply due to the low profit rates of such films. Our best choice, if we were to get someone else to distribute it for us, would be a company such as 'Soda Pictures'.
They are a UK based company that has released several independant films, and has had success with a few films including; Frostbite, Into Great Silence, & Old Joy.
http://www.sodapictures.com/
However with such large quantity of popular film releases, this company will be unlikely to handle our distribution due to the fact we are unknown directors.
This is why we were thinking of premiering our film at the London: Future Shorts and the London: Valentine Film Festivals - this would be done as non-subtitled versions as it is shown to a UK audience, and otherwise would require more money, which a low-budget movie wouldn't have.
From there we'd make the movie a viral video which would be downloadable for a small fee, £4.99 - this would be done to entice customers into buying the video, and building a reputation on the internet for having a good viral video.
From there, we'd consider trying for a cinema release, with the popularity of our viral video behind us, we'd hopefully get 'Soda Pictures' to distribute our film at a national level - if not european, on a small scale.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The targetted audience for our media product would be teenagers aged between 12-21, this is due to the nature of our film, the characters within it, and the plot in general. I would argue that the targetted audience would generally be females between this age group, mainly because of the narrative within the media product - jealousy, revenge, and anger are themes that mostly attract a female audience. Whereas the type of thriller that attracts young male teenagers are those with a lot of blood, violence and fast paced action.
How did you attract / address your audience?
The audience was attracted through the use of the internet, using both my own, and Alea's facebook to try and get some comments on our video which was posted on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=361_PdMPlTk
Having our media production on a worldwide level, via Youtube, we've made the first steps to making our product a thriving success.
Secondly, some of the comments we have recieved on Youtube has been very positive about our production which gives me high hopes about what this production could potentially achieve, both on a national level, and international level.
The fact that we've also attained a comment from a person of German origin, shows that this film is already getting watched internationally.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6uUQtNEcY
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
I personally feel I have learnt a lot since the preliminary task. When doing the preliminary there are several things I would not have considered which I now know must be included or considered every time. Such as; Depth of Field, Lighting decisions, Framing, Timing, Pace, and Length of shot.
Camerawork and Editing
Much of what was done with regards to Camerawork had been planned out carefully throughout the development process of this media product - this is shown in both blog entries and the Animatic video. Length of shot was very important when thinking about the scenes, as the product had a very specific time limit, the film could not be filmed with careless disregard for the length of each scene.
Secondly, Continuity - although continuity was carefully thought about for the preliminary, we had to consider it to a far greater extent with our final piece. With the preliminary, we chose a very small room, with no reflective surfaces simply so we wouldn't have to deal with reflections of the camera, or other persons. The final piece did not have this luxury as we filmed inside someone's house, and thus had many reflective surfaces such as tables, pictures, and mirrors which had to be avoided, and camera placement had to be considered carefully.
However, this does not mean that our final piece was faultless - the second scene clearly has a problem with reflective surfaces, dispite our best efforts to avoid such, we can clearly see the camera in one of the pictures, which was only spotted during the editing of our film.
There was much which we could not achieve in the preliminary which limited us greatly, firstly, we found out that using the standard cameras supplied by the college we could not achieve any sort of movement from the camera, as we had problems with bluring, and the white-balance reseting itself. These issues were resolved when we had to produce our final film as we had access to the HD cameras which fixed the bluring and white-balance problems - as well as the fact we were allowed outside of the college to film which allowed us to work a lot more freely with what we could and could not do.
Sound and Mise en Scene
Unlike our preliminary, we had to edit sound seperately from the main visual piece and add them to the final product, this presented a new set of challenges because we did not need to do this for our preliminary - although it was overcome fairly easily through the use of a much better piece of software, namely: Final Cut Pro.
The use of, and addition of pre-made sounds from Garageband made our job much easier as it allowed us to focus a lot more on the editing of our film instead of having to find out ways of implimenting real sounds and making them believable.
Mise en Scene wasn't really expanded upon from our preliminary, some of the same costumes were used, and our focus was mainly on the camerawork and editing to make our film believable for the audience. However this is not to say that we ignored Mise en Scene completely, costume was mainly only considered for the antagonist as we needed his face covered to keep the mysterious element intact for the audience's benefit.
Overall, I believe our group has developed quite a lot since the preliminary, considering ideas and using media concepts which we otherwise did not, including; framing, depth of field and using a varity of different styles, and I am quite proud of the final piece.
Evaluation - Alea Holland
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convention of real media products?
For our thriller project we relied heavily on conventions of thriller whist researching to help construct the concept of our film and what it would entail. In class we looked at openings of several thriller films: "Old Boy", "The Dissaperance of Alice Creed", "44 Inch Chest" and "No Country for Old Men" being some of them. We took most of our insparation from the inroduction to the film 44 Inch Chest as we wanted to use the conventions of creating enigma using discontinuity editing and having no dialouge allowing for the audeince to piece together the narrative for themselves.
With these techniques providing the main base to structure our thriller around we then turned to ideas we could use to make our work more unique when comapred to other thrillers. This is why we decided upon using a point of view shot for the first scene allowing the audeince to be immediately placed in the centre of the action in the narrative which was praised in the feedback from our target audeince commenting that it "almost creates the sense that it is in an expository documentary style and the audience will believe the footage is real". In addition to this we decided we did not want and diolouge to occur in the opening to add to the enigma of the scene and to allow for the audiences interpritation of the scene to rely on decoding the narrative through aspects of camera work.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The characters in our piece reperesent the average middle class young adult aged around 16-19 years. In the opening of our film issues on status and sterotyping is addressed as in our piece the female character is the victim which is also a convention in other films and also in one of the research thrillers: "The Dissaperance of Alice Creed".
We show this mainly through use of camera work. In the first scene as the first few shots are low angle point of view shots looking up at the male antagonist character immediately establishing the antagonists power over the female character.
The idea of using discontinuity editing allows the audeince to see how the protagonist is victomised due to the future events of the narrarive so when in the second scene the film moves back into chronological order the audience can sympathise with the character as the developing narrative woul clearly show the progagonists innnocence and that they truly are the victim. This does however create a negative representation of the female gender by showing some aspects of the female stereotype come through in the character.
3.What kind of media distribution might distribute your media product and why?
Being an independant film it would'nt be possible to get our product distributed through major film production companies such as "Universal" so we would more than likely get our product distributed by an independant company that handles independant films like Soda Pictures (http://www.sodapictures.com/).
Soda Pictures have released many films onto DVD as well as cinema releases from independant directors from several different countries in Europe so we could go for either a regional release or try to reach a wider audience by releasing in Europe. However as we are first time independant film makers our distribution buget would not be able to streach far as UK distributors spend £300 million a year on bringing new releases out for exhibition and to create 1 film print costs £1500 creates a large cost and risk for us as if it does not do well on it's release very little profit will be made. Also the competion faced by the much bigger blockbuster released could severley reduce our chances at being able to get multiplex cinemas which are more popular than arthouse to distribute our product. In addition to this we could loose out on gaining good audeince numbers as our target audience would only have a certain amount of leisure pound to spend and would most likely go to watch the more anticipated and highly advertised Hollywood films and generally tend to visit multiplex cinemas rather than independent ones.
Due to this factor as well as budgeting advertising to be able to get our film noticed amoung the blockbusters the methods of distribtuion we thought would be best are:
Making the film acsessable to download allows us to reach a global audience as well as being able to easily reach our target audeince. To download we will most likely use popular sites such as iTunes as many people use it, its is popular with our target audience who would be able to download the film to watch on the computer or iPod so they can consume film on the go. We believe this would appeal to our target audience as they could watch the film on public transport on the way to work/college. The download price would be around the price of £5 to entice customes as it is a cheap price for downloadable film and this also can help us build a good reputation and popularity. Also is the film festival proves to be popular a follow up of the internet download could provide great popularity for the film so at a cheap price it could still make a profit.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted and addressed our audeince through posting our thriller opening on YouTube along with posting the link to it on mine and Rasmus' Facebook pages. This allowed us to reach our target audience easily and aquire feedback on our project as it is easily accessable using the internet. We did recieve some positive feeback from Facebook and YouTube comments as well as some constructive critisism and the majority of people commenting were amoung are target audience and those comments were the most positive. Alos we recived a comment from a person in Germany showing that we are reaching a global audience successfuly.
.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 learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back on our preliminary task I can say with confidence that we have definitely improved on our work. Most of our technical skills have improved in the short time between making our preliminary and our thriller opening as we have gained more understanding of how to use the technology to its full potential and how to be more creative in our use of camera work and editing. Our camera work in the preliminary was rather limited as we mainly just had simple shot types with no camera movement and when we did try to incorporate some more interesting camera work we found that we ran into problems mainly to do with the camera and the settings that we had to film in with white balance issues and blurring of focus whenever the camera was moved too fast. Also being confined to the college campus meant that we were limited with ideas for creating the narrative for our preliminary and coupled with little experience using the camera it was a rather basic piece. Being allowed to use the HD cameras and being able to film off the college campus gave us the abiltiy to have more diversity with the shot types and some more freedom in choosing the overall narrative as we had some ideas for locations that we could use already established before the story was even created and allowed us to use appropriate settings that I feel worked really well with the piece. Despite our efforts to spot errors whilst filming some reflections of equipment can still be seen in the second scene as it was only noticed they were visible whilst editing.
Our visual editing I think has improved from the preliminary as well as our sound. However I do not think sound has improved as much as visual editing. With our visual editing we have been a bit more ambitious and tried to use the editing to set the pace of the scenes with the first scene showing short clips of the action with black transitions between them to try to heighten the pace. In the second scene shots were longer and transitions were just smooth dissolves or straight cuts so the pace and overall mood of the scene is calm. When it came to sound editing we did come across some problems which made it hard to achieve the effect we wanted as some of the sounds we had recorded ourselves came out too quiet each time we recorded it and in our final product there are some shots with no sound. Unfortunately it was picked up on by the audience as the main area that we needed improvement on. Overall I think that our thriller opening is a great improvement over our preliminary. Yes I admit it still has its faults but it is a more well executed piece that I think we are all quite proud of.
For our thriller project we relied heavily on conventions of thriller whist researching to help construct the concept of our film and what it would entail. In class we looked at openings of several thriller films: "Old Boy", "The Dissaperance of Alice Creed", "44 Inch Chest" and "No Country for Old Men" being some of them. We took most of our insparation from the inroduction to the film 44 Inch Chest as we wanted to use the conventions of creating enigma using discontinuity editing and having no dialouge allowing for the audeince to piece together the narrative for themselves.
With these techniques providing the main base to structure our thriller around we then turned to ideas we could use to make our work more unique when comapred to other thrillers. This is why we decided upon using a point of view shot for the first scene allowing the audeince to be immediately placed in the centre of the action in the narrative which was praised in the feedback from our target audeince commenting that it "almost creates the sense that it is in an expository documentary style and the audience will believe the footage is real". In addition to this we decided we did not want and diolouge to occur in the opening to add to the enigma of the scene and to allow for the audiences interpritation of the scene to rely on decoding the narrative through aspects of camera work.
To create the atmosphere and mystery that is usually coupled with a thriller film we did focus on use of the camera a lot as it would be our main tool for creating tension and essentially help to narrate the story with the lack of dialouge we used a conventional camera technique known as restricted narration. Whilst researching openings we found a good example of restricted narration in the "The Dissaperance of Alice Creed". We felt this was key in order to achieve one of the conventions of thriller films by making the audience ask questions about what is happening in the scene. To create our restricted narration we decided to use entirely point of view shots in the first scene of our opening as it does provoke the audeince to question what is happening, however, POV shots are uncommon in terms of being used in a film opening so this does challenge a convention of thrillers and makes ours more unique.
A feature that is also present in both these exracts that had an impact on our product is the lack of dialouge that has been previously mentioned. In our group we agreed that this was the best way to go as it did allow the audience to piece together what is going on in the scenes for themelves. This also makes the scenes more thrilling as is the overall objective of a thriller film as there is no clear indication into why the actions in scene are taking place or the characters and thier place within the narrative so relies heavily on audeince interpretation for the first scene.2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The characters in our piece reperesent the average middle class young adult aged around 16-19 years. In the opening of our film issues on status and sterotyping is addressed as in our piece the female character is the victim which is also a convention in other films and also in one of the research thrillers: "The Dissaperance of Alice Creed".
We show this mainly through use of camera work. In the first scene as the first few shots are low angle point of view shots looking up at the male antagonist character immediately establishing the antagonists power over the female character.
The idea of using discontinuity editing allows the audeince to see how the protagonist is victomised due to the future events of the narrarive so when in the second scene the film moves back into chronological order the audience can sympathise with the character as the developing narrative woul clearly show the progagonists innnocence and that they truly are the victim. This does however create a negative representation of the female gender by showing some aspects of the female stereotype come through in the character.
3.What kind of media distribution might distribute your media product and why?
Being an independant film it would'nt be possible to get our product distributed through major film production companies such as "Universal" so we would more than likely get our product distributed by an independant company that handles independant films like Soda Pictures (http://www.sodapictures.com/).
Soda Pictures have released many films onto DVD as well as cinema releases from independant directors from several different countries in Europe so we could go for either a regional release or try to reach a wider audience by releasing in Europe. However as we are first time independant film makers our distribution buget would not be able to streach far as UK distributors spend £300 million a year on bringing new releases out for exhibition and to create 1 film print costs £1500 creates a large cost and risk for us as if it does not do well on it's release very little profit will be made. Also the competion faced by the much bigger blockbuster released could severley reduce our chances at being able to get multiplex cinemas which are more popular than arthouse to distribute our product. In addition to this we could loose out on gaining good audeince numbers as our target audience would only have a certain amount of leisure pound to spend and would most likely go to watch the more anticipated and highly advertised Hollywood films and generally tend to visit multiplex cinemas rather than independent ones.
Due to this factor as well as budgeting advertising to be able to get our film noticed amoung the blockbusters the methods of distribtuion we thought would be best are:
- Film Festival showings
- Internet downloads
Making the film acsessable to download allows us to reach a global audience as well as being able to easily reach our target audeince. To download we will most likely use popular sites such as iTunes as many people use it, its is popular with our target audience who would be able to download the film to watch on the computer or iPod so they can consume film on the go. We believe this would appeal to our target audience as they could watch the film on public transport on the way to work/college. The download price would be around the price of £5 to entice customes as it is a cheap price for downloadable film and this also can help us build a good reputation and popularity. Also is the film festival proves to be popular a follow up of the internet download could provide great popularity for the film so at a cheap price it could still make a profit.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our piece would be the teen market ranging from 12- 21 years as the main characters in our film are teens it is easy for the audeince to relate to them as our piece is aiming to be realistic. However with a low age rating of a 12A we would be able to reach a wider audience as the content of the film wouldn't be inceredbly violent or explicit. The gender of teens that would most likely be more interested in our film is the female gender because of some of the issues that are raised in the narrative with themes of jealousy and revenge whereas a male audience would be more interested in a film containing more action and violence. The main issue raised in the narrative is one of abuse in relationships as our story is based jelous ex boyfriends fighting over the ex girlfriend and as established in the first scene things go beyond petty fighting.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted and addressed our audeince through posting our thriller opening on YouTube along with posting the link to it on mine and Rasmus' Facebook pages. This allowed us to reach our target audience easily and aquire feedback on our project as it is easily accessable using the internet. We did recieve some positive feeback from Facebook and YouTube comments as well as some constructive critisism and the majority of people commenting were amoung are target audience and those comments were the most positive. Alos we recived a comment from a person in Germany showing that we are reaching a global audience successfuly.
.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 learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back on our preliminary task I can say with confidence that we have definitely improved on our work. Most of our technical skills have improved in the short time between making our preliminary and our thriller opening as we have gained more understanding of how to use the technology to its full potential and how to be more creative in our use of camera work and editing. Our camera work in the preliminary was rather limited as we mainly just had simple shot types with no camera movement and when we did try to incorporate some more interesting camera work we found that we ran into problems mainly to do with the camera and the settings that we had to film in with white balance issues and blurring of focus whenever the camera was moved too fast. Also being confined to the college campus meant that we were limited with ideas for creating the narrative for our preliminary and coupled with little experience using the camera it was a rather basic piece. Being allowed to use the HD cameras and being able to film off the college campus gave us the abiltiy to have more diversity with the shot types and some more freedom in choosing the overall narrative as we had some ideas for locations that we could use already established before the story was even created and allowed us to use appropriate settings that I feel worked really well with the piece. Despite our efforts to spot errors whilst filming some reflections of equipment can still be seen in the second scene as it was only noticed they were visible whilst editing.
Our visual editing I think has improved from the preliminary as well as our sound. However I do not think sound has improved as much as visual editing. With our visual editing we have been a bit more ambitious and tried to use the editing to set the pace of the scenes with the first scene showing short clips of the action with black transitions between them to try to heighten the pace. In the second scene shots were longer and transitions were just smooth dissolves or straight cuts so the pace and overall mood of the scene is calm. When it came to sound editing we did come across some problems which made it hard to achieve the effect we wanted as some of the sounds we had recorded ourselves came out too quiet each time we recorded it and in our final product there are some shots with no sound. Unfortunately it was picked up on by the audience as the main area that we needed improvement on. Overall I think that our thriller opening is a great improvement over our preliminary. Yes I admit it still has its faults but it is a more well executed piece that I think we are all quite proud of.
Evaluation - Ollie Newson
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
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 learned in the progression from it to the full product?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
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 learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Monday, 21 March 2011
21 March 2011 - Garageband
We basically finished the sound editing for our final product, however we encountered several problems throughout, some we have not fully solved as of yet.
Firstly as the first scene had a heartbeat added to it, and then the female character starts running, it would seem logical to have the tempo of the heartbeat increase - however there is no technical way of adding this to Garageband, and so it will need to be created in FinalCut Pro and exported to our final movie.
Secondly, we didn't have all the members of our group present, and thus we couldn't add the heavy breathing necessary to complete the sound editing for the scene.
Thirdly, we felt that the title sequence was not dramatic enough without edited sound, so we added an additional soundtrack to the title sequence to make it stand out more for the audience - and to make them pay attention.
Finally we thought that the text sound from the movie sound wasn't loud enough for the audience to pay attention, and so it was removed from the clip, put onto it's own layer, and the sound was increased to the appropriate level.
By Rasmus Klingstroem
Firstly as the first scene had a heartbeat added to it, and then the female character starts running, it would seem logical to have the tempo of the heartbeat increase - however there is no technical way of adding this to Garageband, and so it will need to be created in FinalCut Pro and exported to our final movie.
Secondly, we didn't have all the members of our group present, and thus we couldn't add the heavy breathing necessary to complete the sound editing for the scene.
Thirdly, we felt that the title sequence was not dramatic enough without edited sound, so we added an additional soundtrack to the title sequence to make it stand out more for the audience - and to make them pay attention.
Finally we thought that the text sound from the movie sound wasn't loud enough for the audience to pay attention, and so it was removed from the clip, put onto it's own layer, and the sound was increased to the appropriate level.
By Rasmus Klingstroem
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Title Research - Alea Holland
The Orphanage
The titles to “The Orphanage” are quite interesting as instead of just being overlaid on an image or on their own on a black screen they match the action of what is happening on the screen with the children tearing away the wallpaper to reveal the titles underneath. This can add to the narrative as one reading of this would be suggesting that there is a hidden meaning in the story that would be revealed as the story progresses. Another reading of this could be that the orphanage could descend into chaos as the audience has already learned from the pervious scene that one of the girls at the orphanage is going to be adopted which could lead to some sort of revolt form the other children. Also the colour that is used in the title sequence creates a rather sinister mood as it is in black and white but the colour of the wall shown underneath where the wall paper has been ripped off is red. This creates a sinister mood as it stands out and could represent blood due to the fact that the wallpaper over the top is ripped away to show it.
The titles to “The Orphanage” are quite interesting as instead of just being overlaid on an image or on their own on a black screen they match the action of what is happening on the screen with the children tearing away the wallpaper to reveal the titles underneath. This can add to the narrative as one reading of this would be suggesting that there is a hidden meaning in the story that would be revealed as the story progresses. Another reading of this could be that the orphanage could descend into chaos as the audience has already learned from the pervious scene that one of the girls at the orphanage is going to be adopted which could lead to some sort of revolt form the other children. Also the colour that is used in the title sequence creates a rather sinister mood as it is in black and white but the colour of the wall shown underneath where the wall paper has been ripped off is red. This creates a sinister mood as it stands out and could represent blood due to the fact that the wallpaper over the top is ripped away to show it.
The sinister mood is also added to by the soundtrack as the music used is very eerie and some of the beats in the music match the timing of the ripping of the paper which makes it parallel sound as it suit’s the action well.
The font style and colour used in the titles in very basic so stands out more from the intricate pattern form the wallpaper yet does not provide anything else to the plot. Misery
The titles in ‘Misery’ are a lot simpler than those in ‘The Orphanage’ as they are simply super imposed over the top of a driving scene.
The Text itself is unusual as red is rarely used for titles even in thriller and horror films. However it is effective as the red contrasts to the white and green of the setting in the film allowing it to stand out and grab the audiences attention which is added to by the bold text font used. The credits do take up a large portion of the screen but due to the fact that the section of the film it is overlaid on is just showing a simple driving scene mostly made of of long shots and extreme long shots with no action in it. There are some mid close ups used on the character but in those shots titles are placed further down the frame so it doesn’t block out any key points in the story and just allows for the audience to see the characters journey.
SevenThe titles for Seven are quite different when compared to the previous two as the overall style of the title sequence with the style of the text merges very well and almost becomes part of the props and setting in the scene. This connection is made mostly by the text style and animation that is used along with the cinematic style of the opening sequence. The font style used is sketchy and the animation used on the titles creates a distorting effect as they flash and shudder which fits well with the editing and the overall style of the opening sequence as the scene itself is quite distorted at times with use of the manual focus on props in the scene, overlaying images and sudden cuts.
The placement of the text varies as some are just on black and some are overlaid on the footage but placed in dark areas of the frame so no detail in the shots are blocked or missed as most of the shots are close ups of props in the scene.
This technique is also something we can use in terms of placement of our titles as the scene we are looking to place them in has quite a few props in the setting that help to set the scene and we don’t want the titles to be distraction form that nor blocking off certain objects. Soundtrack used in this opening sequence is non-dietetic yet adds to the tense mood and enigma created by this scene as the use of cinematography with restricted narration allows the audience to piece together for themselves the picture of what is happening. The sound used contains static bursts and other similar noises that are coupled with the distorting imagery creating a rather unsettling atmosphere as the audience cannot see clearly what is going on and the beats of the music seem to progressively build up towards the end of the credits sequence creating a tense atmosphere.
For our piece I think combining techniques from both ’Misery’ and ’Seven’ would work well with our scene in which we plan to place the titles.
The placement of the text varies as some are just on black and some are overlaid on the footage but placed in dark areas of the frame so no detail in the shots are blocked or missed as most of the shots are close ups of props in the scene.
This technique is also something we can use in terms of placement of our titles as the scene we are looking to place them in has quite a few props in the setting that help to set the scene and we don’t want the titles to be distraction form that nor blocking off certain objects. Soundtrack used in this opening sequence is non-dietetic yet adds to the tense mood and enigma created by this scene as the use of cinematography with restricted narration allows the audience to piece together for themselves the picture of what is happening. The sound used contains static bursts and other similar noises that are coupled with the distorting imagery creating a rather unsettling atmosphere as the audience cannot see clearly what is going on and the beats of the music seem to progressively build up towards the end of the credits sequence creating a tense atmosphere.
For our piece I think combining techniques from both ’Misery’ and ’Seven’ would work well with our scene in which we plan to place the titles.
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