5 minute analysis on Hostage: Andrew Lingard
For my 5-minute analysis on a film I have chosen Hostage. It is a thriller with Bruce Willis about a kidnapping at a house in the middle of nowhere. This relates well to the film that we are going to create as ours involves a kidnapping that takes place in roughly the middle of nowhere too. I will describe why certain shots are used and how it gives effect to the movie and sets the whole movie up for what is to come.
Right at the start of the movie there is a close up of a cartoon style man holding a gun at his forehead. This is used to show the audience that the movie is starting and the starting credits have finished. As the camera zooms out from him, the character becomes real and he is clearly upset and begins to shout out whilst on the phone. His exact words are, “I want to speak to that mother fucker”. This gives the idea that there is someone he knows who will help him come to some understanding about the whole situation. As the camera zooms out more, through the door to the house that the man is in, you get the establishing shot of a whole police force surrounding the area. This shows that the scene is no ordinary scene, and the man in the house has done something extremely wrong. The zooming out leads to a high angled shot of the police looking down on the man in the house. This shows that the police force is in control of the situation and has full power. Subtitles then pop up at the bottom of the screen to set the scene so the audience knows where the action is taking place.
The shot then changes when a helicopter comes back in the direction of the camera to Bruce Willis who is lying on the floor with the camera zooming in on him. The audience then finds out that he is speaking to the person in the house who the police are after. The fact that we know this, and Bruce’s character is still laying down means we know he is relaxed about the situation and he will have done it all before. It shows he knows exactly what he is doing, and that he is in control of the situation. It also sets up the main character’s appearance throughout the film.
The shot then shows a leg with a gun strapped to the ankle. This shows that the character who is speaking has some kind of authority and may be in the force himself. The camera then shows a close up of a comb that Bruce’s character is holding and then the camera pans the knife up towards his own face where he starts to comb his beard. This shows more relaxation and calmness by the character and proves that he knows exactly what he is doing.
A close up of the Bruce’s characters face is shown, he is looking at something. Then the camera shows a long shot of what he is looking at. In this case it is gunmen, possibly snipers taking their positions on the rooftops. This gives the audience an idea that something is about to happen.
Friday, 14 May 2010
ANDREW LINGARD EVALUATION
Andrew Lingard
Critically evaluating Video Production
In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For out Media project we choose to do a 5-minute film instead of a documentary. The reason for this is, as a group, we believed that choosing a film would give us a wider range in which we can show off what we can do. Using different camera angles, showing our imagination in the plot of the story but most importantly, we felt comfortable as we had done a film before and could advance on our attempts last time.
We followed the continuity rule throughout the film extremely well. The shots in which we intended to follow on from each other followed on extremely well. The trickiest part of this was the final scene with the car, we had to make sure body movements and car positions were correct for our film to flow correctly.
In two occasions however we broke the continuity rule. The first was the flashbacks. This helped give a greater picture of what is happening in the film and helps the audience interact with the character and on the second instance it involved a few chopped up shots in which a more disturbing and upbeat feel was caused. So even though the rule was broken, it was intentional for the film to make sense and give more of a reason.
We knew from the start, before any line was wrote or and scene was imagined that we needed to create suspense in our film, leave the audience on the edge of there seats and most importantly, give the film a twist at the end in which the audience didn’t expect. This is how our film compares to other thrillers of its kind. The basics were there from the beginning, which was great. Another important aspects of our film that are similar to other thrillers is the music. A variety from a slow melodic sound at the beginning to create a tense atmosphere and then when the throwing of the bucket happens, an upbeat and heavy piece which bring an aggressive streak to the film.
Our film both goes along with stereotypical images and also goes against the stereotypical image of women. For instance, our main character, in which at the beginning of the film is portrayed as a weak and fragile women, crying and looking scared in a corner, then appears, as the film goes on, to be a strong and quite psychotic character.
Throughout the film you capture different aspects of the characters life and gain different judgements which change as each scene takes place. For instance whilst in the building in which she starts in, you feel sorry for her, crying in a corner, but later she starts throwing petrol all over and lights a lighter. But flashbacks throughout this scene show why she is doing such things so it helps give the audience their own judgement on the character.
We didn’t add elements of pastiche or parody due to the nature of our film. It wouldn’t fit right due to our filming wanting to create a disturbing atmosphere, not a humorous or comical one. Also we didn’t hint at other films through reference at all. Ant parts of the film, in which people believe were taken from other movies of the same genre, or other perhaps, were not intended. All the shots, story and characters were created by ourselves.
Depending on how you see the film and what mood the audience is in even, depends on whether pleasure is provided. The main pleasure I wished to achieve from the start of the film was simply enjoyment. I know from experience that the first thing I look for in a film is to enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, you don’t take notice and aren’t really bothered about the film. So straight away we planned on capturing the audience’s imagination and giving them 5 minutes of enjoyment. Depending on how the audience sees the film depends on other pleasures they may have. For instance some people may have an emotional response to the way in which Lauren, our main character, sets about her new life. How she has thought about running away and taking the chance at a new life. People watching this may have had a similar experience at one time or another in their life.
When we were producing and directing our short film, there were no real comparisons with any media texts that we interpreted into our own. But shortly after we had finished filming and editing, I caught a glimpse of a shot in a film called Trainspotting. In the shot the police are chasing down “Ewan Mcgregor” for the use of drugs gets in the way of a car. The shot of him is from inside of the car, showing “Ewan” looking straight at the camera as though it is in a first person view of the driver. This is exactly like one of our shots when Lauren gets in the way of the car at the end of our film.
How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
As a group we set out, from the very beginning to produce a thriller of the best quality and standard that we could achieve in the time we had and with the equipment in which we could use. We wanted the audience throughout to be puzzled by the situation, never knowing what is going to happen next. The two pieces of advertising products that we created were the radio trailer, and the poster.
The radio trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90cdPkgZvcM had many different personas speaking, all using a dark tone of voice, straight away causing an eerie and uncomfortable atmosphere in which the sound of the children’s toy in the background just added to it. There is also a short sound clip from the film, scene in which shouting and banging is heard. This yet again adds to the atmosphere and mood of the film.
The second piece was the poster. We all each created our own, and a final one was chosen to which we thought suited the style and genre of our film the best. This happened to be my poster.
In my poster I tried to create a dark atmosphere whilst also capturing the characters expression of sadness. I didn’t want to give too much away by putting a picture of a light or even a car. Just a simple snapshot from the film worked perfectly. I wanted to keep everything in the poster really dull, in away taking all the life from the advertisement without actually killing it. Giving a blue shadow around the title “AFFLICTED” and the stars from the ratings. The ratings I believe were a great touch to finish the poster of. Not only do they appear in all other poster, giving the audience something more to go by, but it helps capture the audience, dragging them in to read the ratings, therefore taking more time to look at our advertisement. There was only one main character in our film so I put her name right at the top of the poster so you knew straight away who the actor was. The final bit of the poster, which I had to change, was the age rating. Usually you see the rating in red, but I thought it would be clever to carry on with the blue theme and change the colour. I believe it worked extremely well.
Above are a few posters in which I looked at to give me inspiration for my own. The second picture, a film called “COBB” captured my eye at the start and I had the idea of boxing of the character and the having the detail and writing above and below the central image. After trying this out, in my opinion if just didn’t really look as good as it could, so I started to look again and found posters in which the main characters face was blended into the rest of the poster and the writing and titles were put around the image. Especially like the poster for “13”. This is what gave me the final idea to my poster. A close up of the main character, the title to the bottom left of the poster and the name of the actor at the top.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We asked 18 people of different age and locations around Yorkshire to complete a Questionnaire on short five-minute films. We asked them a series of questions on short Thrillers to find out what the audience would like to see when it came to the filming of our Thriller.
http://bca2media-group9.blogspot.com/2010/05/audience-questionnaire-results-and.html
This questionnaire gave us ideas of what to use in our film and what not to use in our film. We aimed the audience to be of a young age, between 18-25. This is due to the fact we wanted the opinions of the younger generation who maybe enjoy lots of Thrillers and would be able to answer the questions with greater detail. The results that we got were very helpful and helped toward the production of our film. But most of all, as you would expect, we got the feedback in which we wanted to hear. The audience wanted to see lots of suspense.
After we had completed a rough draft of the film we posted it onto youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhKyuQD8Qrc&feature=related
This gave us even more feedback from a wider audience. Positive and Negative feedback was received, but the most important of all was the fact that a few people were confused on how she got from the eerie garage to the road. Why she had gone and such forth. So we knew straight away we needed to add something simple yet effective to tie the start of the film to the end and help the story become that little bit more clear.
Thanks to the feedback that we received we managed to add a suicide note, in which the first draft on youtube doesn’t show. This helped tie the film together explaining why she has run away, how she is feeling and gives a deeper entail into the mind of Lauren, helping the audience to feel what Lauren is feeling inside.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
There are advantages aswell as disadvantages of using a wide variety of technology whilst filming our film. Some made our work a lot easier, whilst some got in the way and took away precious time that we had.
Advantages
The main advantages of the technology were the cameras. These were Sony HD1000. This camera improved the quality of the shots used in our film due to the fact it was filmed in HD.
Whilst editing the film afterwards, Finalcut express was used, opposed to moviemaker in which we used last year. This improved the quality of our film even more, being able to change the lighting to help with the continuity and finer cropping making it easier to assemble whilst putting the movie together.
We were also able to use different effects to make our movie more professional. For instance, to make our flashbacks appear clearer to the audience, we changed the scenes into black and white. This added to the films making it a lot more understanding and clear to watch.
Other equipment that we used to create our film were, a DV1000, which we were able to transfer all our shots to the computer for editing and a zoom recorder, to make the sound in the movie a lot clearer and without all the background noise.
Zoom Recorder
Our access to an Apple Mac, Final Cut, iMovie, Blogger, Garage Band and PhotoShop also made our time a lot easier. Helping with the production of the film and also the advertising side of things aswell.
Using this technology throughout the year has given me a wider range of skills for me now to use. I am able to change the colour of scene I just shot quite easily now, and also change the colour of photos and manipulate them to look as I wish.
Disadvantages
The only disadvantage really was the Blogger. It took me a while to realise how to go about the whole process of uploading into onto a website instead of just completing the work on other devices and saving them onto my computer. Many occasions I struggled with uploading and it just frustrated me and took valuable time away from me. Also with posting our work onto Youtube, we were unable to get the amount of feedback that we wished. There are few people who would log onto youtube and give their actual real opinion on a film made by college students.
Critically evaluating Video Production
In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For out Media project we choose to do a 5-minute film instead of a documentary. The reason for this is, as a group, we believed that choosing a film would give us a wider range in which we can show off what we can do. Using different camera angles, showing our imagination in the plot of the story but most importantly, we felt comfortable as we had done a film before and could advance on our attempts last time.
We followed the continuity rule throughout the film extremely well. The shots in which we intended to follow on from each other followed on extremely well. The trickiest part of this was the final scene with the car, we had to make sure body movements and car positions were correct for our film to flow correctly.
In two occasions however we broke the continuity rule. The first was the flashbacks. This helped give a greater picture of what is happening in the film and helps the audience interact with the character and on the second instance it involved a few chopped up shots in which a more disturbing and upbeat feel was caused. So even though the rule was broken, it was intentional for the film to make sense and give more of a reason.
We knew from the start, before any line was wrote or and scene was imagined that we needed to create suspense in our film, leave the audience on the edge of there seats and most importantly, give the film a twist at the end in which the audience didn’t expect. This is how our film compares to other thrillers of its kind. The basics were there from the beginning, which was great. Another important aspects of our film that are similar to other thrillers is the music. A variety from a slow melodic sound at the beginning to create a tense atmosphere and then when the throwing of the bucket happens, an upbeat and heavy piece which bring an aggressive streak to the film.
Our film both goes along with stereotypical images and also goes against the stereotypical image of women. For instance, our main character, in which at the beginning of the film is portrayed as a weak and fragile women, crying and looking scared in a corner, then appears, as the film goes on, to be a strong and quite psychotic character.
Throughout the film you capture different aspects of the characters life and gain different judgements which change as each scene takes place. For instance whilst in the building in which she starts in, you feel sorry for her, crying in a corner, but later she starts throwing petrol all over and lights a lighter. But flashbacks throughout this scene show why she is doing such things so it helps give the audience their own judgement on the character.
We didn’t add elements of pastiche or parody due to the nature of our film. It wouldn’t fit right due to our filming wanting to create a disturbing atmosphere, not a humorous or comical one. Also we didn’t hint at other films through reference at all. Ant parts of the film, in which people believe were taken from other movies of the same genre, or other perhaps, were not intended. All the shots, story and characters were created by ourselves.
Depending on how you see the film and what mood the audience is in even, depends on whether pleasure is provided. The main pleasure I wished to achieve from the start of the film was simply enjoyment. I know from experience that the first thing I look for in a film is to enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, you don’t take notice and aren’t really bothered about the film. So straight away we planned on capturing the audience’s imagination and giving them 5 minutes of enjoyment. Depending on how the audience sees the film depends on other pleasures they may have. For instance some people may have an emotional response to the way in which Lauren, our main character, sets about her new life. How she has thought about running away and taking the chance at a new life. People watching this may have had a similar experience at one time or another in their life.
When we were producing and directing our short film, there were no real comparisons with any media texts that we interpreted into our own. But shortly after we had finished filming and editing, I caught a glimpse of a shot in a film called Trainspotting. In the shot the police are chasing down “Ewan Mcgregor” for the use of drugs gets in the way of a car. The shot of him is from inside of the car, showing “Ewan” looking straight at the camera as though it is in a first person view of the driver. This is exactly like one of our shots when Lauren gets in the way of the car at the end of our film.
How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
As a group we set out, from the very beginning to produce a thriller of the best quality and standard that we could achieve in the time we had and with the equipment in which we could use. We wanted the audience throughout to be puzzled by the situation, never knowing what is going to happen next. The two pieces of advertising products that we created were the radio trailer, and the poster.
The radio trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90cdPkgZvcM had many different personas speaking, all using a dark tone of voice, straight away causing an eerie and uncomfortable atmosphere in which the sound of the children’s toy in the background just added to it. There is also a short sound clip from the film, scene in which shouting and banging is heard. This yet again adds to the atmosphere and mood of the film.
The second piece was the poster. We all each created our own, and a final one was chosen to which we thought suited the style and genre of our film the best. This happened to be my poster.
In my poster I tried to create a dark atmosphere whilst also capturing the characters expression of sadness. I didn’t want to give too much away by putting a picture of a light or even a car. Just a simple snapshot from the film worked perfectly. I wanted to keep everything in the poster really dull, in away taking all the life from the advertisement without actually killing it. Giving a blue shadow around the title “AFFLICTED” and the stars from the ratings. The ratings I believe were a great touch to finish the poster of. Not only do they appear in all other poster, giving the audience something more to go by, but it helps capture the audience, dragging them in to read the ratings, therefore taking more time to look at our advertisement. There was only one main character in our film so I put her name right at the top of the poster so you knew straight away who the actor was. The final bit of the poster, which I had to change, was the age rating. Usually you see the rating in red, but I thought it would be clever to carry on with the blue theme and change the colour. I believe it worked extremely well.
Above are a few posters in which I looked at to give me inspiration for my own. The second picture, a film called “COBB” captured my eye at the start and I had the idea of boxing of the character and the having the detail and writing above and below the central image. After trying this out, in my opinion if just didn’t really look as good as it could, so I started to look again and found posters in which the main characters face was blended into the rest of the poster and the writing and titles were put around the image. Especially like the poster for “13”. This is what gave me the final idea to my poster. A close up of the main character, the title to the bottom left of the poster and the name of the actor at the top.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We asked 18 people of different age and locations around Yorkshire to complete a Questionnaire on short five-minute films. We asked them a series of questions on short Thrillers to find out what the audience would like to see when it came to the filming of our Thriller.
http://bca2media-group9.blogspot.com/2010/05/audience-questionnaire-results-and.html
This questionnaire gave us ideas of what to use in our film and what not to use in our film. We aimed the audience to be of a young age, between 18-25. This is due to the fact we wanted the opinions of the younger generation who maybe enjoy lots of Thrillers and would be able to answer the questions with greater detail. The results that we got were very helpful and helped toward the production of our film. But most of all, as you would expect, we got the feedback in which we wanted to hear. The audience wanted to see lots of suspense.
After we had completed a rough draft of the film we posted it onto youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhKyuQD8Qrc&feature=related
This gave us even more feedback from a wider audience. Positive and Negative feedback was received, but the most important of all was the fact that a few people were confused on how she got from the eerie garage to the road. Why she had gone and such forth. So we knew straight away we needed to add something simple yet effective to tie the start of the film to the end and help the story become that little bit more clear.
Thanks to the feedback that we received we managed to add a suicide note, in which the first draft on youtube doesn’t show. This helped tie the film together explaining why she has run away, how she is feeling and gives a deeper entail into the mind of Lauren, helping the audience to feel what Lauren is feeling inside.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
There are advantages aswell as disadvantages of using a wide variety of technology whilst filming our film. Some made our work a lot easier, whilst some got in the way and took away precious time that we had.
Advantages
The main advantages of the technology were the cameras. These were Sony HD1000. This camera improved the quality of the shots used in our film due to the fact it was filmed in HD.
Whilst editing the film afterwards, Finalcut express was used, opposed to moviemaker in which we used last year. This improved the quality of our film even more, being able to change the lighting to help with the continuity and finer cropping making it easier to assemble whilst putting the movie together.
We were also able to use different effects to make our movie more professional. For instance, to make our flashbacks appear clearer to the audience, we changed the scenes into black and white. This added to the films making it a lot more understanding and clear to watch.
Other equipment that we used to create our film were, a DV1000, which we were able to transfer all our shots to the computer for editing and a zoom recorder, to make the sound in the movie a lot clearer and without all the background noise.
Zoom Recorder
Our access to an Apple Mac, Final Cut, iMovie, Blogger, Garage Band and PhotoShop also made our time a lot easier. Helping with the production of the film and also the advertising side of things aswell.
Using this technology throughout the year has given me a wider range of skills for me now to use. I am able to change the colour of scene I just shot quite easily now, and also change the colour of photos and manipulate them to look as I wish.
Disadvantages
The only disadvantage really was the Blogger. It took me a while to realise how to go about the whole process of uploading into onto a website instead of just completing the work on other devices and saving them onto my computer. Many occasions I struggled with uploading and it just frustrated me and took valuable time away from me. Also with posting our work onto Youtube, we were unable to get the amount of feedback that we wished. There are few people who would log onto youtube and give their actual real opinion on a film made by college students.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Critically evaluating video production
In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As a group we came up with the storyline for 'Afflicted' together as we all wanted to create a unique film. By choosing to do a 5 minute film it gave us the opportunity to shoot different shots and really use our imaginations. We tried to use continuity throughout the making of the film to smooth over breaks and disruptions. We also used a variety of shots so that it was interesting throughout. To keep the variety shots strong and unique I improvised for one in particular which is of Lauren sat on the floor. I shot this from a high up perspective to create the effect almost as if someone is watching her. We also didn’t break the 180° rule. We cut some of the shots in one part of the film to create a frantic and distressed approach. Also, we picked some heavy music to add to this effect. I thought it would be a great idea to cut the shots really short so that they were doing the opposite of continuity in a way and together making a thrilling sequence.
I think that our film is similar in ways to other thrillers in that it leaves the audience in suspense and unsure about what is going to happen. An element we used to help create this atmosphere from the very beginning is our title sequence.
We shot our main character ‘Lauren’ in different areas around the same location and put them together to make it seem like she was jumping and appearing in different places. We used long shots and extreme long shots and then towards the end we used a medium shot which our actress walks off of.
We used mellow music in the background. I think our title sequence is effective because it makes the audience want to know more and therefore keeps them watching. I researched a few other title sequences and the ones which I thought had the best atmosphere I put links to;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VspdKtdsku8
This is the link to the opening scenes of Sin City. I liked this because at first it shows you a city with bright glowing lights and it appears chic and almost luxurious but then turns into red which automatically indicates thriller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UcnT3sMcfw&feature=related
I liked how the titles were made for Pulp Fiction because there is a tension as soon as the Miramax logo appears as there is a voiceover. The voice over is very clever as is entices us because it is quite out of the ordinary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY
Finally, i used the opening titles from the film 'Se7en'. I think that this is a great example for this genre as it isnt entirely clear what is going on and will therefore keep us watching in order to find out.
I think that our film provides emotional pleasures because as we get further into the film, Lauren has flashbacks and this makes the audience feel sorry for her. The flashbacks are easily recognisable because we put a black and white effect on them. Another audience pleasure would be intellectual pleasures. I think this because the storyline is not always clear and therefore leaves the audience wanting to solve what is going on and analyse the characters. Also, with intellectual audience pleasures draw upon the conventions of who has done it; relating to the fire in our case. However, the audience would not be questioning who had set the fire; they would be questioning who will find out, and if anyone is hurt.
How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
In our main production we were trying to create an atmosphere which was unpredictable and eerie. We were creating a drama/ thriller therefore we wanted the effect like the most popular dramas and thrillers around which is generally nail biting and captivating to the audience almost instantly. We created a radio trailer and each individually created film posters to promote our production. I think that our aims were also reflected in the two advertising products. For our radio trailer for example; we began with the voice of our main character Lauren, with the sound of a creepy tune from a child’s toy playing in the background; this was for the effect of a scary and fearful storyline.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90cdPkgZvcM
The trailer then goes on to Laurens parents arguing, and then a news report which I think creates suspicion. Then, to conclude, the name of the film is announced, along with the date that it will be shown, and the slogan to leave the audience wondering more about it. I believe that our trailer fits well with our initial aims because it isn’t giving too much of the story away, and yet it is still telling us what we need to know. The poster I created is a lighter sparking on a black background. I used this image because it was eye catching and explosive.
MY OWN POSTER HERE - IT WOULDN'T LOAD :(
The flames are shooting off of the lighter in all directions which was brilliant and it worked well with the theme of our film because Lauren covers the garage in petrol and then uses a lighter to set the fire, this was my link. I made the title of the film look like one of the sparks coming from the lighter so that it would stand out which was quite tricky to do but it turned out alright in the end. I also put the name of the actress at the top of the poster like on real advertisements. Another idea I took from real posters and incorporated into my own was reviews. I made up 3 reviews and put them at the top, and the final addition to my poster was the month it would be coming out ‘DECEMBER’. After researching radio trailers and film posters I tried to interlink ideas and methods from the researched pieces into my own. Films are being promoted and sold purely through posters and radio trailers by using different techniques which attract audiences and attention and I have tried to add some of these features into my own work.
We then decided on one of our four posters to use for our final group promotional poster:
I also researched some other film posters of the same genre to compare. The last of which, is ‘Salt’ and has a close up of Angelina Jolie’s face just like our group poster. This instantly shows us the main character. However, Jolie’s focus is forward, showing she has set her mind on something, unlike our character Lauren is focusing away which could show some kind of rebellion.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We asked 18 people of different ages from all over Yorkshire to complete a Questionnaire about five-minute films. We asked them a series of questions on short Thrillers to find out what the audience would like to see when it came to the filming of our Thriller.
http://bca2media-group9.blogspot.com/2010/05/audience-questionnaire-results-and.html
We aimed our questionnaire for younger ages such as around 15-30. We did this because we thought that these would generally be the most attracted to our film genre. From our questionnaire we found that what people liked in short films was normally suspense and excitement. This was a great result as we had intended for our thriller to be full of suspense and the unexpected.
After our first draft of our film had been made, we posted it onto YouTube and asked people to leave feedback and constructive criticism comments below for us to read and take on board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhKyuQD8Qrc
Our comments involved positive and negative comments which helped us to realise stronger and weaker points to our film. We had a comment about our title sequence which was ‘The intro also creates the atmosphere brilliantly’ (referring to the titles):
This is showing us that it is as we intended and that it is creating an atmosphere from the very beginning of the film. I believe that our audience response from our film was good and the target audience was met I think our characters were believable and it was easy to understand.
During the production of our film project I have used digital cameras and editing resources and also digital sound recording equipment. Also, the internet has been used throughout. These involved the Sony HD 1000, a DV100 which was used to transfer shots from the camera onto the computer, a Nikon D60 I used to take photographs of the location, a Zoom Recorder, an Apple Mac, Final Cut, iMovie, Blogger, Garage Band and Photoshop.
Sony HD 1000
Adobe Photoshop
Zoom Recorder
Final Cut
Also, I used creativity within these to create the likes of posters, title sequences and the radio trailer. Through using all of the technology listed above, I learned a wide range of skills and now would feel quite confident if I were to use any of them again. For example; the colour corrector in Final Cut;
Due to us having filmed the shot from different points of view and areas around our location, the colour was changing because of the sunlight shining from different sides etc. Therefore the colour corrector was an excellent tool we used to help prevent major inconsistencies and noticeable colour changes. It also brought a more professional approach and a more sophisticated look to our film. For the research and planning stages of the production we created a storyboard, character profiles, photographs, risk assessment, scripting, call sheet, cast and crew lists, prop lists and location information. Creating the storyboard was a tricky process because after sketching each shot, I had to scan take photographs of each frame, load them into the computer and then create a movie from them in iMovie which was very time consuming and a lot of hard work. I also used conventions from real media texts for my research. I did this by writing an analysis on a 5-minute film which I found on YouTube called ‘Asleep’ However, the film was over five minutes but I decided to analyse it anyway because it was perfect for inspiration into our own film.
As a group we came up with the storyline for 'Afflicted' together as we all wanted to create a unique film. By choosing to do a 5 minute film it gave us the opportunity to shoot different shots and really use our imaginations. We tried to use continuity throughout the making of the film to smooth over breaks and disruptions. We also used a variety of shots so that it was interesting throughout. To keep the variety shots strong and unique I improvised for one in particular which is of Lauren sat on the floor. I shot this from a high up perspective to create the effect almost as if someone is watching her. We also didn’t break the 180° rule. We cut some of the shots in one part of the film to create a frantic and distressed approach. Also, we picked some heavy music to add to this effect. I thought it would be a great idea to cut the shots really short so that they were doing the opposite of continuity in a way and together making a thrilling sequence.
I think that our film is similar in ways to other thrillers in that it leaves the audience in suspense and unsure about what is going to happen. An element we used to help create this atmosphere from the very beginning is our title sequence.
We shot our main character ‘Lauren’ in different areas around the same location and put them together to make it seem like she was jumping and appearing in different places. We used long shots and extreme long shots and then towards the end we used a medium shot which our actress walks off of.
We used mellow music in the background. I think our title sequence is effective because it makes the audience want to know more and therefore keeps them watching. I researched a few other title sequences and the ones which I thought had the best atmosphere I put links to;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VspdKtdsku8
This is the link to the opening scenes of Sin City. I liked this because at first it shows you a city with bright glowing lights and it appears chic and almost luxurious but then turns into red which automatically indicates thriller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UcnT3sMcfw&feature=related
I liked how the titles were made for Pulp Fiction because there is a tension as soon as the Miramax logo appears as there is a voiceover. The voice over is very clever as is entices us because it is quite out of the ordinary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY
Finally, i used the opening titles from the film 'Se7en'. I think that this is a great example for this genre as it isnt entirely clear what is going on and will therefore keep us watching in order to find out.
I think that our film provides emotional pleasures because as we get further into the film, Lauren has flashbacks and this makes the audience feel sorry for her. The flashbacks are easily recognisable because we put a black and white effect on them. Another audience pleasure would be intellectual pleasures. I think this because the storyline is not always clear and therefore leaves the audience wanting to solve what is going on and analyse the characters. Also, with intellectual audience pleasures draw upon the conventions of who has done it; relating to the fire in our case. However, the audience would not be questioning who had set the fire; they would be questioning who will find out, and if anyone is hurt.
How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
In our main production we were trying to create an atmosphere which was unpredictable and eerie. We were creating a drama/ thriller therefore we wanted the effect like the most popular dramas and thrillers around which is generally nail biting and captivating to the audience almost instantly. We created a radio trailer and each individually created film posters to promote our production. I think that our aims were also reflected in the two advertising products. For our radio trailer for example; we began with the voice of our main character Lauren, with the sound of a creepy tune from a child’s toy playing in the background; this was for the effect of a scary and fearful storyline.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90cdPkgZvcM
The trailer then goes on to Laurens parents arguing, and then a news report which I think creates suspicion. Then, to conclude, the name of the film is announced, along with the date that it will be shown, and the slogan to leave the audience wondering more about it. I believe that our trailer fits well with our initial aims because it isn’t giving too much of the story away, and yet it is still telling us what we need to know. The poster I created is a lighter sparking on a black background. I used this image because it was eye catching and explosive.
MY OWN POSTER HERE - IT WOULDN'T LOAD :(
The flames are shooting off of the lighter in all directions which was brilliant and it worked well with the theme of our film because Lauren covers the garage in petrol and then uses a lighter to set the fire, this was my link. I made the title of the film look like one of the sparks coming from the lighter so that it would stand out which was quite tricky to do but it turned out alright in the end. I also put the name of the actress at the top of the poster like on real advertisements. Another idea I took from real posters and incorporated into my own was reviews. I made up 3 reviews and put them at the top, and the final addition to my poster was the month it would be coming out ‘DECEMBER’. After researching radio trailers and film posters I tried to interlink ideas and methods from the researched pieces into my own. Films are being promoted and sold purely through posters and radio trailers by using different techniques which attract audiences and attention and I have tried to add some of these features into my own work.
We then decided on one of our four posters to use for our final group promotional poster:
I also researched some other film posters of the same genre to compare. The last of which, is ‘Salt’ and has a close up of Angelina Jolie’s face just like our group poster. This instantly shows us the main character. However, Jolie’s focus is forward, showing she has set her mind on something, unlike our character Lauren is focusing away which could show some kind of rebellion.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We asked 18 people of different ages from all over Yorkshire to complete a Questionnaire about five-minute films. We asked them a series of questions on short Thrillers to find out what the audience would like to see when it came to the filming of our Thriller.
http://bca2media-group9.blogspot.com/2010/05/audience-questionnaire-results-and.html
We aimed our questionnaire for younger ages such as around 15-30. We did this because we thought that these would generally be the most attracted to our film genre. From our questionnaire we found that what people liked in short films was normally suspense and excitement. This was a great result as we had intended for our thriller to be full of suspense and the unexpected.
After our first draft of our film had been made, we posted it onto YouTube and asked people to leave feedback and constructive criticism comments below for us to read and take on board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhKyuQD8Qrc
Our comments involved positive and negative comments which helped us to realise stronger and weaker points to our film. We had a comment about our title sequence which was ‘The intro also creates the atmosphere brilliantly’ (referring to the titles):
This is showing us that it is as we intended and that it is creating an atmosphere from the very beginning of the film. I believe that our audience response from our film was good and the target audience was met I think our characters were believable and it was easy to understand.
However, this was only our first draft therefore didn’t contain our suicide note scene. The suicide note scene was unplanned and spontaneous but was a great idea as it made the story line a lot more thrilling and was also giving more speech into the film.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the production of our film project I have used digital cameras and editing resources and also digital sound recording equipment. Also, the internet has been used throughout. These involved the Sony HD 1000, a DV100 which was used to transfer shots from the camera onto the computer, a Nikon D60 I used to take photographs of the location, a Zoom Recorder, an Apple Mac, Final Cut, iMovie, Blogger, Garage Band and Photoshop.
Sony HD 1000
Adobe Photoshop
Zoom Recorder
Garage Band (used for trailer)
Final Cut
Also, I used creativity within these to create the likes of posters, title sequences and the radio trailer. Through using all of the technology listed above, I learned a wide range of skills and now would feel quite confident if I were to use any of them again. For example; the colour corrector in Final Cut;
Due to us having filmed the shot from different points of view and areas around our location, the colour was changing because of the sunlight shining from different sides etc. Therefore the colour corrector was an excellent tool we used to help prevent major inconsistencies and noticeable colour changes. It also brought a more professional approach and a more sophisticated look to our film. For the research and planning stages of the production we created a storyboard, character profiles, photographs, risk assessment, scripting, call sheet, cast and crew lists, prop lists and location information. Creating the storyboard was a tricky process because after sketching each shot, I had to scan take photographs of each frame, load them into the computer and then create a movie from them in iMovie which was very time consuming and a lot of hard work. I also used conventions from real media texts for my research. I did this by writing an analysis on a 5-minute film which I found on YouTube called ‘Asleep’ However, the film was over five minutes but I decided to analyse it anyway because it was perfect for inspiration into our own film.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Critically evaluating product
In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film largely adheres to the conventions of continuity through match on action shots, for example, the two shots of the news report move from a third-person perspective to a first-person perspective, but the audio of the report continued through cuts in synch with the reader's lips.
we also used other means of tying our film together across shots. For example, the use of diegetic sound (the toy) smoothes the cuts and gives them elliptical coherence. However, we broke some of these rules in order to distort our film. Firstly, we used flashbacks to make our film non-linear. This develops the storyline and gives the viewer insight, whilst building suspense. Also, we broke continuity at the mid-point of our film, where the protagonist douses the garage with petrol and sets it alight. Here, we used jump cuts, this was effective as not only did it speed up the tempo of the film, it created a really distorted atmosphere, and made the character's actions seem more frantic. Additionally, the unusual appearance of a jump cut makes the scene much more visually stimulating.
Our film both confirms and subverts stereotypes of the thriller genre. Initially, the main character of our film is portrayed as the victim (typical of women in thriller genre), most of our shots are at eye-level or higher, making her appear smaller. Particularly in our flashbacks does she appear victimised- she is seen with her head in her hands, even writing a suicide note, the quiet, melancholy sound of the toy reinforce this. However, once our film speeds during the petrol seen, the shots become quick, and the music is quick and heavy. The mood moves from dejection to anger.
By the end of the film you realise it was all staged, that the character is cunning and has taken control of circumstances, which subverts expectations of women in such films. Though our character challenged conventions, the structure of our film was relatively conventional. The grungy garage fits with the iconography of a thriller, as does the idea of arson, and this was furthered by our costumes and the dark lighting. The twist in the film is also highly conventional of thriller, particularly short films in which something interesting must happen within a short space of time due not having the ability to extensively develop the plot.
In our film, we have not used pastiche or parody; mainly, this is due to the fact that pastiche and parody create a humorous tone and our film is not intended to be funny. Also, there is a risk that when parodying something, you can be too subtle (or too overt) and so the deliberate element of parody is overlooked, and you appear to have plagiarised. Though our film was influenced by many others, there is no intertextuality.
Our short film intends to provide many different forms of pleasure, primarily, intellectual, counter-culture and emotional pleasure. It provides intellectual pleasure because it adheres to the "twist" conventions of a thriller. The point of realisation allows the viewer to place the pieces together and realise that the events have been staged, and because the viewer has been included in this knowledge they feel satisfied. Secondly, we provide emotional pleasure because of the sympathy evoked for the main character. Because the issue tackled, domestic violence, is so commonplace, many viewers would not only sympathise but empathise (which also conforms with the integration and social interaction elements of Uses and Gratifications). Finally, counter-culture pleasure is provided by the actions of the protagonist. Her total seizing of control, her arson and her escape stimulate the viewer because the events are "larger-than-life" and the viewer can find escapism in the drama.
The short story I took most inspiration from was the one I discussed in the short film analysis, called "This is the Place"
What I found particularly interesting about this film is the characterisation. The woman is represented as the intellectual, and also as in control of the situation. The man is at her command and is portrayed as bumbling and a little bit useless, all things considered. The film is incredibly well structured- the twist is totally unexpected and subverts your attitudes towards the characters. They move from well respected investigative officers to calculating murderers. The idea of character shift interests me and I wanted our character to move from victim to culprit.
This is the Place also leaves the audience wondering what their motives are, so not everything is perfectly tied up, I think this is something we wanted to take to our film. We wanted our viewers to be able to finish the story themselves and make their own assumptions.
Also, this film is edited in a way that creates distortion, just like our product. The sepia effect and blurring work well with the violent imagery and the distortion gives a sense of uncertainty. Flashbacks are used in This is the Place to fill in gaps in the narrative and suggest new paths for the narrative to follow. They show the viewer why the characters are where they are, in the same way the flashbacks in our film show the protagonist's situation and we follow her experience through the use of flashbacks.
In terms of specific shots, the shot that was taken inside the car was inspired by the opening sequence of Trainspotting. I thought the shot worked well because it moved quickly, involved another perspective and just seemed unusual.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We wanted our product to be a successfully thriller, that had a strong storyline and conclusion within 5 minutes. Our film is dark and depressing, and therefore our ancillary texts reflect this. As individuals, we created a poster and then took elements from each forward to our main poster. Below is my attempt to create a poster. This is a still taken from our title sequence. I wanted to show the character on the poster because I feel it's important to let your audience know who will be in the film (this is particularly important when marketing a high-budget film with stars in) so I followed this convention. The writing is in a hand-written style, which seems informal and it also reflects the writing of the suicide note in the film. I intentionally made the poster darker than it was in the film. My reasoning behind this was because I wanted to market the film in a melancholy way, and the dark colours wash everything together which makes the character blend in, and seem insignificant (even though she is at the forefront of the image). The lamp just breaks up the darkness of the image, and the trees stand out more against this.
These were the comments left on our Youtube. Of particular importance is the top comment. We had originally ended with the car driving away, but before the suicide note scene was added this dynamic didn't seem to work. After having the idea mentioned by a member of our audience and contemplating it ourselves, we decided to do this. This is the most prominent example of the audience having a direct influence on my film.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
There are a number of advantages of the wide number of technologies used in the production of our film, but these also come with many disadvantages.
Advantages:
the cameras we used allowed us to film in HD, which meant the quality of our film would be much higher. Similarly, using Final Cut Express as opposed to Moviemaker improved the quality of our film and made it appear more professional.
Final Cut Express allowed us to broaden our horizons creatively. There were a wide range of effects that could be utilised. For example, the first scene (excluding title sequence) of our film differed in colour between shots, some were tinted yellow by sunlight. Because we wanted to garage to look cold and unwelcoming we colour corrected it to match all of the shots and give them a blue tint.
The ability to use effects also allowed us to establish our narrative. Putting our flashbacks in black and white flagged them up as different from the rest of the film, and this marked them out as flashbacks. This allows to viewer to realise that the film is non-linear and avoid confusion.
Final Cut Express also allowed us to create a title sequence that felt genuine and looked professional. Though we could have created our own font we decided to stick with something simplistic and clear, and let the images be the focal point.
We also had access to a wide range of music to apply to our films. We searched through CDs and websites to gain music that fitted with the mood of each scene. We overlapped tracks to give a louder, busier sound to the climax of our film.
Disadvantages:
The biggest disadvantage of using only technological mediums was maintaining the blog. I didn't have constant access to a computer and so couldn't update things as frequently as I would have liked to, also, I had many problems with upload failures and website crashes that were not only stressful but at times it meant that my work suffered.
Because the internet isn't accessible to everyone, we didn't get as much feedback as we'd liked. Even though we told many people about our first draft film being published online we only managed to get four comments (one of which was inappropriate and had to be deleted) and so that aspect of research didn't work particularly well.
Our film largely adheres to the conventions of continuity through match on action shots, for example, the two shots of the news report move from a third-person perspective to a first-person perspective, but the audio of the report continued through cuts in synch with the reader's lips.
we also used other means of tying our film together across shots. For example, the use of diegetic sound (the toy) smoothes the cuts and gives them elliptical coherence. However, we broke some of these rules in order to distort our film. Firstly, we used flashbacks to make our film non-linear. This develops the storyline and gives the viewer insight, whilst building suspense. Also, we broke continuity at the mid-point of our film, where the protagonist douses the garage with petrol and sets it alight. Here, we used jump cuts, this was effective as not only did it speed up the tempo of the film, it created a really distorted atmosphere, and made the character's actions seem more frantic. Additionally, the unusual appearance of a jump cut makes the scene much more visually stimulating.
Our film both confirms and subverts stereotypes of the thriller genre. Initially, the main character of our film is portrayed as the victim (typical of women in thriller genre), most of our shots are at eye-level or higher, making her appear smaller. Particularly in our flashbacks does she appear victimised- she is seen with her head in her hands, even writing a suicide note, the quiet, melancholy sound of the toy reinforce this. However, once our film speeds during the petrol seen, the shots become quick, and the music is quick and heavy. The mood moves from dejection to anger.
By the end of the film you realise it was all staged, that the character is cunning and has taken control of circumstances, which subverts expectations of women in such films. Though our character challenged conventions, the structure of our film was relatively conventional. The grungy garage fits with the iconography of a thriller, as does the idea of arson, and this was furthered by our costumes and the dark lighting. The twist in the film is also highly conventional of thriller, particularly short films in which something interesting must happen within a short space of time due not having the ability to extensively develop the plot.
In our film, we have not used pastiche or parody; mainly, this is due to the fact that pastiche and parody create a humorous tone and our film is not intended to be funny. Also, there is a risk that when parodying something, you can be too subtle (or too overt) and so the deliberate element of parody is overlooked, and you appear to have plagiarised. Though our film was influenced by many others, there is no intertextuality.
Our short film intends to provide many different forms of pleasure, primarily, intellectual, counter-culture and emotional pleasure. It provides intellectual pleasure because it adheres to the "twist" conventions of a thriller. The point of realisation allows the viewer to place the pieces together and realise that the events have been staged, and because the viewer has been included in this knowledge they feel satisfied. Secondly, we provide emotional pleasure because of the sympathy evoked for the main character. Because the issue tackled, domestic violence, is so commonplace, many viewers would not only sympathise but empathise (which also conforms with the integration and social interaction elements of Uses and Gratifications). Finally, counter-culture pleasure is provided by the actions of the protagonist. Her total seizing of control, her arson and her escape stimulate the viewer because the events are "larger-than-life" and the viewer can find escapism in the drama.
The short story I took most inspiration from was the one I discussed in the short film analysis, called "This is the Place"
What I found particularly interesting about this film is the characterisation. The woman is represented as the intellectual, and also as in control of the situation. The man is at her command and is portrayed as bumbling and a little bit useless, all things considered. The film is incredibly well structured- the twist is totally unexpected and subverts your attitudes towards the characters. They move from well respected investigative officers to calculating murderers. The idea of character shift interests me and I wanted our character to move from victim to culprit.
This is the Place also leaves the audience wondering what their motives are, so not everything is perfectly tied up, I think this is something we wanted to take to our film. We wanted our viewers to be able to finish the story themselves and make their own assumptions.
Also, this film is edited in a way that creates distortion, just like our product. The sepia effect and blurring work well with the violent imagery and the distortion gives a sense of uncertainty. Flashbacks are used in This is the Place to fill in gaps in the narrative and suggest new paths for the narrative to follow. They show the viewer why the characters are where they are, in the same way the flashbacks in our film show the protagonist's situation and we follow her experience through the use of flashbacks.
In terms of specific shots, the shot that was taken inside the car was inspired by the opening sequence of Trainspotting. I thought the shot worked well because it moved quickly, involved another perspective and just seemed unusual.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We wanted our product to be a successfully thriller, that had a strong storyline and conclusion within 5 minutes. Our film is dark and depressing, and therefore our ancillary texts reflect this. As individuals, we created a poster and then took elements from each forward to our main poster. Below is my attempt to create a poster. This is a still taken from our title sequence. I wanted to show the character on the poster because I feel it's important to let your audience know who will be in the film (this is particularly important when marketing a high-budget film with stars in) so I followed this convention. The writing is in a hand-written style, which seems informal and it also reflects the writing of the suicide note in the film. I intentionally made the poster darker than it was in the film. My reasoning behind this was because I wanted to market the film in a melancholy way, and the dark colours wash everything together which makes the character blend in, and seem insignificant (even though she is at the forefront of the image). The lamp just breaks up the darkness of the image, and the trees stand out more against this.
Below is our final poster:
The final poster also uses a still from the film, for the same reasons as discussed above. This particular image encompasses the mood of the film; the character looks despondent and distressed. The light only shines on half of the face, shadowing the other half; this has the effect of creating two sides to the character and hiding part of her. The font is plain and bold, this makes it easily legible, and the white stands against a black background. Underneath is a tagline, a convention of many posters. We decided to go with the idea of "flames" to give an insight into the full plot.
The poster for the film "23" is very similar to ours. Like our poster, this uses a facial close up showing Carey looking somewhat demonic. The scribbles add to this effect. Like our poster, the main actor's name is along the top in a bold, simple font (again, because it is important to let your audience know who stars in the film). Rather unconventionally, the title of the film is tucked away in a corner; I don't particularly feel this is effective. I think ours works better in this sense because the title is larger and dominates the image more.
The second text we did to support our product was a radio trailer.
In taking soundbites from our film we knew that the two would cohere and support one another perfectly. I feel that both the products successfully contribute to the main product, they both assist portraying the mood of our film, and they also successfully work within advertising conventions.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
When planning our film, we carried out a questionnaire amongst our peers, but also of people from outside college to find out firstly, what their preferences were to films in general, and then more specifically to what they thought of short films. The majority of those who had an awareness of short films expected them to be on channel 4 (for example, 3 minute wonders). This led us to look into the types of short filmed played by channel four. Overall, key features that arose from our questionnaires were that our sample audience wanted the film to keep you in suspense and to have a brief, but complete storyline. The downfalls associated with short films are obvious, but still easy to do. Many of those we questioned said that they felt that short films appeared rushed and at times careless, so this was one thing we made our priority.
When we were filming our product the main problem that we came across was that the film didn't quite seem to tie together. Our first draft (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhKyuQD8Qrc) didn't contain the suicide note, and so the girl's duplicity and escape didn't seem apparent, therefore, we took it upon ourselves to film an additional (and unplanned) scene. It worked well, not only did it tie our film together and put the last piece of the jigsaw in place, but it added another element to the narrative of the film and gave the "twist" greater impact, we thought this would create greater enjoyment amongst our viewers.
We tried to use a wide range of shots from numerous angles, purely to make our film more interesting to watch and to be more visceral. At the forefront of our creativity was our need to create the feelings of the protagonist. We used a lot of different effects to distort the film somewhat, for example the speeding up of the titles sequence, which looks twitchy and the rolling of the clouds appears ominous. We chose our locations with audience in mind- the garage and country road seem typical of thriller films and sticking with the iconography would satisfy our audience's preference for the conventions of a thriller/horror.
We showed our film to all students in our class, and also placed the link on youtube/facebook. Our peers were all impressed and gave positive feedback, though mainly suggested that you could really tell that the film was unfinished, needed tidying up and needed to cohere more.
These were the comments left on our Youtube. Of particular importance is the top comment. We had originally ended with the car driving away, but before the suicide note scene was added this dynamic didn't seem to work. After having the idea mentioned by a member of our audience and contemplating it ourselves, we decided to do this. This is the most prominent example of the audience having a direct influence on my film.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
There are a number of advantages of the wide number of technologies used in the production of our film, but these also come with many disadvantages.
Advantages:
the cameras we used allowed us to film in HD, which meant the quality of our film would be much higher. Similarly, using Final Cut Express as opposed to Moviemaker improved the quality of our film and made it appear more professional.
Final Cut Express allowed us to broaden our horizons creatively. There were a wide range of effects that could be utilised. For example, the first scene (excluding title sequence) of our film differed in colour between shots, some were tinted yellow by sunlight. Because we wanted to garage to look cold and unwelcoming we colour corrected it to match all of the shots and give them a blue tint.
The ability to use effects also allowed us to establish our narrative. Putting our flashbacks in black and white flagged them up as different from the rest of the film, and this marked them out as flashbacks. This allows to viewer to realise that the film is non-linear and avoid confusion.
Final Cut Express also allowed us to create a title sequence that felt genuine and looked professional. Though we could have created our own font we decided to stick with something simplistic and clear, and let the images be the focal point.
We also had access to a wide range of music to apply to our films. We searched through CDs and websites to gain music that fitted with the mood of each scene. We overlapped tracks to give a louder, busier sound to the climax of our film.
During the composition of our radio trailer we moved away from Final Cut Express and into Garage Band.
We used more advanced sound technologies when overdubbing dialogue. For this we used a zoom recorder, it was easy to use, accessible and high-quality.
We used more advanced sound technologies when overdubbing dialogue. For this we used a zoom recorder, it was easy to use, accessible and high-quality.
Disadvantages:
The biggest disadvantage of using only technological mediums was maintaining the blog. I didn't have constant access to a computer and so couldn't update things as frequently as I would have liked to, also, I had many problems with upload failures and website crashes that were not only stressful but at times it meant that my work suffered.
Because the internet isn't accessible to everyone, we didn't get as much feedback as we'd liked. Even though we told many people about our first draft film being published online we only managed to get four comments (one of which was inappropriate and had to be deleted) and so that aspect of research didn't work particularly well.
Monday, 3 May 2010
Afflicted Radio Trailer
As part of our course, we were required to create texts to support the marketing of our product, and this is our radio trailer.
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Audience Questionnaire Results and Evaluation
Andrew Lingard
We asked 18 people of different age and locations around Yorkshire to complete a Questionnaire on short five-minute films. We asked them a series of questions on short Thrillers to find out what the audience would like to see when it came to the filming of our Thriller.
1. There were 12 male participants and 6 female participants who answered the questionnaire. The reason for the more males than females is just an error on judgement. More males were wiling to participate in the answering of the questionnaire.
2. The age group was mainly 15-18 due to the fact that the audience going to watch out film would be around this age. We tried to get a few older people to answer also to give some variety on the answers. There were no participants at the age of 30+.
3. Students are the main group in our questionnaire. The second highest group was waiters/Waitresses, but these where still very far behind. Finally there were two other participants, a Policeman and a Doctor.
4. 16 out of the 18 participants where from Barnsley. The final two were from Sheffield. We tried to create a vast area that we could ask people but it came down to just asking a variety of different people.
5. Out of the whole 18 people in which participated in answering the questions, only 6 actually watch short films. This came as a disadvantage to us, but we managed to work our way around it, as the people had a vague idea on short films and were they appeared.
6. Most of the people who have answered this question said that they couldn’t remember what film they watched. Six people haven’t answered due to admitting they don’t watch Short films with only one person naming an actual film they have seen, “Mikes Car”. The rest say they’ve seen them on YouTube.
7. Most people expect to see short films on Channel 4, followed closely by YouTube and then just behind that, Paramount Comedy. Other results showed “not sure”, “Itv2” and “BBC3”.
8. For question 8, the large majority of people believed that short films, if seen at any time, would be after 9 o clock in the evening. This gave us a rough guide on when an audience expects to watch these types of films. There were the odd few that believed that short films would be seen slightly before 9. No one suggested watching films in the daytime.
9. Most people didn’t answer this question because they didn’t know how to answer the question or they hadn’t really seen a full version of a short film. But for the people who answered this question, a lot of violence, murder and suspense were in the films they watched.
10.A) The main positive of a short film, which nearly all the participants agreed with is that short films are usually easily watchable. The other answers we received which didn’t gain any votes were that:
• Sometimes Funny
• Gives good ideas for your own project
• Quick and easily accessible.
10.B) Most of the participants believed that the negative points of short films are that they are way too rushed, so you aren’t able to be captured by the film. The other two answers we received were that the actors/actresses were not able to act, or that the film was too short to be able to know what was going on.
11. There were quite a few answers to this question, varying with each participant so we asked them to cut there answers to a short quick response for us to be able to read and record the results and take the answers into accounts. We were then given 4 different answers. The things that make a good short film are:
• Suspense
• Exciting
• Good Storylines
• Giving people a chance to create their own film.
12. The vast amount of people said Horror and Comedy were the main Genres in which they like to watch from a short film. Supernatural and Action were not far behind those two. Science Fiction was the least popular genre of film.
We asked 18 people of different age and locations around Yorkshire to complete a Questionnaire on short five-minute films. We asked them a series of questions on short Thrillers to find out what the audience would like to see when it came to the filming of our Thriller.
1. There were 12 male participants and 6 female participants who answered the questionnaire. The reason for the more males than females is just an error on judgement. More males were wiling to participate in the answering of the questionnaire.
2. The age group was mainly 15-18 due to the fact that the audience going to watch out film would be around this age. We tried to get a few older people to answer also to give some variety on the answers. There were no participants at the age of 30+.
3. Students are the main group in our questionnaire. The second highest group was waiters/Waitresses, but these where still very far behind. Finally there were two other participants, a Policeman and a Doctor.
4. 16 out of the 18 participants where from Barnsley. The final two were from Sheffield. We tried to create a vast area that we could ask people but it came down to just asking a variety of different people.
5. Out of the whole 18 people in which participated in answering the questions, only 6 actually watch short films. This came as a disadvantage to us, but we managed to work our way around it, as the people had a vague idea on short films and were they appeared.
6. Most of the people who have answered this question said that they couldn’t remember what film they watched. Six people haven’t answered due to admitting they don’t watch Short films with only one person naming an actual film they have seen, “Mikes Car”. The rest say they’ve seen them on YouTube.
7. Most people expect to see short films on Channel 4, followed closely by YouTube and then just behind that, Paramount Comedy. Other results showed “not sure”, “Itv2” and “BBC3”.
8. For question 8, the large majority of people believed that short films, if seen at any time, would be after 9 o clock in the evening. This gave us a rough guide on when an audience expects to watch these types of films. There were the odd few that believed that short films would be seen slightly before 9. No one suggested watching films in the daytime.
9. Most people didn’t answer this question because they didn’t know how to answer the question or they hadn’t really seen a full version of a short film. But for the people who answered this question, a lot of violence, murder and suspense were in the films they watched.
10.A) The main positive of a short film, which nearly all the participants agreed with is that short films are usually easily watchable. The other answers we received which didn’t gain any votes were that:
• Sometimes Funny
• Gives good ideas for your own project
• Quick and easily accessible.
10.B) Most of the participants believed that the negative points of short films are that they are way too rushed, so you aren’t able to be captured by the film. The other two answers we received were that the actors/actresses were not able to act, or that the film was too short to be able to know what was going on.
11. There were quite a few answers to this question, varying with each participant so we asked them to cut there answers to a short quick response for us to be able to read and record the results and take the answers into accounts. We were then given 4 different answers. The things that make a good short film are:
• Suspense
• Exciting
• Good Storylines
• Giving people a chance to create their own film.
12. The vast amount of people said Horror and Comedy were the main Genres in which they like to watch from a short film. Supernatural and Action were not far behind those two. Science Fiction was the least popular genre of film.
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