Evaluations Navigation

Jack Cozens

Evaluation 1,2,3 & 6

Timo Burbidge

Evaluation 1,2,3 & 6

Simon Tucker

Evaluation 1
Evaluation 2
Evaluation 3
Evaluation 6

Group

Evaluation 4,5 & 7

Final Piece

Preliminary

Animatic

ST EVALUATION 6

Technologies

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A powerpoint, presented on slideboom on how we used and learnt about new technologies.

Enjoy.

ST EVALUATION 3

3What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute your Media Product and Why?

Our film is a small project so a smaller independant studio would probably be best for the production of the film. For example Film4, which has experience with smaller films such as 'This is England' (Shane Meadows, 2006). From the audience research on surveymonkey.com and after the screening, it shows that the audience is largely young males, which film4 has had experience making films for. It is also the largest audience for the average cinema goer.





The advantages of having a small production studio is that we can keep on the writers and 'talent' for the film - however it could greatly benifit a large studio backing, with access to key stars to attract audiences and a larger distribution base.



The best distibuter for our film may a smaller distributer, put still with larger access, for example Vertigo Films, which has distributed smaller films such as Football Factory (2004, Love) and more recently Monsters (2010, Edwards). As well as this Pathe films may be very good at distribution across Europe.

This studio could be linked with another larger studio from a larger distribution in other regions. Fox Searchlight specialises in independant British films and gives them a larger base for example 127 Hours (2010, Boyle).Fox Searchlight is a subsidiary of Fox Filmed Entertainment, so if the film proves popular, there is the resources of a much larger distributor to give the film more audiences.

The film would be released on a large scale due to the ease, accessablility and relative cheapness of digital screens, this would be because the film is a conventional action thriller, with comedy aspects which have been proven as popular in western cinema.

With the intoduction of Web 2.0 applications, the advertising would be used to create a larger audience for the film. Using examples such as Facebook and Youtube and to push people into 'word of keyboard' or 'word of mouth' talk of the film.

ST - Commentary DVD Extra

Using Audacity and CamStudio, I give a brief outline of how our idea changed throughout the process

ST EVALUATION 2

Representations of Social Groups on Prezi

ST EVALUTATION 1

In What Ways Does your Media Product use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

PLOT

• Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels (Richie, 1998) – similar story and stock character


• Location – dark/dirty


• Props – covered hostage face/black car


• Enigma of purpose / motivations of characters


• Continuity editing, with a clear narrative – conventional of action thriller

CHARACTER EXPOSITION

The stock characters and location quickly portray the mood of a conventional film, a hostage, gang member, protagonist and too a lesser extent the unaware girlfriend of the gang member. This is anchored by the dialogue exchanged by the two relevant characters, which is about criminal activities. And thus maintains the thriller genre to the audience.

MISE-EN-SCENE

• The costumes were quite an after-thought which shows in the final piece, although still works at conveying the ages and stereotypes.



• The set was littered with composition and props (wine bottles and general clutter) with implies cluttered and uncaring lifestyle – similar to opening of Watchmen (2009, Znyder), in which the old man is cluttered and dirty also connoting a carefree existence



• Transition of lighting when entering the stock room, was very good, expressed a sense of enigma and focuses the audience from the title to the action.

Prop-car black, (Skodia Fabia vrS, left) iconic type of car for the genre. Similar to that in the Transporter (Leterrier, Yuen, 2002) series –always using a black car for crimes (Audi A8, bleow).

The lighting in the warehouse is low-lit, which creates larger shadows connoting that the things that go on in there shouldn’t be seen by anyone else and it is a secretive location.

SOUND

· Non-diagetic sound – dialogue, weakest area from questionnaire, - used to connote a youth audience and from the point of view and language of youth.

· Intro guitar gives a nerving impression, while character is still unidentified during the sequence

· Used as anchoring to the character’s exposition

· Drops off to give the dialogue more prevalence, this was a mistake, adding the right sound would've anchored the piece more.

· Different guitar riff with higher tempo, gives complete different feel to the audience, also changes the character exposition, gives more unorganised feeling.

CAMERA WORK

· Initial bird's eye shot of Jack and his quick narrative shows him the protagonist to the audience, otherwise it would be very difficult to identify Jack as main character

· The over-the-shoulder shot is used even more to position the audience with Jack, despite not fully seeing his face before then. Rule of 1/3 used that shot while behind jack, gives the audience partial view of what he sees, also used to hide hostage to the audience. It’s a great shot since it positions the audience with the protagonist, but is still distant enough for them to remain unconnected to the character. This can be considered a break from convention as the audience is rarely so connected to a bad protagonist, because they are bad themselves, so the audience feels less inclined to like them.

· The point-of-view running shot connects audience to hostage, who isn’t really a character at all during the sequence.

· Shot-reverse-shot is used during the dialogue, to show the conversation and push the narrative quickly forward, giving the audience an idea of the premise.

· The framing of the final car boot shot is excellent, it gives the audience a Point-of-view shot from the hostage. The two characters are clearly identifiable in line with the rule of 1/3 lines in the shot. This type of shot is used in crime- action thrillers quite often – because it gives the audience a sense of how these people conduct their crimes.

EDITING STYLE

The editing style is very quick, cutting on action, which is used to push the narrative.

· It slows slightly and changes to continuity editing during the stock room scene to allow for coherent dialogue and a bit of character exposition.

· Jump cutting is used during hostage escape and recapture, this is used to progress the narrative in a less conventional way than continuous action.

· The colour used in the piece is conventional to similar pieces, the stock room is low-lit, which creates much darker shadows and dims the colours in the room leading to a bleaker outlook on the characters and situation.

· The titles are introduced and removed during the action, this was inspired by the ‘Lord of War’ (Niccol, 2005) opening scene, in which titles are introduced in times of no action to the audience.

JC - Evaluation Questions 1, 2, 3 & 6

Group - Evaluation Questions 4,5 & 7

Media Studies Evaluation Questions 1 , 2 , 3 and 6

My evaluation in the form of a SlideRocket , covering all neccessary individual posts.

Group - update: DVD extra completion and plan for the weekend

DVD Extra

In our lesson earlier today, we took our camera to an empty room in the school and filmed our DVD extra. Unlike we had proposed, just myself and Timo talked through the opening. We feel the analysis went well, however when we came to add the commentary and video box into our piece, we stumbled upon a problem - we had already filled all of the Video boxes in the Premiere editor, and because Mr Fiveash was not in school, we decided not to to leave the piece, which we hope to tidy up on monday.

There were two solutions we came up with in order to fix this problem; we could either:

• have a video box appear briefly at the beginning and the end of our piece, with commentary in between OR
• just have a simple audio commentary running throughout the piece

Weekend plans

As we have already posted the majority of our evaluation on the blog, we will simply convert this to a user-friendly, multimedia format. In order to do this, we have decided to use the presentation creator 'sliderocket.com'. Having previously experimented with Prezi, we felt that although this follows a more traditional powerpoint style, that the different transitions, as well as the availability of features such as video and audio - which will allow us to use our audience feedback and preliminary task comparisons - that we would use this software.

Group - Update: Plan for DVD extra

Our plan for our dvd extra is to recorded a director's commentary, with myself, Timo and Simon analysing different parts of the film. We will plan to add a small video box in the top left corner (in the same way that we did with Sarah's dialogue within the film) for this commentary.

Group - Audience Feedback 2

Jack Lennard gives his opinion on what he thinks of our film.

Group - Audience feedback 1

Earlier today, we interviewed some fellow students to give us their thoughts on our film opening, following a screening event in the Drama Studios.

To Do List - Deadline Next Tuesday

-Complete Task 7

Finish Q 4 and Q5 and Q7 powerpoint

-Individual posts need to be made multimedia , for example , addition of screenshots or conversion into powerpoint.

Q4 & Q5 Draft/Planning

We are hoping to appeal to a wide target audience , with a great range of ages. Our 15+ certificate obviously limits us to older than 15 year olds , but we feel we could target this audience effectively. We think most of our audience will be made up of young males.

We hope to target a simliar target audience to such films as : Pulp Fiction ( 1994 , Directed by Quentin Tarantino) and Lock , stock & two smoking barrels ( 1998 , Directed by Guy Ritchie )

We also aim to target an audience interested in similar niche type films such as : Kickass ( 2010, Directed by Matthew Vaughn) ( Right ). We feel this is an example of how mild violence can be intergrated with humor to create an amusing yet thrilling movie.

Evaluation - TB

What kind of institution would distribute your media product and why?

After completion our film would need our production company to obtain the film a distribution deal, with distributors willing to invest into and distribute our film. It would be up to them to distribute our film in a way that reaches our target audience effectively and successfully. Distributors control the advertising, such as posters and trailers in return we give them a percentage cut of our sales from our product. Our film would be a 15 + certificate, allowing them to reach a wide audience of everybody above the age of 15. I feel this is a good certificate since it allows a wide target audience, but also means we wouldn’t have to restrict the content that is necessary to make our film.

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After the deal is finished with the distribution company we would look to invest some money in promotion and exhibition of the film, preferably we would to exhibit worldwide but perhaps using the UK as a base for launch would be wise, since we don’t want to dedicate money nationally until we know our film is successful, which I'm confident it would be. We think the film has mainstream qualities and would do better as a mainstream film, targeting the main public rather than a niche audience.

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Saying this, I feel our film would best be exhibited in large multiplex cinemas, suited to large audience attendances. I personally would choose a distribution company such as warner bros. since they are used to distributing thriller movies of our similar genre. They recently have distributed thrillers such as The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010), both of which were very successful films.

Evaluation - TB

How our media product represents particular social groups?

In our film opening all the characters shown are young, white, middleclass males with the exception of a young, white, middleclass female. Our piece does not feature any representatives of a different ethnic background, e.g. black, Asian, Caribbean. Nor does it show any representatives of lower class or upper class. This would suggest our piece does not fully represent different social groups and people from different ethnic backgrounds.

Our main protagonist, along with the other gang member and hostage, are all represented positively, while individually they are all represented with different positions of power, for example, the hostage (me) is a young white middle class male. The gang leader is also a young white middle class male, showing an equal depiction of group stature and how we have not used a minority to depict the person in need of help. This could be seen as either racist or sexist (depending on who we used to depict the theoretical hostage). However, with this said the young female has the phone hung up on her in our opening, and is slightly marginalised in terms of exposition. This could be seen as gender stereotyping, with the males being shown in the main role with females used as side characters, being objectified to the males. This would mean our opening piece is re-enforcing current popular gender stereotypes, however there are no residual ideologies being suggested as any gender groups are not represented in a residual way, only conforming to current ideologies.

Mise en Scene doesn’t play a huge role in our representation of young, white, middle-class males. We are all wearing our own chosen clothing; therefore our clothes are simply down to individual choice. I would personally say this is positive, because the individuality shows variety in youth clothing, and we haven’t negatively stereotyped our clothing to that associated with youths nowadays e.g. hoodies and tracksuits.

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Non-verbal Language- It would be fair to say our acting is quite poor, therefore we cannot sufficiently judge our non-verbal language to make statements about the social group we have represented. If anything, we have all played ourselves, not taking on any roles. This is again, I feel, positive because self-character and individuality are being portrayed through young people, a social group often so negatively portrayed in modern society.

Camera Work – We have given camera precedence to the males in our opening, due to the obvious reason that they are the main characters. The lack of other social group representatives being shot on camera may suggest that we have re-enforced popular conventions of thriller, a white male protagonist centred on side characters. The fact a young female is presented to the audience as being nothing more than a girlfriend may be seen as negative, and again enforcing conventions of popular thriller.

Sound - Our sound plays a very little role in representing different social groups , its main use being a mood changer that is in sync with images being shown to help convey changes in pace or emotions.

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Macro Issues

The slightly gangster nature of this opening could be seen as re-enforcing traditional traits of masculinity. The social norm for a male is to be seen as very masculine, a willingness to be aggressive and generally part of a high standing social group. In our opening the mere fact they are part of a gang would suggest they exhibit all those stereotypical male traits, conforming to social norms and ideologies. The gang member is shown to have a girlfriend, suggesting another male trait should be that of a female partner. Also, the lack of female gang members is conforming to social norms that females cannot exhibit masculine traits if they want to perceive as feminine by society. Our opening can also be seen as re-enforcing popular conventions of thriller movies, our main characters are both male. An example of this can be seen in the successful thriller movie Seven (1995), both protagonists are male, with the antagonist also being male.

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Evaluation - TB

Forms and Conventions

Our opening piece definitely uses popular forms and conventions of real media products, helping to create the enigma and construct character exposition. This is evident in the way that our protagonist is slightly mysterious and illusive, conforming to conventions of protagonists in thriller genre type films. Enigma is created in the way that they are young adults in this horrible crime filled world and yet the picture painted in one of a desirable lifestyle. The inner morale conflict expressed in the protagonist furthers this enigma since the conflict expressed changes the audience’s view of him as the storyline unfolds.

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One way our piece does challenge forms and conventions is the fact our piece is labelled a thriller, however has a very cheeky/humorous feel to the opening. This is very unusual for a thriller genre and would be seen as challenging popular stereotypes that thriller can’t be amusing in order to excite, thrill, the watching audience. One of the ways this humour is expressed is through the dialogue and body language of our characters. The acting was on purposely done in this way to help create this effect. Our upbeat soundtrack also conveys a positive mood throughout the piece, and is almost used as a way of making the audience feel good about certain actions, for example, when the hostage tries to escape in the opening scene the soundtrack is used to make the getaway seem more humorous.


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Iconography, Props and Location also played an important role in establishing the genre of our film. Iconography such as bound hands of the hostage and a bag over their head are popular conventions to convey a kidnapping. The props we used were basic but effective, with the bag over the head demonstrating he was not in the position of power. Our location, under the school stage, proved very effective. The low lit dusty location resembled that of a gang hide out, perfect for our use as somewhere a hostage may be held.

When it came to applying research to our actual film piece I feel the most obvious way we did that is with the POV shot we did. Our inspiration came from 2 main sources. I personally had researched Jaws (1975) and the opening sequence for Lord of War (2005). Both which open with a POV shot. In Jaw’s it is of the shark, swimming through the ocean stalking a girl swimming, while in Lord of War it is of the life of a bullet being packaged, processed and distributed around the world. This inspiration was tried and tested on our recce to wilderness woods, with the results thought to be successful, but could be improved. The final application of this shot was very successful, being used to get an insight into the hostage’s perspective as he tries to escape the gang. Due to the fact both films mentioned are thriller genre type movies , it would be fair to say that the application of the POV shot does indeed show how we used popular forms and conventions , in this case camera techniques , in our opening piece.

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With colour and visual techniques, we pretty much stayed with what the camera had shot, as we felt happy with the lighting and effect the early evening sun had given us. However, we were very pleased with the font we had chosen and felt it helped re-enforce our thriller / crime /drama conventions. We used the font ‘Trashco’ off www.dafont.com , applying the title at the end of the opening when the car boot was shut on the hostage (another POV shot from inside the car). I feel this is our most successful shot and visually looks fantastic.

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To conclude , I would definitely say we stuck to forms and conventions shown throughout real thriller style movies.The only exception being our slightly unconventional application of humour throughout the piece , however , I feel this humour was still successful.

JC - Evaluation question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

Although - as we have previously stated - our film has drawn inspiration from the large blockbuster/mainstream films that we studied in the process of gathering ideas, I feel that, for a number of reasons, our film would be more successful if it were distributed via the /British Film Institute/lottery funding, rather than a large media conglomerate such as Warner Bros.

Our story prides itself on its' high quality, original narrative. The British Film Institute (formerly UK film council) often invests in projects which have strong story lines and films which are likely to be successful (such as The Kings Speech), whilst also supporting emerging talent (such as Adulthood).  If our project were to be approved by the BFI, our belief that we have a strong storyline would be reinforced, and because we would be using soft money from the institution to produce our film, every element of our script/plans etc. would be retained, whereas if we were to use hard money from a foreign investor such as Warner Bros., elements of our script would be adapted to suit both a global audience and the investors' wants.

Furthermore, the promising young actors who appear in our opening would most likely not secure those roles in our film, which would instead go to bankable stars who would be likely to draw big crowds, should we opt for funding for a media conglomerate. I believe this would be detrimental to our piece, as we want it to be a predominantly english based storyline, whilst also promoting british talent, and without government funding which allows for the film to be made as we would wish, we would not to be able to fulfil our promotion of british talent.

In addition, our film does not require a large amount of investment to be produced - we have no special effects, with the majority of the cost of our production revolving around the need for camera and sound recording equipment etc. This reduces the need for hard money from a large institution, whilst it would enhance our chance of securing cash from the BFI, as they would have to provide less to us than other potential projects.

I feel that even if our film were to be distributed by the BFI, we could still aim for a mainstream release, through multiplex's such as Odeon and smaller independent, perhaps arthouse cinemas - due to the film's unique and high-quality storyline - in the same way that great British films such as the Kings' Speech have reached mass audiences. I would give our film a 12 certificate, as despite the 'gangster' connotations, the film actual revolves around Renwick's struggle with his morality, and therefore the few dark moments that would occur in the rest of the story would be when he has a particularly low point. Giving the film a 12 certificate would allow us to target a much wider audience, enticing both young and old to come to watch the film. I feel that the ideal target audience for our film would probably be 25-40 Male category, as they are likely to understand the storyline more than younger audiences, whilst also being more engaged by the storyline than females simply because it is a male-dominant world.

JC - Evaluation question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film stars young, white characters of both sexes, whilst there is a class and regional variation on our piece. This suggests that our opening is not representative of society, as there are a number of social groups (ethnicity, disability, sexuality and age) missing from our piece.

Because the film stars young actors, we can say that youth is represented progressively, as there is full and predominant representation in the piece, whereas most films tend to revolve around adults, with young adults and children playing a lesser role. However, this representation is negative and perhaps stereotypical, because it shows them to be involved in illegal processes and therefore perhaps to be rebelling against society, a view which many people hold of teenagers. This can be seen when the protagonist enters the lair, removing a bag from the hostage's head, immediately revealing his status, whilst the accomplis also reveals that he has "picked up" the hostage - and therefore participated in an illegal process - for a sum of money. His non-verbal language may also conform to many views held about teenagers today, as he shows little empathy towards his victim, suggesting that teenagers do not care about their acts and their potential consequences.

 The regional variation and difference in class is clear through the speech  of the main protagonist and his companion, who has a cockney accent, and from this (as well as the ensuing storyline) we associate that he is working class, showing two potential social deficiencies. However, there is instead positive and progressive representation of the working class and regions, as the character is both the focus of the storyline, and is also in the same job as his middle classed, well spoken counterpart. This is shown through the amount of screen time they both receive (the protagonist has more screen time), as well as the low angle shot of the protagonist, which connotes his greater importance in the narrative than his companion, who can be seen sitting down and at an eyeline level.

Our piece also shows heteronormative discourse, as there is both higher male representation, as well as greater role and screentime for the male characters. We know this as the male characters are present throughout the sequence, whilst the female character is only present in one shot. Furthermore, she has only one line in the piece, before her audio is cut off, whilst the size of her box once she appears in the piece is significantly smaller than that of her male counterpart, who talks to her abruptly before cutting her off. This connotes that she is of less significance than her male equivalents.

JC - Evaluation question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As nice as it was to have a break, the real work has to start again!

Our film opening, Murder Inc., was an original thriller idea that took little inspiration from other films, and therefore the actual construction of the narrative had very little influence - if any - from the films we studied prior to our production. However, having spent the first month and a half of the project studying film openings, we picked up valuable skills that were mirrored and used in our piece, such as the style and form of our opening.

One of my first posts on the blog was to research the main conventions of the thriller genre, and looking back at them, the following are applicable when comparing our opening to typical thriller openings (some require a feature-length film in order for them to be discovered):

• Suburban/city locations
• Heroes are often normal citizens
• The identity of the archetypal villain is known throughout

In this evaluation, I will look at these characteristics individually, to see if our product complies with them. I will also (primarily) take a broad look at our opening and see if it follows the same form and style of a thriller film. Finally, I will conclude as to what extent our film uses, develops or challenges both generic conventions and those films which we have studied.

Our opening is conventional, as it follows a linear pattern. Furthermore, in keeping with both traditional and contemporary thriller media products, it involves both character exposition - as we see the main characters, Jack Renwick and Simon Daglass, appear in the opening sequence - and locational exposition - as we are introduced to the location at which much of the rest of the story continues at. In terms of plot and mise-en-scene, the opening sequence conforms to more recent films in that there is a sense of mystery following our protagonist (Renwick), as the opening wake-up sequence gives little away about his character.

Our opening is also continuity edited, though unlike most other films of this type, there are some jump cuts; this was done to both cut down soome of our footage but still retain the same narrative, whilst also retaining some of the comedic feel about the opening, created by the non-verbal language and tone of speech of our characters. The inspiration from this (on my part) came from the TV series 'Garth Marenghi's Darkplace', although myself and Simon were told that we were naturally humorous, despite our best efforts of 'serious acting'.

I also feel that our use of Timo (our hostage) as, in effect, a prop, also conforms to generic conventions, as in many films there is use of a hostage, who seems weak and vulnerable. This is connoted through camerawork, as we have a low angle shot looking out of the boot when he has been re-captured, as well as through mise-en-scene, as his body is slumped when we first see him.

One way in which our piece most definitely breaks with convention is through the use of sound; our soundtrack involves mainly dialogue, with only two pieces of music played through the whole piece. We felt this was one way in which we could break with convention, as with most thriller films, tense and dramatic music is used to anchor the images on screen, whilst also setting the scene and mood for the film. We felt that by using mostly dialogue, but interspersing upbeat major-key guitar riffs, we could create a contrast between the feel of the opening and the overall mood of the film.

One problem that we did encounter when we came to pitch our piece was the suitability of our locations; whilst we felt that given the majority of our piece would be based in a warehouse, and therefore the other locations would not be of as much significance, Miss Fernandez raised the issues that our setting in Sevenoaks may not be in keeping with other thrillers, such as the Dark Knight, where one of the first shots of the sequence is of a sky-scraper. Whilst this would be a way in which we could break convention, we felt that actually we wanted to retain the high-rise/close-wall feel of our piece, and therefore in order to combat this, we used two main techniques; as Renwick locks the front up and the victim escapes, we used quick motion pans to keep focus on the characters, instead of the location; when we switch to the victim running away, we felt that a POV shot would be best as it would capture the emotion and adrenaline to an extent, whilst also narrowing the shot and the walls and buildings around it to a close proximity.  The diegetic sound in the shot directly afterwards, when the victim is caught, also helps to connote an industrial feel, as the viewer can hear a large fan-like sound, coming from the Stag theatre which was releasing air, as well as the look of the shot, as it appears as though the shot is filmed in a narrow alleyway in between two industrial buildings. We feel that although the suburban feel is definitely present for some time in our shots, the piece is overall in keep with the generic conventions which suggest that the narrative should take place in an urban location.

Although our story does not have a hero, the protagonist with whom the audience are likely to show sympathy is an average, every day normal citizen; he likes a lie-in, as connoted by the time on the clock, whilst there is no strutt as he walks; he talks in perhaps a common way, and also wears normal clothes (apart from the bright green trainers), which suggest there is nothing supernatural about the character. In this way our story therefore conforms with convention, as the same thing can be seen in films such as Spiderman, where Peter Parker is a normal citizen with a normal job.

In our opening, there is no archetypal villain; the identity of the characters therefore, is perhaps the most significant way in which our film opening breaks with convention, as we have no designated hero or villain in our piece. In conclusion, therefore, given the evidence which I have provided I would say that on the whole, our film has effectively drawn inspiration from the pieces we have studied, yet allowing us to create a completely unique and original take on the thriller genre.

Group - Murder Inc. finished piece

Here is the opening sequence for our film Murder Inc.

Group - Daily Update: The Finale

Today, at 12:17PM, we completed the final cut of our coursework, Murder Inc. Having had a difficult start to the production process, we as a group are thrilled to have met the deadline, particularly with the piece we have ultimately produced, as we feel it is a strong piece, and that it reflects the hard work that we have put into the piece. Here are our views:

Timo Burbidge

I have throughly enjoyed this project , especially watching it come together in the final few days. Watching it back today has given me a sense of acomplishment , and cannot wait for other people to view it.

Simon Tucker

I haven't had many regrets in my life, this is one of them.
Of course I'm joking, the final product has reached and in some cases exceeded my own very high expectations, at times it has beeen a great hassle, but now to see the final it is not only a relief it is an achievement.

Jack Cozens

Looking at our work at the start of the week, I found it difficult to see how we would reach the deadline, as we had little idea of the sound we wanted to use (ironically, apart from a piece that we didn' end up using), our video was two and a half minutes long and we hadn't started with our transitions. However, I think that the fact that we did manage to reach the deadline - in the end quite comfortably - to the sound of welcoming comments, is a testament to both the brilliant idea for our opening from Simon, and our determination to finish the piece. Whilst we have all expressed relief in a light hearted manner, we have all been overcome with a genuine sense of pride and achievement, and therefore the only thing left for me to say, in the words of Mark Webber, YES, YES YES YES YES!

TB - Audio

Today is our deadline and I think its important to highlight the importance audio now plays in our final piece. Jack and Simon researched specific guitar acoustics to try and fit our opening ,and they have successfully found some good music.

The music seems to capture the mood surrounding our piece , with a mild crime/gangster theme , but also exagerating the humor in some parts.

I am very proud of our final piece , and have enjoyed watching it come together , the audio was our final stepping stone and we have now successfully applied it to our footage.

TB - Effective Use of the Jump Cut

Recently we have decided to impose a few jump cut shots into our final piece , brought about by the fact that some shots seemed to long for the audience to watch without much happening on screen. The applied jump shots have really helped our opening gain speed , adding to the feeling of efficient changing through scenes. Before these jump cuts were applied , some shots didn't work as well as we had hoped and , as I mentioned , some continuous shots were too long for the audience to be staring at. This was because they would start to look at objects within the frame that weren't necessarily of key importance in the plot.

In my next post I will try to upload some stills of where in our piece we used some jump cutting.

ST - Sound-a-Matique

With only days left it seems wildly overambitious, but with the musical expertise of Jack Cozens, who has keenly been awaiting introducing music into the film, a well thought out soundtrack will no doubt bring a new experience to the piece.

 Not as rag-tag as it may first seem, the music has been thought of throughout the planning and preparation of the film. Thousands of music tracks from freesound.org has been listened to by Jack and then the best of the best, shared with the rest of the group.

We've gone with a sombre, slow tempo guitar riff, on a loop, it insinuates a morbid tone in the character who is on screen while it is being played. As well as this during the point of view running shot, a more uplifting chords and quicker tempo, still using a guitar to give some consistancy to the music. This is used as an almost cheeky effect, to show how the characters, despite being immoral killers are still able to have well rounded banter. This is shown even more in the fianl dialouge.

JC - Production: How we made our split screen

As will be the focus for the rest of our lessons' this term, today we edited our piece. Having made some decent progress during the lesson, myself and Timo stayed behind afterschool. It was here where our project took most development, as we made sure our editing was in keeping with the comical style that has become apparent in our piece. This was done by placing jump-cuts through scenes, so that our narrative is still linear, however the process of time progression has been sped-up without having to speed up our edit. This has allowed us to cut the amount of footage we have significantly, and in the next few days we should find it much easier to edit down our final footage.

The next change to our sequence was a technique that we wanted to use as soon as we started to develop our idea. Simon wished to use a split-screen to show the brief conversation between himself and Sarah. As usual, we were puzzled about how we would develop such an idea, and so called on the assistance of Mr Fiveash. He showed us the steps that we would need to take to turn this idea into a visual effect, which I have outlined below (visuals will appear shortly):

• To begin with, the two (or more) videos that are to be used need to be stacked in the two different video rows
• One portion of footage should primarily be selected. From here we then go to the edit section, and select the crop effect
• Decide how much you wish the clip to be cropped, by using the drag buttons
• Decide on the size of the shot (ie. 100%), by using the drag buttons
• Reposition the image to a favoured position, by using the motion control button
• Repeat the process for as many clips you wish to use in your split screen

JC - Daily update: editing our footage

As I have three frees today, I decided I would start our editing process so that we are closer to the other groups when we come to our lesson later today. Having just checked out our camera and uploaded our footage onto the system (click here to see how we do so), the shots that we did in school appear at first glance to be a lot more refined and successful, and whilst our decision to film most shots from three angles meant that our shoot was time-consuming, this seems to have paid off, as the piece should fit and flow as one much better than before, as well as giving us more choice as to what angles we wish to show/alter the number of cuts and shots we have.

Today our main aim will be to edit as much as we possibly can, whilst also updating the blog with any additional information we can add to make our blog more technically advanced and show the skills that we hope will be demonstrated in our footage, in order for us to achieve a level four in each stage of our coursework.

Group - Analysis of shoot

Continuing from where we left off yesterday failed to hinder us in our progress through the shoot. After working through each shot chronologically this time, we feel that we have enough shots to make up the time. Although we missed out a couple of shots of the hostsage being taken away from the scene, we feel that this was actually something we can cut out and save some time on, whilst also allowing us to include our transitions where our titles will appear. We will look through the footage on monday, however from looking at our it initially, and the fact that we filmed the majority of it from three different angles has suggested to me that we will still be on course to meet the coursework deadline and that our footage is sufficient in terms of both quality and quantity.

ST - New Shoot, New Location, New Inspirations

Following the unsucessful first shoot, judging by the footage, countless negative reviews and comments, we've found a new location and a fresh outlook on our project.

The daytime shoot ensured the complete attention and best acting ability from the entourage, excitement for the final outcome was heavy in the air. The shoot started slower then expected, due to the need to find new camera positions in such a cramped space.

The change in location meant that some of the orignal camera shots couldn't be used, and alternatives had to be thought of on set. This meant some entirely new shots were thought of, as well as the scrapping of some other shots.

Overall this shoot has improved the imagery of our piece and is a much better location, look and adds much needed authenticity.

JC - Daily update: plan for action

Following yesterday's successful shoot, there are still some shots on our checklist that we need to finish preferably by today, in order to spend the whole of next week editing our work. Whilst we accept that we may be further behind in the production proccess than most groups (certainly all of those in our class), we still feel that we will be able to complete the necessary tasks ahead of next Thursday's lesson.

Our plan for today is primarily to complete all of the footage that we want to change, and hopefully if we have enough time review this, before posting an analysis of how our shoot progressed, what we feel went well/badly if we can still use the footage etc. We will also talk about any changes that we have made during this process, adding screenshots to explain these changes.

New Location Reflection.

As Jacks previous post stated , we are now using the area under our school stage as a location for our hostage scene. The scene itself is ideal , with 3 different lights allowing us to play with the lighting displayed on our footage. This is helpful since the light can convey feelings and add atmosphere to the footage.

I hope we can edit this new footage successfully into our older footage and have confidence in our ability to make this opening work. Some of the shots we have captured are superb , and I feel we are in a decent position to make a very good go at our final piece.

JC - Wednesday lesson progress update

Playing back the footage and beginning to edit our piece yesterday was an arduous task; it raised questions about our idea, and about the length of time that we had given each shot on the screen. One positive that we were able to draw from this was that we had plenty of footage, and so we could in effect cherry pick the best of it.

Today was a much more successful day than tuesday; we looked at our footage again and found that the parts of the narrative with which we were pleased had footage that we would be happ to use. We also consulted with Miss Fernandez, and found her advice to be helpful. She suggested that the hostage scene - the part that we were least convinced by - could be filmed in school under the main stage, erasing the need for us to make another trip to Sevenoaks to film.

Mr Fiveash also reassured us that our idea would be fine, and helped us on the editing front. During the lesson Timo and Simon went on a reccie of our new hostage location, and filled out the required call sheets and risk assessments in order for us to use the equipment tomorrow. I continued to edit the footage that we intend to use still, and we have collaborated to make sure our filming tomorrow is seamless.

We may struggle to produce a rough cut by tomorrow's lesson, however we will go into that lesson much more confident within our project than we did today, and our aim will be to continue that for the rest of the project and end our coursework particularly strongly.

ST - Monday Shoot - Afterthoughts

The shoot started very well, at a good pace, with quick succession of successful shots involoving Jack. The advantage of shooting on a Monday evening were clear,with less people on the street, meaning we could quickly film without waiting for the public to be out of shot, also the weather was slightly overcast and darker, adding to the atmosphere.

As the shoot continued insiode the warehouse, it was harder to get as quality shots in quickly, due to the small space. However there was good a good momentum in filming. Unfortunately Timo had to leave before the filming was fully done, which meant we had to film as mush with Timo as possible and film other scenes with Timo later on after he had gone. This was fairly hard and made the continuity very muddled and caused us to miss time certain shots and missed some shot entirely, which if left out, will leave the piece not making any sense.

After viewing the shots, many of them are not enkeeping with the genre and the story and continuity make no sense. This leaves us in a difficult position as to how to change the shots, script and location in under a week.

Group - Animatic

Following what we believed to be a successful storyboarding session, we decided to make our animatic; this involved us filming the shots on our storyboard, and then exporting them from our camera to the computer, where we then edited them.

The whole process of producing and editing our animatic has been extremely useful. Drawing out the pictures allowed us to get an idea of what our idea would look like on screen when we have filmed our footage, whilst the editing stage of the process was helpful because it not only gave us more experience with using premier and the editing tools on it, but also because it allowed us to time the shots as to how we long we would expect each one to last for - this was helpful because we timed each one to be as long as we wanted it to be, and our film came in at two minutes and two seconds, close to the allocated two minutes we have for filming.

Whilst there is a shot that seems as though it is too long (the shot of the protagonist walking to the warehouse), we actually planned this shot earlier in the process to be of short length, but during the editing process decided to make it longer, as after a group discussion, we decided to add in more shots during this sequence, as by this point in our narrative we will have swapped to a linear sequence, meaning that the time we spent in this area needed to be as long as the time we would actually spend if we were to go through the route taken in real time.

The final noteworthy point from our animatic is the final shot, where our title appears. Once we had found our font and applied it to the title slide, we applied a red colour fill-up, connoting blood. Although this was somewhat experimental (as shown by the white border), it is a technique that we may consider when we finally produce our piece.

Planning Shoot for Monday

This evening we plan to shoot the rest of the clips near Jacks warehouse , hopefully this will be our final shoot unless we are not happy with our results. The shooting will consist of the hostage / kidnapped person being held in the warehouse. All shots tonight are either of Jack walking to the location or of the hostage trying to make a getaway afterwards (and the interrogation).

Group - StoryBoard

We have finished our storyboard and will be uploading an animatic of it shortly. We have taken the storyboard on both of our shoots and we feel it has helped us plan our shots , and helped us plan our time more effectively. Jack and Simon drew the storyboard by hand , allowing flexible adjustment with the shots we chose. The final storyboard is a reasonably accurate reflection of what we hope our real footage to contain.

Feedback

Guys - have you not filmed yet? where is the evaluation of shoot? No posts since Wednesday - therefore what did you do in the lesson on Thursday during my absence? You need to get on top of this to achieve a L4

How we decided on our Font

We found the font we have chosen on the website http://www.dafont.com/

The font we chose is called Trashco , a very urban and bold font which is symbolic of the crime infested underworld that is Murder Inc. We feel the font also conveys our thriller style opening , being splattered across the screen , while also holding shape to signify meaning of the title. The title with this font will appear at the end of our clip , when the car boot is sl

ammed to darkness , a very quick transition from the view of the hostage in the boot.

We have not yet decided on the colour of the font , as we are conflicted to what we each feel looks best.

JC - Production Update: Two weeks to go

With just over two weeks left to film and produce our project, here is a brief summary list of the things we will need to ensure are completed in order for us to reach this deadline:

• Produce a script for our film opening, so we clearly know what each character is going to say
• Edit animatic and post blogs on how we created our storyboard and animatic
• Film footage
• Review footage and post what we think could be done to improve our work
• Edit footage

This is a small list of what we need to do, however they content of each point is essential to the completion of our work - in particular, the filming and editing of our footage. In order to make sure this is successful, we will need to shoot more footage than we need to use (and if it comes to the point where we have too many shots, we can cherry-pick the best shots) and make sure at the editing stage that all the footage fits continuity-wise, and that our sounds and titles work well in the piece.

Feedback

While all necessary posts are here, there are 2 vital pieces of feedback:

1. You must demonstrate "excellence in use of ICT" to achieve a L4. You need to redesign your blog, create your own images from your shoot, and go back though posts, visually illustrating research - from simply putting in bold key terms, to images, imbedding clips. Think about web design and how to lay out your research

2. This month - all posts are by Jack?! You should all be posting and also commenting on ALL research submitted

JC - How we upload our footage

Having spent some time mastering the cameras, I thought it would be useful to produce a post on how we upload our footage.

Once we have collected the footage we want to use, we connect the plug to socket and the lead to the charger. the charger then clips in at the end to the camera. Once this is done, we then connect the camera to a USB lead, which should be plugged into the computer.

Once this is done, we turn the camera on. An option menu will then appear on the screen and we select the 'PC' option. The camera will then be recognised by the computer, and we can access the video files on the system (although at this point we cannot view them).

Following this, we select all the shots we wish to use, and save them to a new foloder on the D-Drive. Once these have been saved onto the hard-drive, we can then open up a new project in our editing programme, 'Premiere 8.0'. From here, we select the 'get media' option, and then go to the relevant folder in the D-Drive and select our footage. We then import this, and once this has been done the footage can be played back and edited.

Group - Murder Inc, Film Treatment

Below is the treatment for our film Murder Inc:

"A reimaging and modernising of a vicious real life gang originally from New York during the 1920s, called Murders Inc. (title). The main protagonist (Jack Renwick) is a member of the gang and has generally enjoyed his moral ambiguity along with the respect and money that comes with being a member of a notorious gang, who is hired by crime bosses as cheaper and less suspecting hitmen.
At the beginning of the film it is clear that he doubts whether or not he can ever have a normal life and what his future will hold if he carries on killing for money, despite this being a secret identify for him and everyone in the gang. He comes to the realisation that he doesn’t want to continue, and needs to distance himself from the gang and his closest friends. "

Group - Group 8 Preliminary Task

This video was our second take at the task  - after we were unable to complete it before half term and I was subsequently ill for the first three days of this term, leaving Timo and Simon to make a new version. Whilst it is a simple piece, we feel it is continuous, and although the acting is a little wooden (ahem), the piece fits the purpose.

As was said in the previous post, Windows Media Player was the first place to export the piece that came to mind. I will change the file type once back at school, and hopefully will have re-uploaded the footage by the end of the week.

NB: This piece has now been re-saved, and can be seen at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAS1Y0NVOak&feature=relmfu

Group - Practice shoot, Wildernesse Woods

The reason for the late posting of this work goes back a long way; originally, we had a lot of footage to choose between, and therefore the editing stage of our process was delayed. Following this, we also had to dedicate lesson time to the production of our preliminary task, and because we failed to complete this before half term, there was no opportunity for us to edit this piece. I was also away for the first three days of the new term, and therefore we took the decision to simply edit the footage and add music to the piece. However, when Timo and Simon got to the stage of uploading the video to Youtube, the video had not been converted into a file suitable for uploading, and therefore for a couple of days we were unable to diagnose why the file would not upload.

When we realised our error, I saved the piece as a Windows Media Player file. As I was away when we were briefed about saving, I was unsure as to what to save the piece as, and therefore went for the one that I have previously used on projects I myself have uploaded to Youtube. Once uploaded to Youtube, we found that the picture quality, as you will see, is poor. I will therefore look to go back and re-post both our Wilderness Woods and Preliminary task pieces in the next few days.

As for the content of our piece, we are pleased with the outcome. The opening sequence, in particular, where the character flashes out of shot as the water ripples was our favourite shot. Our conversation could be seen as unconventional, however we still found the shot reverse shot practice to be a useful piece, as we are looking to include it in our film opening. We also thought that the montage clip towards the end of the piece was successful. We found this exercise to be useful, as it was our first use of the cameras, whilst the list of shots we were given at the beginning of the day to try out also gave us the foundations for how we might frame our opening and acted as a catalyst for us to try different shots of our own choice.

NB: This piece has now been re-saved, and can be seen at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcd0aV12xMg&feature=channel_video_title

JC - Audience Research results

We conducted audience research both information about the people we were surveying and therefore what age and gender we are likely to gear our film towards, and what their likes and dislikes were within the thriller genre, what they thought of our concept. In total, we surveyed 21 people.

Primarily, we asked our audience which age category they belonged to and what gender they were; we found that 95.2% of the people we surveyed were aged 10-21. We also found that 61.9% of the people we surveyed were male. These two background questions were extremely useful to us, because they suggested that the majority of people we surveyed belonged to the target audience we had set aside - male teenagers.

Following this, we asked people about their generic expectations of thriller films; we gave them a list of locations to choose from and asked them to rate them according to how appropraite they thought they were for a thriller opening. Strangely, they thought that a lake was the most appropriate location. However, their second most popular choice was a warehouse - which we intend to use in our opening. Following this, we asked them which type of opening they preffered: Character exposition; location exposition; random sequence; linear narrative, or other. We found - as we wanted - that character exposition was the preffered choice. Finally, we asked them whether they preffered linear or montage openings; 63.2% said that they preferred a linear opening.

Our final area of reserach was to test our product on the people. When we asked them what they thought our title connoted or symbolised, none of them thought of the same idea as we had. Whilst this could be seen as confusing, this may also draw more people to see our film as they would be uncertain as to what the idea was behind our film, and may be enticed to find out what it was about. Our final question asked the people to read through our treatment and rate it out of ten, giving a reason for their choice. Despite wording the question appropriately (ie. stating 'ten being best'), some people were still confused as to whether or not to rate the film as a 1 or a 10. However, despite our mixed bag (an overall rating of 6.29%), the most selected score was an 8, which was encouraging for us.

Our audience research was useful, because on the whole, it reflected what we want our audience to get from our film. Furthermore, it provides us with legitimacy to carry on with our plans, as the audience's views tend to agree with the style, form and conventions of our opening sequence.

JC - Murder Inc pitch and response

On thursday, we presented our pitch for our film, Murder Inc, to the class and miss Fernandez. Given that I had been off for the whole of the week previous to thursday, we were pleased overall with how our pitch went. We felt that our concept was explained well and we had clearly shown that we had considered the ideas we were going to use, in particular the location reccies and how we felt they would connote ideas about the genre, especially given that the we had little time to collaborate and fully understand each others research.

Having received feedback suggesting that we should reconsider our location, we still feel fairly confident that our locations are justifiable. However, on the same evening whilst walking into Sevenoaks I stopped and decided to photograph the Tubs Hill House compley, consisting of two office towers and an accomodation facility right next to it. If we did feel the need to change location, provided we had the required permision, I feel that this would be a useful location for us as it is in an urban, high rise location, conforming to the generic conventions of thriller films.

There are some areas of our work that can definitely be refined; for instance, we still need to nail down what music we will use; how this willv shape the audience's experience and how it will anchor the mood; what we expect our budget to be; which bankable stars we will include in our film.

In conclusion, whilst there were evidently areas in which our work could be improved, I found this exercise to be extremely useful, as it not only allowed us to share our idea with the rest of the group and reinforce the ideas in our minds that our piece is well thought out, but it also gave me a confidence boost, as I felt I was able to perform well in front of an audience where I usually struggle in such a situation.

Whilst I am unable to embed our pitch, here is the link: http://prezi.com/hsminym7ep0u/group-8-pitch-murder-inc/

Location Reccie (2) - The Shambles, London Road, Southpark

Following our intial reccie and a group discussion about the plotline, we have decided to extend the location shoot to the Shambles, a courtyard just off London Road, the Southpark junction by the Stag and Southpark itself.

Our initial photo is from the junction, looking back down towards Beaux Bagels Pronto. This is where our antagonist will run to after fleeing the scene. Once we have finished our footage from Beaux Bagels, our action will cut immediately to a long shot, one similar to that which can be seen to the above right. As the character turns, we will cut to the other shot to the right. Following this, there will be a POV shot along the road. Currently, this is where we plan to end our footage.

Our discussions also led to us changing ideas for the opening of our film; instead of opening with an establishing shot of the courtyard at Beaux Bagels, we will instead have our victim dragged through the Shambles - the old slaughter houses in Sevenoaks, now with a courtyard in the place where the market once stood - and initially beaten up, before being dragged off to the warehouse.We also hope to add in a transition at this stage; as the victim falls to the floor, we will cut to a POV shot of his head hitting the groud. As he looks up, a name will appear in the clouds, and we hope that as they move out of the frame, we will be able to move the name out of shot at the same time.

JC - Audience research questionnaire

Audience research is a vital part of our planning process, and therefore we as a group created a set of questions to test our target audience on both what they expect from the genre, so further down the line in the concept development process we can analyse our results and either break with or conform to their expectations. To take the questionnaire, click here.