John's Evaluation

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

Real media Products Have a number of things in common, the all have an Antagonist and a Protagonist, and use things such as iconography, restricted narration, and use camera, sound, and light to create mood and enigma.
Real Thriller Films

Here is a screenshot from Shutter Island, we can see the protagonist to the right of the shot. we can tell he is the protagonist due to the high number of shots on him.

We can see that there is a lot of shadow in this shot from Shutter island, in thrillers shadow i used a lot to set the mood and to create an eerie mood. and the main focus of light is on the main characters face.






Here is a screenshot from Drive, we can see the protagonist on the left of the shot. once again the lightning has been used to create a lot of shadows around the main character.





Here is a screenshot from Tink Taylor, we can see the protagonist on the left side of the shot. once again a lot of shadowing has been use to create an eerie mood. restricted narration can make it harder for the viewer to understand what is going on, creating enigma.



we can see here in this shot from drive that the lighting has been used to once again create a lot of shadows. iconography has been used as a large bad like that is usually associated with a robbery.

 Here we can see the antagonist on the left in this shot from Pulp fiction. the scene here is well lit however half of the antagonists face s shadowed creating a negative feeling towards the character.
a diagetic sound bridge of cutlery being placed down is used as a sound bridge to link the scenes together.

A two shot has been used here to show the conversation between the two main characters. unrestricted narration is used to let the view know what is happening as they plot it.

Point of view shots have been used to help the viewer see what the character is seeing and share the same experience as them.







Our Film

 here is the title of the film being displayed at the beginning of the film.

 In our thriller we used a variety of shots, this is a close up of  one of the antagonists removing his seat belt. a close up like this helps to create enigma as we do not know where the character is.
the close up restricts the narrative as we don't really know much about what is going on. this helps to create enigma.

 there is a large number of shots on the victim being drowned so me immediately can see he is the protagonist. Point of view shots have been used to share what the character is going through.
as the victim enters the pool overlapping was used to exaggerate the splash.

 we have also used a two shot of the character being drowned. this allows us to see what is going on so we know he is being drowned.

 a sound bridge has been used throughout all of the shots to link them together, this is a soundtrack or eerie music to help add to the mood. a voice over is also being played and we can see on screen that it's what the two antagonists are listening to.
the lighting has been used to light up the whole scene which doesn't really create a frightening mood.

here is an establishing shot of the Leisure center. it lets the audience know where the character is being drowned. this slightly restricts the narrative but makes it make more sense.






2. How does your media product represent a particular social group?

Here we can see the character is a middle aged man, from his costume we can tell he is of a higher social class because he is smartly dressed. he walks with a confident stride and his body language shows that he is not at all nervous, this implies that he is experienced in this type of work. he is also leaving a private jet which shows he has power and money.

 Here we can see that the character is dressed in jeans and a hoodie, this tells us he is of a lower social class than that of the character on the plane. he might be looked at as the antagonist that does the "Dirty Work". He is a younger male and may be stereotyped and someone who will get his hands dirty for a small reward.

Here we can see the antagonist drowning his victim,  he is wearing a hoodie which maybe stereotyped with people of a low social class.

he is a male doing the dirty work which refers back to the traditional stereotype of a male playing in the dirt whilst the girl plays with her toys and is clean.

We can see from the shot that the prop is an expensive phone which again adds to the image of this character having a wealthy lifestyle.








3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media products and why?
Distribution is when a film gets a secured placement on an exhibition screen. Traditionally films would have been consumed at cinemas's and televisions, but now days films are played on many devices such as phones, tablets, streamed online, and game consoles.

There are four main stages in Distribution:
Licencing
when a licence is purchased it grants the distributor legal rights to display the film. this could be on a DVD, at the cinema, or for streaming online.

Marketing the Film
New films are usually released on a Friday as its the begging of the weekend and when people are most likely to go and see a film on wither Friday or Saturday night. some films are also released seasonally which is in the school holidays, this is also another great opportunity to release a film as people have time of to watch it, especially teenagers and children, so this would be a good time to release the film as teenagers are out target audience for our thriller.

there is not much competition when it comes to marketing the film, and it is done through prints and through advertising. trailers will be on the internet and played on T.V if the film is big enough. however for a small inside film it is more likely to be print outs at it is a lot less expensive.

Prints and Advertising
all of the costs for prints and advertising are met by the distributor, between 10-and 200 copies of film are produced and given to cinemas to play them to the audience, each roll of film costs around £2000 to produce and the cinema will pay 40% of that to rent it. they will get the profits made from displaying the film.

cinemas now have 4k projection which means they can play high quality films which are stored digitally on either high capacity USB sticks or are streamed using ADSL. this is a much cheaper way to distribute a film and greatly benefits a small indie film.

where will it be shown?
there are two main types of cinema these are multiplex, where new large films are produced, these are extremely expensive to produce and full of things such as CGI and aimed at mainly the teenage audience. Another type of cinema is Art-house, this is a much smaller independent cinema which plays smaller films which are not as expensive to produce and well advertised as the multiplex films. Art-house are well known for playing smaller indie films.

Art-house cinemas can sometimes host special events such as thriller seasons, this would be a great opportunity to distribute the film. however there will be a lot of competition as other thrillers will also be played at the same time.

We used to be consumers but now we are also producers. now days all companies are looking at digital distributing.

There are many online services the provide streaming services for users to stream films down to their TV's and other consoles such as Xbox360, PS3, Phones, and Tablets. here are some examples:

• Netflix
• Virgin meida
• Sky
• Love Film
• Vimieo
• Itunes
• Youtube

Now days people don't really watch television shows are they are scheduled on TV, but rather catch up with them at a more convenient time for them. They can easily do this online with TV on demand, a great example of this would be BBC Iplayer. Films are played on TV but not always watched at the time they are scheduled and catch-up TV only usually stores shows for up to a week before it is overwritten.

There are many Distribution companies, large Distribution companies such as 20th Century Fox are not likely to touch a smaller independent film, therefore i have researched into some smaller Distribution companies, below is a list of some possible Distribution companies for our film.
Distribution companies:
Momentum
Artificial eye
Pathe
Dog-woof
Icon
Curzon

We also have the choice to release the film either regional or countrywide, it would be expensive to release it country wide, as it is a small indie film it would be more suitable to just release it regionally. the audience of this film is teenagers. the south west would be a good region to distribute the film has it has a high population of teenagers.

I believe that the best way to distribute the film would be on Love Film, this is because it is online and can be streamed to a very wide variety of devices such as games consoles. Our main target audience is also teenagers which use devices such as the Ipad, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and phones. this would make the film very accessible for them. however, people who do not have a membership with Love Film will not be able to access the film, that is the main disadvantage with this method. but it is a cheap method as it does not involve any costs in making DVD's.

4.who would be the audience  for your media product?
Most film producers target the males with the age group from 11 to 17. As we made thriller i also thought it would be a good idea to target this market. some research was carried out into the certificate categories and decided that a "15" would be appropriate as there is scenes of a murder taking place and did not feel it was appropriate for any younger age to view.

5. how did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience in a number of ways, firstly, all of the lead characters in our film are males. This might be unappealing for most females as there aren't any females starring in it. also by uploading the film to Facebook we targeted the audience of 11 to 17 year olds as they most likely use social networking sites such as Facebook on a day to day basis.

There is a murder Scene in the opening to this film which would appeal to a lot of male viewers rather than female viewers.

6.what have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learned a lot of new skills from this project, especially from using technology. I have gained a lot more knowledge in things such as Final cut pro, Garage band, as well as the functioning of a camera.

Firstly, I had never even heard of Blogger before I started this project and it is a great piece of technology because it has helped the group communicate and work together to achieve our aims. It is really handy being able to work on posts and the same time, and it is extremely accessible as you can access it on any machine connected to the internet and just work. It is very easy to post new ideas and information quickly to share ideas with the group.

Using the camera's has taught me a lot about how they function using manual focus to push and pull the focus was great fun and created a really nice effect to create enigma! one of the main things on the camera which was so simple but so important was setting the white balance, this made all of the difference and ensured that the colour was correct on the film. when filming in the swimming pool we forgot to set the white balance on one of the camera's. this left the water looking green instead of blue. however we did manage to correct it in post production.

I also gained a lot of knowledge in Final Cut Pro, this piece of editing software allowed us to import our movie clips and put them together in the desired order to make out film. I learned to add different video transitions such as fades as well as us default cuts between scenes. I applied certain filters to the film the main one being the colour correction filter, this allowed me to change the RBG colours resulting in the green water becoming blue again.

I enjoyed editing the sound in garage band this was a great piece of software as it allowed us to add lots of different tracks of sound to our film, and had a massive library of Foley which we would use. we removed most of the sound from our footage and replaced it using this software, this resulted in much more clear and enhanced sounds and splashing noises.

7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel that i have learned a lot from the preliminary task up to the final product, i have developed a wide range of new skills and experience in creating the thriller and can now put these skills to use in future tasks.

 we used various shots for our preliminary task, this prepared us for our final product as we used a wide range of shot types and angles to create mood and exaggerate what was going on.
we used a much wider range of shots in our final product compared to our final product.

In both products the costume, hair and make-up was not done in great depth, this meant the the charters were just wearing normal clothes and i think it would have looked better if this had been thought about in greater depth.

 In final cut we have progressed greatly from our preliminary task to our final product. we have learned to use a lot of new things such as video transitions and filters which we did not know about in our preliminary task, this made the film look a lot more professional and again added to the whole mood of the thriller. we used techniques such as overlapping to make the splash look more realistic and bigger, we did not have this knowledge of the techniques used by professionals.

 I have Learned a Lot more about lighting and the setup which is needed to create a well lit scene. In our preliminary task we did not have a great deal of knowledge ans didn't realize how important it was to use lighting. This resulted in some shots being too poorly lit to use as we could not see the character. in our thriller we used a lot of external lighting to ensure everything was lit up.

 Our locations for the preliminary tasks were very basic, as we could only make do with the college campus, this meant that is wasn't that interesting. For our final product we used a lot of different scenes such as an airport hanger, inside an aircraft, a swimming pool, and outside a train station, this meant the mise en scene was really accurate and good as we visited real locations.

 Another thing we have greatly progressed in is the editing in final cut pro. some shots in our preliminary task really dragged out and there was not much pace to the film. For the final product we added a lot more different shots and edited them together so there was a higher amount of shots per second, this added a lot of pace. we also used techniques such as parallel cutting to add more pace to the film.

I have learned a lot of new things about sound in garage band which I did not know when creating the preliminary task. I have learned how all of the layers can be used together to create different sound effects to make the film sound much better. I learned how to manipulate the volume at certain points to cut out unwanted noise and mistakes.
I also learned how to add a voice over, this would have been useful as the sound in the preliminary task was not as clear as the sound of our final product.

I also learned a lot about how a film would actually look, things such as studio logo's at the beginning and adding subtitles in the correct places so that they are visible. this helped us when coming to create a final product as we added a title screen and subtitles so it looked a lot more like an actual film unlike the preliminary task where the film just started straight away.

Harry Quilley's Evaluation

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


Me and tom looked at some good camera angle for which we could end the scene. We came across this clip of DiCaprio, we imitated in the angle of the camera and the positioning of the character, this give us the idea of hitting the bottom, or in our case, dead.

The biggest inspiration we had for our pool scene was the 'let the right one in' clip that we found before we started to plan our opening. it really gave us something to aim for when filming our film scene, less in the fact of a savior but more for the camera angles we used for the scene and the way the attacker held his head to keep him underwater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ6qh0z48Uk



2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 
It is clear from the opening that a there is a common occurrence with age and gender of all the characters. With them all being male, is a clear female stereotype, this gives across that women are not likely to be involved with murder or assassination, but are often seen as a victim within films as they are deemed as weaker and an easy target. 

It is quite clear from about 43 seconds in when the guy is thrown into the pool, this implies he is the protagonist  of the opening. Men are regularly portrayed as the antagonist because they are more dominant. This also suggest that the person committing this murder is the antagonist, as well as the other character/s through-ought that we have seen listening to the voice message telling him that the murder is being committed. We are never told who the voice message is for, as its only for one. this creates the enigma of who is part of the assassination and who is unaware. Both characters were similarly clothed to not give any distinctive ideas to who the message was for. This creates enigma around these two characters and who they are. in relation to the drowning scene.
In our movie their is no female characters, we had options to include them as either antagonist or protagonist but chose against, we didn't want to follow most stereotypes and have a female protagonist as it seemed to cliche and would make the story line more confusing to the audience and would make it seem like a simple murder.
All character except the one who start from within the plane, are all similar age, this is to add to the enigma, by contradicting their normal recruits and maybe have an older member  or they keep it young and fit.
The voice mail voice over was key to the Representation of the males as it the deepness and seriousness in his voice wouldn't be the same if played by a female antagonist.

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

As a low budget British indie film we need to think realistically  on who will distribute our film. Choosing someone like Dreamworks or Universal studio would not be a viable option.
The company that distribute the film is the company who get the film to the audience, either via cinema, consoles/television and devices (phone, tablet, iPod). The distributor will market the film, this is things like adverts, signage and the production of the film onto Film or digital device. Our film will be distributed via ADSL. ADSL is a way of digitally screening a film rather than printing it all on to film. the main reason for this is the cost, with film costing £2000 to print onto the film this is very expensive for cinemas to rent. Having to pay 40%  at £800 is too much for cinemas so they started to store the film digitally which keeps down costs enabling independent cinemas the ability to rent movies too, digital films cost £560 to rent over the £800 for film. 
 When trying to find a distributor for our film we have to think realistically in terms the size of company and whether or not they will agree to distribute our film. I searched for a up and coming British indie film producer because i think that as a new company will be trying to impress and could really help with the popularity of the film. 
I think a company like axiom films would be suitable..
Although originally going for an up and coming company we decided to go for a more experienced lesser known distributor because of the experience it will bring. I believe they would the correct company to distribute our film. they have have expertise in all film and will help in develpoing our movie on multi-media. They are a company that market and distribute many different genre of films. They also have a connection with lovefilm and iTunes meaning  their new releases are also available online to rent after the movie is released. I believe the best way to premiere the film would be via console. Xbox/Microsoft to be precise. As our film as a thriller, with a lot of action, the best audience to aim at was 14+,  with Xbox having such a high number of teenagers on the console would give the film a lot of teenagers to release to. Distributing to premiere on the Xbox would best be done over the weekend/Friday  as this is when teenagers play and are online the most and would gain the most exposure.
Soon after release, renting it out to places like Lovefilm would these type of sites are growing ever more popular and will increase the audience size. as well as this they can be watched anywhere via smartphones and tablets on the go.

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


It was clear from the start that we would be aiming at an age group similar to ourselves. 12+ seemed the right decision for our movie. The reason for this is because of the violence we see in the swimming pool scene which is a little strong.

From the 5 people I had watched the film, i was told that this was the correct age rating for the movie, however one said that they would rise the age limit because of the drowning scene. She(my mum) felt as if this was to much for someone as young as 12 and suggest a 15. I searched through the BBFC website. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/search/releases/drowning . this was pretty similar to our rating, with variations from 12A to 15 I believe 12 is correct because there isn't any other violence or bad language within the opening.  I also did some research of other movies with drowning and 12A is a common occurrence within most that don't involve further violence.

The movie was aimed to be viewed mostly by male, stereotypically because of the violence between the males and that they are all male characters. The violence and action will instantly attract most males whereas females will think nothing of it. This will enable men to relate to characters and even look up to them.

5. How did you attract/address your audience

The very first shot of the plane taking off is an instant hook, being so popular it hooks people in. This will
instantly get the attention of many, once they are hooked the rest of the opening will continue to interest them. With the location of the airport this will attract mostly males as this is a male dominated place, in terms of engineering and flying. 

Having all male characters will relate to many guys which will keep them watching. The use of a rare setting, a place were people do not visit or go to everyday, will make it seem out of the ordinary on what happens during the movie. 

Creating enigma in which character is linked to the assassination will really making viewers think about who it is and will make them watch too the end to find out whether they thought right or wrong. 

The main point we used to attract our audience was the action. A violent drowning scene to surprise them from what they have seen prior to the event. Violence is always a good way of hooking in an audience as it is something that most men enjoy watching 


6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Adapting to the access of technology we had we was vital to getting our thriller opening to the best it could be.

Camera
A big part of this was using the camera to its full capabilities. ensuring we set the white balance every scene was key to making the film look smooth and professional. On a couple of occasions we forgot to do so which meant we had to remove the footage and we could not use it in the opening.

Blog
Using the blog fully was something i took advantage of to begin with and didn't use it as I should have and posted very little. The blog really shows the story of how we made our film, when looking back it helped us in the final stages of our film with editing and making sure the 180 degree rule wasn't broken.
Taking the blog even further, uploading vlogs helps to explain things in greater in detail as wel as using multi-media which is needed for our blog.

Final cut/garage band
Final cut was something that really help us in our film, cutting footage as well as removing sounds to time the match on actions perfectly is something that we used to our advantage. it also enabled us to add a fade at the end which really adds to the suspense at the end of the opening. using colour correct enabled us to save part of our filing that went wrong because of no balance and really helped with creating intensity at the end of the opening. We used garage band to find a track to run all the way through our opening. this really added to our piece, creating enigma and adding tension.

Voice Recorder
This is what tied our entire opening together. without it our film wouldn't link and wouldn't be connect  to each scene. the voice recorder enable us to recorder toms voice to put over , without it the thriller opening wouldn't make much sense.

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

Making this opening has made me realize that from the start of the preliminary opening, to where I am now, is absolutely massive. not just by myself, but as a group. I feel as though all areas of my thoughts have gradually got more realistic progressed to where they are now as I was always overdoing ideas trying to make ideas seem realistic when they are just to out of the ordinary. It is clear that have learnt many things that will help me drastically next year.

• Lighting: Since the preliminary task I have started to realize how important lighting is to show the emotion in the characters as well as how they are portrayed. As we can see in this shot from our prelim task, The lighting has been done poorly in this shot as tom is barely visible which adds confusion to the audience leaving him expression less because you can see his face. Compared to the next shot below, which is taken from our Thriller opening. although no artificial lighting was used, we had to move location in the swimming pool as the place in the pool we filmed all of the drowning seen was too deep and we knew that if we filmed here the lighting would very dark. This is isn't visible because the editing and lets us see his facial expressions clearly.
• Editing: Editing was also something I have improved in since we completed the prelim, especially in sound editing. Being introduced to Foleys  as well as non-diegetic sounds really widened the variety of thoughts on how we could improve our Thriller opening. as well as this, knowing about adjusting sound from our original filming to increase pitch to emphasize a certain event happening. We used this effectively with the first splash in the thriller to enhance the volume to increase intensity. There isn't really and image to compare with this because the preliminary task didn't have and specific places to increase the volume.
• Research and Planning: At first, I was trying to hard to figure the entire story line, even though it is almost irrelevant and only a vague idea is needed to create our prelim. Again I was over complicating things unnecessarily which was wasting time that could have been spent story boarding or doing additional research and planning. When the we started the thriller opening I made sure to stay away from that. This also gave us more freedom within the thriller opening, not having to plan an entire movie gave us more flexibility within the storyboard and planning that wont hold back ideas for the opening.
• Using camera angle and shot to portray a characters emotion I also something that has gradually increase since we shot the prelim. a clear example would be in these two shots. the one on the left being the thriller opening and the right the prelim, it is clear the camera angle and shot is both clearer of facial expressions as well as the camera angle suggesting mystery like he is being look at, this is done by having a corner of the fence in the shot to make it seem like peeking.

• Filming: Run-Off during filming as well as re filming shots 3-4 times to get the correct footage that we needed to ensure smooth editing for match on actions. this is something that cause large problems when putting together our prelim as some footage wasn't right, this meant we had to edit parts out because there was a loud background noise they we didn't realize would affect the sound on the camera but when re-watching in we noticed it drowned out toms speech. Filming for 5-10 seconds before and after each clip was key to getting the match on actions correct, this gave us enough footage to edit and move around to get the perfect timing with our match on actions. I feel as though the match on action of the door into the hub in the first clip was slightly out of sync as the characters position was slightly different although this couldn't be seen in real time, only if it was slowed down.

Final film

Almost complete

How to add a fade - Tom C

First things first, you need to select the footage you want the fade to be on.

Then you go  into the 'video transitions' part of the menu (it's one of the top bars, just follow it down), select 'dissolve' then 'dip to colour dissolve'

This adds the highlighted grey bar onto the footage's end (put on a different part so as not to lose data)

The footage then needs to be rendered as you have introduced the effect.

As the video plays, you can see the fade come into effect