Evaluation question 7

From looking at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I think as a group we have come a long way in the progression and standard of our media texts. I think we have improved in every part of making a film and I think we have progressed well.
In the preliminary task we were asked to make a short film and in the final product we were asked to make a opening scene. When we started the preliminary task we didn't really know a lot about the different types f camera shots and angles. We had learnt them but we had never used them before so we probably didn't use them as effectively as we would of liked it to.

This is a screenshot from the opening scene within our preliminary task. You cannot see from this buy this was a little shaky because we didn't use a tri pod. this is compared to our newest opening scene task where the camera was never shaky unless intentional.

The planning for our opening scene was a lot more organised and we completed this much quickly because we knew exactly what we had to do as we have had some practice before and had completed it. This made it much easier for us as the quicker we planned what were had to do then the quicker we could go out and film and spend more time filing and editing. An example of this is when we completed the storyboard we stated which shots we should be using for each one so when we went to film we would know where to set up and exactly where we needed to be meaning it wouldn't take us long to film. this made the filming much smoother and meant that we would have more time to edit.

Some of the camera shots we also used improved a lot because in our preliminary task we used an over the shoulder/tracking shot which was slightly shaky whereas when we used this shot in our opening scene we had the tripod so it allowed the camera to move smoothly. We also made sure that we followed the 180 degree rule, math on action and shot reverse shots and used them effectively which was important because these are all important when it comes to camera.  

When it came to me using the camera and the Mac to edit I felt much more comfortable to use them both with the opening scene. Previously I had never used these equipment before so I was a bit unsure what I was doing but over the year I had practiced meaning that I was more comfortable and new exactly what I was doing on them meaning I could use them more effectively and concluding in giving it a more professional look.

I think the end product of our opening scene was overall good. We had good feedback from people but the only problem we had with it as a group is that we thought it was too short. If we had more time we would have gone back to make it a bit longer and add more in. I think it was good though because our film created a lot of tension and made the audience ask a lot of questions such as "who is this man? what is he doing?" which was our intentions.  

Evaluation question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Overall I think the camera that we used was very good. It showed what we filmed in good quality and it was very simple to use. I liked using it because I found it quite easy and I felt comfortable enough to use it by myself and it was a big step up from the camera used in the preliminary task. We also used a dolly for our camera this time which allowed our camera to move much smoother for tracking shots so as long as were on flat ground it would run smoothly.

When we was filming the only problem we faced was outside interference from other people. this was a problem because we did not have the right to tell people t get out our shot so we would have to wait for them to move patiently but this took up a lot of time. This wasn't a huge problem however because as soon as they were out of the shot it would mean that we could start filming again so this problem was not too difficult to over come.

For the editing we used iMovie. I think this was a good programme to use because it was quite simple to understand and I am not normally good with things like editing but I found this quite easy to use meaning I could edit effectively. It allowed us to use different effects in order to make our film look more of an action film and also allowed us to hide some of our mistakes. An example of this is when the man at the front door was wearing a helmet and you could see the person filming him in the lens but because of the effect you could not see the camera man.

Another mistake we made was that in the opening scene it shows the alarm going off and the time on the phone which was not a realistic time to wake up. We could have changed this by going back and filming but we did not have the time and it was not an obvious mistake.

As a group I think we worked well because we are all good friends so this allowed us to cooperate well and work together. I enjoyed working with them because I feel like we are all on the same wave length and understand each other.

We have been logging our work by the software 'blogger' which I think is good. I liked it because I like to do my work electronically but the issue I had with it was that I didn't embed some of the images and pictures on but only copy and pasted them on which does not show them. I also had the issue of moving the pictures about because it was hard to control where they went and I found it frustrating at times.

Evaluation question 5

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Certification has to be thought about when thinking of the target audience for our film. This is because if our film is going to be an 18, then this would mean it is not going to be available to watch for a wide selection of people e.g. 16 year olds who are still in our target audience. Our film was chosen to be a 15 because that is the general starting age for people who like action films so we decided to make sure we did not use anything in our film which would declare it an 18.

We would expect our target audience to be from the age of 15 up to about 30 because this is the age group which tend to like action films and go to see them. We would also mainly expect them to be males because stereotypical they are the ones which watch action films because they are seen to be more manly.

I would expect my target audience to watch a few action films before and watch programmes on TV such as 24 because they relate to action and use lots of generic conventions. These include conventions such as guns just like in action film which might entice people in to watch them because it excites them as an audience.  I would also expect the target audience to be quite open because as t is a mainstream film it isn't just going to pick out a certain type of people therefore it is going to be a majority of people who would like the film and be quite different from each other.

Evaluation question 3

What type of media institution might distribute your product and why?

When it comes to film companies, you get different types of companies for example mainstream and independent. Mainstream films have a lot more money to invest in bigger actors and spend on the making of their film. They will also be targeting the film at a large market instead of just a niche audience. This is different when it comes to independent films because it is aimed at a niche audience and they will have lot less money to send on a film therefore they will have less known actors and will aim their film at a particular audience.
An example of a mainstream production company would be Disney whereas a independent would be Film4.

To get funding from our film, the money might have come from previous films that were made and made a lot of money so they invested it in our film. The distributors are the company's that will take your movie to the cinemas and 'distribute' which ones they are going to be shown in and how many screens they will be on.

Our film would be a mainstream film because we have targeted it at a big audience as it is an action film and uses generic conventions of an action film in. This means we would like companies such as Warner Bros. to distribute our film to cinemas such as Odeon because this is  place where they show mainstream films. This kind of company is one of the big 6 meaning that it is going to be a mainstream film company therefore they are only going to want to distribute mainstream films. A similar film to ours that might be released in the same way could be Taken. This is a well known action film like ours so this is why I used this particular comparison.

Evaluation question- 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Within our film opening only two characters are shown and the characters which are shown are not properly introduced. We have done this purposely in order for the audience to not know too much about each of the characters in order for them to ask questions.

The age is shown within the film opening to a certain extent because you can see the rough build of the main character which is introduced from the start. We have only allowed the audience to be able to have a rough guess at the age of the character because you cannot see the face at all to detect facial hair etc. This is because we did not want the audience knowing too much at this stage of the film so they ask questions to themselves in order to attract them in too watch the rest.
You could also guess the rough age of the character by what he is earing. You could see that they were wearing a suit and older men will ted to wear suits when going to work so this gave the audience an idea it was not going to be a young person.














Here is a screenshot of the protagonist and what he is wearing (a suit). You can tell from this frame that this man is not going to be below the age of 18 therefore makes our piece look more professional because we have an adult playing an adults character.  



Evaluation question 1

Our film is about a hit man getting beat at his own game. In the start another hit man arrives at his house ready to give him a taste of his own medicine.

 

 

This is one of the institutional logos for our film. When played it has non diegetic sound and from listening to it, it lets you understand that it is of the action genre because it is faced paced.

This is a picture from the opening scene of the film. It is purposely in a low key lighting because from watching other action films it ids often quit dingy to start with ad creates some tension because it makes the audience think there is not something quite right.

This screenshot is of the main films title. I have mixed opinions about this because I think it is good because it is very big and bold and the colours we have used are from the action genre (silver metal). The problem I have noticed with the title though is that I think it is not clear enough and doesn't have a sharp enough effect to this. when it was created I think we could have made sure we created it in a better programme in order for it to have more quality and look better.

This picture is showing a CCTV shot during the film. I think this is good because it is a generic convention in a lot of action films. although it is not a generic conventions I think there is still a few action films which use them so it gives our film a bit of something different.
this shot also shows the antagonist with a helmet on so he is unidentified. I think this was a good idea to do this because it is a generic convention to not show the antagonist straight away but have him/her covered up as it builds tension for the audience.

This is a simple screenshot of the protagonist holding a gun. A gun is one of the main generic conventions in an action film and you will struggle to find an action film without a pistol used.  although this is just a simple example of a generic convention it is probably the biggest one and most used by action film makers.

This screenshot shows knives in the background. Even though they are just kitchen knives used for bread, if the audience see the knives then it will click in their head that they can be used as weapons and it just clarifies to them that they are just watching an action film.

This screenshot shows a kitchen table with flowers sitting on it. This reminds the audience that this hitman has a family and is almost like an ordinary family whereas he is a hitman as a job. I have seen this used before in past films so we thought it would be a good way to illustrate this particular character.

 



This last picture is showing the man on CCTV riding a motor bike to the protagonists' house. Motor bikes are often used in action film because they are seen to be manly forms of transport.

Final Film

This is our final cut for our film. you can see a lot has changed compared to the first cut and now this looks at a much higher quality. You can see from the film titles that they start from the beginning of the film whereas before they did not. A lot of the sound was changed during the clip, even though we used the same non diegetic sound, we brought it in at different time in order to make the piece look of a higher quality. We also used different sound effects for some things or added some in. For example we gave the alarm on the mans phone a better alarm so it sounded more of an action film and we also added in some Foley effects when the mug smashed.
From looking at these two videos you can see that the final cut is a whole lot more professional and it is of a higher standard. It has been edited much better and it has more of a flow to it and it less jumpy.  

Rough cut 3

Remake- Reservoir Dogs

This is our remake video. We were doing this so we could understand how our film opening had to go roughly so we could make it as good as possible.

Rough cut 2

Rough cut 1

This is our first version of our opening scene.

Institutional logo designs

This is one of my logo designs for our film company. I have used this picture because as our film company is called 'Gecko Productions' it would make sense to have a picture of a Gecko. I think this logo is an okay attempt at one but I know there is people in my group who are going to be better at creating logos as they are familiar with design software on computers.

This is my other logo that I created. This would be my second choice logo because I do not think it looks very professional especially for a mainstream film. It is important a good mainstream film company have a good logo because it is what represents your company. The better your film logo is, the better your company will look.

What type of film company are we?

We have chosen to be a mainstream film company because there is much more money in it as there is going to be a larger audience as the film is targeted at a wide audience. Having more money would mean you an get bigger starts which is then going to mean you can attract an even larger audience because people will go to watch a film as they know there are good actors in them.

Our films would be shown in cinemas such as the Odeon because it is mainstream and shows mainstream films in it. if we was to be a independent film company, our film would be shown in minimal cinemas but places like Picture Houses. These are much smaller and people will only go into them either to support the independent films or to watch a particular film.

As you can see from these two pictures above, the top picture shows some of the films which are being shown which not many people would of heard of whereas the bottom picture shows the inside of the Odeon with advertising for big films such as GI Joe.

Description of ideas

Analysing film openings- S.W.A.T

Analysing film openings

I will now be analysing the film opening from ‘S.W.A.T’. I have chosen to analyse this particular film opening because it is a bit different to the other ones I have analysed and also it is of the same genre that I will be producing when I create my film opening.

The film stats off with the institutional logos. It is silent and then you can hear the police radio come in. at this point you can only hear the radio and see the institutional logo. this is used in order to focus the audience on just listening. hear is a screenshot of the logo as you can hear the police radio.

Genre- as I have just spoke about, I have chosen to analyse an action film because that it what I will be creating for my opening film so it is going to be more beneficial to me because I can see how an action film is set out in an opening scene.  It is obvious straight away in this opening scene that it will be an action before you even see anything. At the start, the institutional logos came on and it was silent so it would have the audience’s attention to listen and the logos were flashing red and blue to connote the police force and then as that was going on, a police radio came in so you knew this film was going to be about crime and the police. I think having the institutional logos shown in this particular way was a good idea and it might be an idea for my group to think about when we make our opening scene.

Editing- from the start of this piece it used fast paced editing and quick cuts to get the audience excited straight away. It came in showing shots of police helicopters, police, robbers and the SWAT team. By doing this the audience could see quickly what the movie was going to be about because as you saw lots of police you could see that there would be action.

Sound- first of all in this clip it was silent as you looked at the institutional logos but when the logo which was flashing blue and red connoting the police, you heard a police radio starting to talk and the audience were forced to just focus on that because they didn’t have much to look at at the time. As the scene started the non-diegetic music started to come in and when the SWAT team arrived to the music has a more positive feel to it because it was showing the audience that the SWAT team would control the situation.

Camera- with regards to camera, there was a lot of hand held camera parts to this scene which would connote panic to the audience and will unsettle them. As the two main characters of the SWAT came into the building, a lot less hand held cameras were used. I think this is because it showed the audience that everything was under control.  A bird’s eye view shot was also shown to show where the scene was and you could see the building that they were in but this shot could also be classed as a point of view shot because just before this shot, it had a shot of a helicopter above so they might have been trying to show you the helicopters point of view.

Mise en scene- from the start of the clip everything was very exciting and they used good props such as guns which were believable and didn’t look fake to connote action and danger to the audience. It is important that when film makers use props, they have to make sure they look real and believable in order to look professional otherwise it would just look stupid.  The lighting in this clip was naturalistic and this might have been to show the audience that it was more real and this situation could actually happen so that the audience could feel more excited.

Titles- with regards to titles within the clip, they were not really used. There were a few institutional logos at the start and the film name. It did not mention the director’s name at all or any of the cast members. When it comes to making our piece I will still be using more titles because I think it looks better and people can see whose made the film as well as whose starring in the film. The institutional logos what were used were adapted to the genre of this film and that is something our group should look at doing because it shows the audience from what is to come of your film and the genre it is.

Character- this clip was a long opening scene and ours will not be as long. At about two minutes into the film, the two main characters were introduced but it wasn’t clear that they were the main characters yet because it cut away again. It became more obvious that they were a couple of minutes after this because they started to have much more camera time and the film was just focusing on them.

In conclusion to this film opening I think it had some real good bits about it that I can take from it and put into ours for example the titles that did show were made specific to the genre which I think is a good way of showing your audience what it is going to be about but I also think that there should have been more titles used and show who directed the film.

 

Analysing film openings- Bad boys

Analysing film openings

For this film opening I have chosen to analyse the film ‘bad boys’. This is because this is a well-known movie which is slightly older than the others I have analysed.

Genre- the genre for this movie is action comedy. Although this is not quite what my group will be doing, it is still relevant to me because it is basically action but there are parts of the film that will try to make the audience laugh. From the opening you can see it is an action because of the music that was used and the shots which were used.

Editing- the editing through this clip was medium to fast paced. It used a lot of cuts but they weren’t necessarily as quick as other action films.  This again showed the genre of the film because action films will tend to have a lot more cuts.

Sound- throughout the clip, non-diegetic music was used. It was a high temp music and connotes that the film was to be all about action and would be exciting. If it was slower music, the audience may have thought it would have been a drama because of the shots which were used so it was extremely important that they used relevant music.

Camera- the vast majority of the shots were establishing shots to show the location of the city. By doing this, it showed the audience where it was to be set and they could see it might be about crime because action movies tend to be set in cities.

Mise- in terms of lighting within this clip, it was very naturalistic and was neither low key nor high key. This was maybe used to make the movie more realistic to the audience so they could feel more involved. Here is a screenshot from the clip; it shows the sunrise over the City which shows the audience where this is going to be set.

 

Titles- in regards of titles throughout this clip, it had a good structure. They came in from the start and went through to the end. One thing I noticed about them though was that the film name was at the very beginning of the clip whereas I would have expected it around the middle.

Characters- there were no characters in this clip at all shown. I think this is a strange thing to do because usually films try to introduce the characters to show the audience who is to be staring in the film.

In conclusion, this film opening is very different of how I want to do mine because I will want to introduce my characters in the clip and I would want to have more of a variety of camera shots in my piece.

 

 

My chosen genre- action

http://youtu.be/sR_mIuwJrgo

My chosen genre- action

An action film is based on an individual or group facing challenges which normally involve fights, chase scenes and life threatening situations.  The purpose of action is to put the audience on the edge of their seats meanwhile exciting them.

Action will use low level fantasy and what I mean by that is that it will be realistic to a degree. For example a Die Hard film is a classic action and it is extreme but a situation like that could be possible so the audience have more to think about.

Some examples of action films;

• James Bond films
• Fast and Furious
• Top Gun
• S.W.A.T
• Bourne Identity

In successful action films there is normally a ‘start theory’. This is that the bigger the star who is in your film then it is going to attract a wider audience so more people will see the film.

Action films are one of the fastest progressing genres due to the newest advances in technology.  As technology has improved hugely in the past 10 years or so, it means that more can be done within action films for example better special effects to make it look more realistic. If a film looks more realistic to an audience they are likely to enjoy it more and more people are going to want to see it.

Just like other types of genres, action shared generic conventions and iconography so the audience can establish what kind of film it is. To present the different types of generic conventions I am going to create a mood board full of pictures.

I have chosen to embed this particular video because it is a typical action film. It involves the normal generic conventions of guns and good guys vs the bad and I think it is a good relevant video for what I have been talking about.