feedback from s1-20

We felt that s1-22's final video is very good as they have put a lot of effort into their production and their music. The first part of the opening sequence is very good when one of the actors is looking at the board and the music accompanies this well. However as the opening progresses, we felt that the quality got a bit poorer. This was down to many different factors such as the poor camera being fuzzy and how the dubbing over of the speech didn't fit in with the video itself. Overall, we felt that this video was really well produced but the small things like the camera being fuzzy and the dubbing not fitting in, was quite noticeable and sort of ruined it.

Final Thriller Opening

Screenshots of editing on Final Cut

These are screen shots of the work in Final Cut in which we edited and added effects in this programme.

Aims for editing after feedback

-Now that we have received feedback from our rough cut, our aim is to record the conversation between Lewis and Bronte, so that we can put the voices over the top to improve our sound quality. Also, we need to come up with a title for our thriller as this is part of the criteria for the thriller opening.

Our aim is to spend the next two lessons before the final deadline recording Lewis's and Bronte's conversation again, edit and add it into our thriller opening and find a font that is suitable to a thriller on www.dafont.com and put it into our opening.

I had a look on www.dafont.com to look at different styles of fonts that would suit the conventions of a thriller. We want to have a font for our title that will suit the style of thriller our opening is.



We think that this font type is best as the shape fits well to represent that the film is a thriller and the sketchy effect has a conventional effect, so we are going to use this one.

Comments from the Feedback we received

We agree with the majority of the comments made in the feedback from our class. What was said was helpful for us to see how the audience perceived our thriller opening. From the comments that were given to us, it has allowed our group to consider what we could possibly change/alter to make our thriller more successful and conventional. The main priority that we have now to improve our work is to firstly come up with a title for our thriller as this is important to meet the criteria of the opening to a thriller.

Some critisms that have been made we agree with, for example the fact that the sound quality of the dialogue is quite poor is an aspect of our work that needs improving and as a result, this is our main priority to resolve. One comment from our feedback that we disagreed with was that some people viewed our mise-en-scene in a negative way, by saying that aspects of the narrative were left unexplained. Although that this may have affected the audiences understanding, our group thought that it fitted well with the conventions of a thriller by adding an element of mystery that would intrigue the audience to find our more.

We also recieved mixed views about two aspects of our opening - firstly, people had a variation of views about the rabbit mask at the end, saying that it ruined the ending, whereas others believed it made the opening more thrilling. However, we think that this an one aspect that makes our work look as though it is meant to be an opening rather than an ending. Additionally, people views about our credits differed - some saying it fitted well this our stalker board and others saying it didn't match. We personally thought that our credits was well incorperated and suited the stalker board that we had and thats why we included it.

Overall the movie was good but the it did not include the appropriate credits for the opening scene. The dialogue was good from what we could hear because it was too quiet and hard to hear. However, the overall soundtrack was good and fitted into the thriller genre.
Also, it would be a good idea to cut the film down a bit as it is 30 seconds longer than it should be and it could result in marks being lost due to not following the rules.

The location was good, as the audience would feel disorientated, adding to the sense of tension. The costumes were good as well, as it fitted in with the thriller criteria.

S1-24 feedback

The camera angles were appropriate to the task making the viewing action clear and precise, the shot after Lewis appears at the bus stop with his mask on was very good and made the film more thrilling.

The narrative made good sense especially with the news board at the beginning linking to the plot of the film, this made the film very easy to understand.

The mise-en scene was appropriate as it was filmed in the dark, also at the beginning the scene with Lewis represented his loneliness which was good.

The constant sound track throughout the film was good and fit the marking criteria well, however the dialog wasn't clear at all and you couldn't understand what he was saying.

s1 19 feedback

The music was very effective and creepy and we enjoyed the way that it was introduced before we saw any picture. The mise-en-scene of Lewis standing in the room was very good and evoked questions. We also like the way that the credits were fitted into the newspaper/board. The film as a whole was well filmed and small details such as the picture in the wallet were well incorporated and added to the strangeness and confusion of the film.
The dialogue was difficult to hear as a result of the loud diagetic sound, but this was obviously unavoidable.

s1-20 feedback

The work produced by s1-22 was of high standard and we can see that they put in a lot of work and effort into their production. This can be shown by a numerous amount of camera angles and edits, such as an over the shoulder shot that allows the audience to grasp the story, and also the fact that this shot and the one before it was put into slow motion to make the audience acknowledge what the character was looking at.
However, the mise-en-scene is a bit mysterious, we don't really understand why the woman character was dressed up and then at the end, why the man is stalking her. There is a good use of location, as it shows that the character is waiting for a bus and has nowhere to go. The ending is also good as it leaves it as a cliffhanger and entices you to watch further, however the bit when the man comes back with the mask on kind of ruins the ending.
At the beginning, there is a good use of sound when the camera is slowly moving into the map as it builds up tension and suspense. On the other hand, the speech during the meet is a bit quiet and could be helped by loudening it.

feedback from s1-21

WE are very impressed with the amount of work put into the rough cut. For example the music starting before the clip gave a good introduction. The slow zoom into an over the shoulder was well constructed because even though there wasn't a lot of action going on it gave you time to digest what the storyline would be and showed they were not afraid to have a slow but intense beginning. We were unsure why they were dressed up. To increase the tension we believe they should have build up the excitement of the story more, making you want to carry on watching. They introduced the characters well, however they need to include titles to show the name of the film at least.

Rough cut

:)

Progress Report

We are now at the stage where we have completely finished filming our thriller film.
Our objectives now are to finalise the editing, this will consist of making few adjustments and changes to the editing and sound track.
To start with, we all listened to the music track together and spoke about the different sounds Lewis has used in the track. We decided that we are on the right track to matching a great piece of music to our film. We have experimented with different tempos in the sound track and found that little changes can make big differences in energy and meaning of the track e.g. a slower tempo in the introduction of the track, which establishes the kidnapper played by Lewis. We found in this part of the film the slower tempo gave a really good atmosphere to the film.

This is a screen grab showing how we experimented with different aspects of the track, in this case the tempo.

We have found that delegating tasks throughout our group have really improved our works' standard and how quickly we do our work. We are aiming to complete our editing work by merging the sound track and film by tomorrow's lesson, so we are ready to show our rough cut on Friday and from there be able to make any changes ready for our final deadline.

More editing progress

Having firstly organised all our footage in the right order for it it make sense and have a clear narrative, Jess and Bronte spent today's lesson having a look of previews of different types of effects on Final Cut that could be used in our footage to make it more conventional to a thriller, more advanced and interesting to the audience. We skimmed through the different types of effects that we could use to assess which ones were suitable for our thriller opening. In the end we used an effect called unsharpen mask in which we put on parts of our footage when you see Lewis's face. This effect caused the light to be more radiant and sharper to create a sutle effect. Where the light was on Lewis's face it showed lots of light areas, whereas on the other side it was really dark, giving a mysterious approach and subtly suggesting a spilt personality in Lewis's character.

In addition, Jess found some effects that changed the appearance of the footage, such as an effect called Light rays which we added when you begin to see Lewis walking down the street, we thought this added a fascinating feature to our footage that showed the scene change from the first half to the scene on the street. We also added an effect called Bloom which made the light that appears on in our footage, such as: Street lights, shop windows etc more vibrant and stand out more. A transition that we added several times was called cross dissolve which was a simple fade to make our work flow gently and gradually, rather than it be sudden and not work well with the footage. Overall, today's lesson we got quite a lot done and had a productive lesson.

Stalker Music

Our inspiration for the opening of our soundtrack is from the music that is played at the start of The American movie 'American Psycho', as you can hear at the start of our soundtrack it is very calm and peaceful with a delicate and simple piano piece, merged with the sound effects of a storm to add to the atmosphere of the scene and to show it is raining outside of the room. After about 15-20 seconds the melody changes with the introduction of some more intricate piano pieces which merged with the first piece creates a simple yet effective melodic harmony. I also added in a contemplative synth sound to merge with the piano pieces to add an Eire atmosphere to the music to show that something isn't right and to give the viewer a sense that something is maybe going to happen. Throughout the composition i have left the piano in as it always gives a feeling of calm whereas later in the composition iv added an electric guitar riff in their to make the sound and feeling of the scenes quite static and uncertain and then halfway through the compostion I've added a more bassey sound into the composition still keeping with the piano but the electronic bass makes the tempo fast and makes the sound seem alot harder and more tense to emphasise to the viewer that the scene is becoming tenser. The mix of the calm piano and the tense guitar sound and the bass mixes well giving the viewer many different feelings about the scene as they all send different types of sounds to the viewer confusing them but at the same time keeping them in a state of calm.

Technical equipment we used making our Thriller opening sequence

Our First and most crutial piece of equipment was the camera to film our footage with.

The next is the tripod used to balance the camera on. This eliminates shaking or a hand held effect when filming. Unfortunatley ours was a bit stiff and jerked when we tryed to pan a shoot of lewis walking back towards bronte at the bus stop.
After we had our footage we captured it on Final Cut Express, which is the below logo on an Apple Mac. In final cut we edited our footage roughly into the right order with the decent takes. In final cut we managed to speed up, slow down, change sound levels to quieten traffic, add effects and transtions and make our sequence what it is. Eventually we may also use Final Cut Express to annimate our ident.

Whilst the editing was taking place, Lewis used Garageband to create a soundtrack to fit out film sequence. This program enabled us to even record our own sounds, even though we chose not to do this its still a feature included. There is even a feature were you can plug in your own keyboard and record your own melodys. On Garageband Lewis changed tempos and keys.

Photoshop was used to make our ident. The layers will be animated through to create a moving ident. Starting off with one picture we edited it through to end with our 'Pulse Productions' in the 'Pulse' font from http://www.dafont.com/

All of this equipment enabled our thriller opening sequence to be made into what it is.

Analysis of a thriller poster

This is a poster advertising 'The Matrix' movie (1999).

To begin with the colour is mainly all dark, illuminating white and unnatural electric blues have been edited into the poster to surround the focal point (the main character) which creates an impression that he is the strongest.

Looking at the costume used, I can see they have matched the dark and unnatural colours used in the background and to surround the characters. The costume is mainly black, Neo, the main character has a long black coat on which emphasizes his strong status. The rest of the characters are wearing black all with different characteristics such as the woman wearing patent black leather trousers and a vest, the image of power is taken further with the use of gun props to enhance their status, making the audience almost feel threatened.

Overall the poster gives the impression that the movie will have action; implied by the weapons, and some strange theme shown through the background with peculiar fonts which we cannot recognise leading onto the title, and it's font. This has a electrical/glitchy font which matches the style and themes of the poster.

Evaluation Questions

The following questions must be answered in your evaluation PowerPoint:

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 the product?

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

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In our opening what conventions have we included that makes it similar/different to existing, professional films. Talk about: music, character conventions, camera work, editing mise-en-scene etc.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Talk about an existing movie character that is similar to your main character(s) and explain their character role, personality and appearance and how is it similar to yours?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Explain would type of institution would best suit your film, e.g. cinema, TV, internet
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Explain the type of people who are most likely to want to see your film. Explain the age range, gender, what other movies they would like to watch, classification, their interests
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
What aspects of our opening have you added to ensure that the audience want to watch the opening and continue to be engage throughout the opening?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Explain the types of programmes you have used, e.g. Final Cut, Garageband and what have you learnt about these programmes. Also, state what problems you had, how you solved them and how to improve
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Explain how your knowledge has developed and say what you have learnt from the progession from the Pre lim task to the final task.

Progress of editing

For the past couple of lessons, Bronte and Jess have been capturing and editing our footage onto Final Cut. To begin with, our main aim was to primarily ensure that we picked the shots of our footage that were most successful and placed it in the correct order onto Final Cut, so that we could see the final look and order to work into. It was important to ensure we had a rough idea of the timings of our work as meanwhile Lewis has been gathering ideas and working on our soundtrack for our opening on Garage Band, therefore he needed to have some knowledge of the timings of each part of our opening.

Once Bronte and Jess had initially put our footage in the right order and made the narrative clearer, we then focused on the more creative aspects of our work. So far Jess and Bronte have been on Final Cut looking at the types of things we could use and have been experimenting to see what works most effectively to suit the conventions of a thriller. At the very beginning of our footage, we added slow motion to make it slow and more gradual. We have added some transitions to our work to make the movement from one clip to the next flow more casually and less sudden, unless we wanted it to for effect - we added a transition that made the footage more 'jumpy' and sudden to our credits. Luckily, Jess managed to find a feature on Final Cut which allowed us to quieten the sound of the traffic in our footage, which meant that the sound wasn't as loud and made our sound quality better.

Analysis of 'Blog of the Week'

P1-04 have made a large effort of making their blogs' appearance clear and simple for the reader, I think this blog has been made 'Blog of the week' to show everyone else that the work does not need to be text heavy in order to be a good quality. I think that by keeping their blog clean, tidy and full of images. However, because they have done this, some blogs aren't entirely relevant, for example they could add small notes on the bottom of image-only blogs. And could increase the content in evaluative blogs to show their understanding more.

Overall though, I think that I can learn from this blog because it shows a small amounts of good detail, for example they have added images to a blog to show us that they have edited the images of the suspects to make them suit the film more, and have an effect on the audience and make them feel like the suspects aren't good people hence the dark colours. If I was in this group, though, I would add a bit more text in just to summarize their work making it more appropriate and relevant. I think blog of the week is good because it shows all groups where they can improve and where they are doing well.

Target Audience

In this blog I am going to discuss the target audience for our film. I will be looking at the range of factors which will identify the films target audience such as; age, gender etc.

Firstly, the age we are looking at targeting for our film will be from ages 15 to adults. We cannot target such a broad target audience like other films because previous thriller films have done this successfully by grabbing the younger audience (12) as young people around this age seem to be really attracted to high action thrillers, and take notice to the high-tech robots and typical heroin and antagonist situations. Whereas, on the other hand with the older range of our target audience would be more attracted to the other elements of the film, for example the characters and their appearances:

Picture of Megan Fox playing the role of Mikaela Banes. Her appearance appeals to the male audience, whereas Sam played by Shia LaBeouf appeals to the female audience.

In terms of target audience, Transformers has a very broad target audience.

Now, looking at our own film I can see that we have not targeted our audience as broadly because of our plot and features we have involved such as murder and crime.

Other thrillers such as Batman (certificate 12A) appeals to children aged 12 and above, up to an older audience for similar purposes as the Transformers film above.

The reasons why our film would most likely suit 15 certificate is because of the psychological crime thriller genre, and I don't think that a younger audience would appreciate this as we haven't included any amazing action scenes of vast amounts of high-tech elements. We can make our film appeal to the audience because of the characters involved, we have used male and females in our film, so this has a similar effect on our target audience as Transformers or The Dark Knight.