Question 7

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

I learnt a lot during the 3 month stage between our prelim and main task. Considering the different tasks, the prelim task asked us to film someone walking through a door and engaging in convocation with someone else. Compare that to making a 2 minute opening sequence and you can tell there is a huge step. With the prelim task, we were told to what to do and didn’t have to plan much of a story as we already had a baseline, where as with the main task. We had to do in depth research and planning, which I have learnt to do more thorough during these 3 months. For example, we started talking about how we wanted to use the theme of loss, so we researched films that include aspects of loss, where as in the prelim task, it was slightly harder to research a theme as there wasn’t really one. When I first did a storyboard for my prelim, I didn’t think doing a photo storyboard would be necessary. But doing the main task, I realised how vital it is, it shows us directly how our shots need to be, it’s a lot more useful than just a storyboard on its own full of pictures that may have been drawn inaccurately.  In our prelim task we had a mere hour or two to record the whole thing, so we rushed some shots, whereas in the main task we could actually spread our time out fairly because we had around 10 hours to finish it. Even though that’s still not a lot of time to record everything, it was a lot more compared to our prelim, so spreading our time out was necessary and i believe it helped my time management skills progress. We had a few problems in the space of our prelim and main task, the biggest problem was one of our group members dropping out the group, so it was only me and Karis in the end. This helped develop our skills of improvisation and working together as a group which is a must in media. Working to our elected roles is also something i have learnt in the prelim, were we wasn’t given strict role, whereas in the main task we had a role each. Karis was the director and I was the Camera man. This helped me develop my skills further into camera. This also helped me progress in the skills of testing rule of thirds and 180% rule. Also, in my prelim, I could use a friend to be my actor. Whereas I couldn’t now due to it being 2 days off timetable, so I had to go into a year 9 class and ask if I could use some a student, then get permission from the head teacher to see if they could have the time off school. This also meant I had to become the responsible adult and take our actors age into consideration. Because we were filming outside during our main task, we had to take the weather into consideration, whereas the prelim task was filmed inside so we didn’t have to worry about the weather.
When it comes to the aspects of editing, it only took an hour or two to digitize and edit our piece in the prelim, where as it took over 10 hours to edit. Using the cut tool and putting excess shots in the bin was learnt in the prelim, but over the course of the main task, i learnt how to do this more effectively. During the prelim task we didn’t use any effects, so I learnt how to use effects efficiently, for example making our whole blue or black and white, to make it look like he was in a dream like state. We also used ghosting, which made it look more abstract, we learned that ghosting was quite familiar in these films due to the research we did in between the prelim and the main task. I believe if we didn’t learn the skills from the prelim task, we wouldn’t of been able to complete the main task to the degree we have now. Also without the research and planning, I believe I have learnt a lot of skills which could take me into further media life just by recording this task. For example, I had never noticed the rule of thirds, but now a days I can see it in nearly every shot in every film.  I had previous knowledge of continuity due to GCSE it was just working it into every piece, for example. When Ashley looked through the window of the door, we had to make sure it looked right when you saw him from the other side. We also recorded many safety shots and even used them in our film, for example other close ups of Ashley’s face and him walking down the road, this was because if we made a mistake we could replace it with one these shots.

Question 6

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

Before I started Media A level, I had no idea how to use any aspect of the camera. For example, setting it up, Recording and then putting it away.
These were the new products that i used and started to get to grips with during the prelim and main task.

Canon XHAI Camera
Battery (and charger)
LED pull away screen
Camera tracks
Tape
Adobe Premiere pro
Tripod

Starting with the Canon camera, this camera was a very expensive camera and before media studies I had no experience with a video camera. I learnt everything that i now know (which i hope is everything about it being automatic) through step by step processing. I first learnt how to insert the battery, which was to push the button which flipped open the hatch for the battery. You would then insert the camera battery in gently which would allow the camera to be turned on. But before you would turn the camera on, you would insert the digital tape to start recording. You would then flip the rotational switch which would change the camera from off to on. Which would be manual or automatic, because we wasn’t that familiar with manual options and working with every aspect of it, we decided to stay on manual the whole time. The zoom lens and button was used a lot during our piece and I learnt that using the button makes it look more professional and flows better than the lens, also right next to the lens was a rotational switch that made the lens distorted or clearer, we didn’t decide to use this as it wouldn’t of matched the continuity.
Next up was the tripod, same as the Canon camera, we learnt how to set this up step by step. We would untie everything from it, then slowly pull each leg out. But this wasn’t good enough because it wasn’t the right size. So you would have to unlock the legs by twisting the knobs on each leg and pulling the tripod up slowly and safely, after I practised this it became easy and stuck in my head, after pulling up the tripod it was vital to lock the tripod otherwise the camera would fall off if the tripod returned to its original state without any support and at great speed. The LED pull away screen was a small screen that allowed us to see all the visual information we was recording, or what we was going to record. This would flip out by pressing a small button, we would arrange the rotation on the LED screen depending on the shot so we could see the whole shot perfectly. The tape was a digital tape which allowed 60 mins of tape on, which we nearly filled up during the whole recording. We had to record back to the beginning before we started to make sure we got the best of the tape, we did everything right and learnt how this can save a lot of time in the future.
Adobe premiere (or the editing section) was a whole new section to learn, we had to learn to cut, drag, digitize, add effects, move shots and a lot more. So it was a complete new thing to learn along as everything above that I’ve already stated. Cutting was getting the original shot and cutting it down to the ideal size; so getting rid of the ‘action’ dialogue and the ‘cut’ plus the extra length we didn’t need. But before that we had to organize our shots and pick the best shots, so we binned the shots we didn’t need. This was okay because if we changed our mind later on we could easily go back to the digitized version of the tape and just take it straight off there. Dragging the shot perfectly in place so it didn’t delete anything was also new, if we didn’t drag it securely, it would delete a part of a shot I didn’t want to get rid of.
Last thing I learnt was adding extra effects and title/closing credits. These were just as simple as clicking buttons to see if you liked the effect, and writing what you wanted.

Question 5

My film poster consisted of a gloomy hand reaching upwards, the hand was covered in dirt with a section of the dirt shaped into a love heart. These posters would be shown in places which would attract my target audience, so in a college or place where young adults socialise so maybe a bowling alley. I could also show my poster on a website what young adults use, for example. Lots of young adults use many social networking these days, so a page featuring my poster will surely attract my audience. These would be appropriate because they will always be seen by my target audience which was the plan. The heart inside the hand can show the romantic side of the film, but at second glance you can say it’s not a full heart and is covered in dirt. This could show that the story is about someone who wears their heart on the their sleeve and often has it trod on. The font of ‘disconnect’ is quite untidy and could be handwritten, this could go with the hand in the poster. Hands tend to write stuff, so having a handwriting font that looked untidy matched the hand. This gives house style and makes the poster look more realistic.
The black and whiteness of the poster also gives the hint that my film is going to be in black and white. It also gives the idea that the film maybe slightly disturbed as the contrast of black and white normally gives us that idea, it also can mean two things coming together, in our film that’s using two different genres to our advantage


At first, we was in a group of three. Me, Karis & Shanell and we instantly thought around the word or theme of losing someone or something, so we thought of many ways we could show this in our group. We thought of a character that we would expect to see in a film like this, foe example someone with dark hair. Has a gloomy look about them and looks slightly suspicious. So we made our character like this, unfortunately our first actor dropped out and we had to use a secondary actor that didn’t match the criteria as much as we wanted, but it still worked out fine. A convention of my genre was sudden tension. We created sudden tension when we used shots such as the mirror shots that gradually got closer and closer. This makes the audience want to watch more because they want to see the real side of our character and what he is like on the inside.
One effect we used which would attract out target audience was Ghosting. This is where the characters in the shot look like they have a counterpart ghost following them around. This adds tension because its eirey and looks disturbing which is a common feature in a film such as mine.
We wanted to make our audience feel sympathy for the character, so we often showed him isolated. For example a shot of him standing in a corridor on his own about to look into the classroom made us feel sorry for him because it was clear he didn’t want to enter the classroom for a reason you don’t find out till the end of the scene. Isolation is a theme that attracts my target audience, in such films as ‘Frozen’  by Adam Green. This film helped me see how I could show my character looking isolated.
Even though we was set to not have dialogue, we wouldn’t of used it anyway. We wanted to show him being isolated and being alone by not communicating with anyone unless it was via his mobile phone. This gives the audience the impression he hasn’t got any friends, and normally psychological thrillers contain a character that cannot keep a friendship and has something mentally wrong in them. The props we used in the living room/Ashley’s sleeping space showed that there was something wrong in where he lived, he was living in garbage amongst everyday objects such as a lamp and school clothes.
We started our opening with a glance of the mirror, this shows the audience it is something that’s going to be important in the rest of the film. This is a convention because there is normally a red herring in films like this that give away certain aspects of a film. The full first shot also shows the environment he lives in, which makes it absolutely clear that something is wrong in his social life for him to be sleeping on the sofa, this attracts the audience because they ask questions like, why is living on a sofa?
we used the shot of him walking to school on his own to also add to the idea of him being alone, normally a child of 13 years of age would walk with a friend of a parent to make sure they arrive safely, but Ashley didn’t which adds to the feeling of being alone.

Question 4

Question 4

Primary audience
Male & female ; 15-23
High end of school such as year 11/6^th from or college.
Any ethnic origin, but someone who’s grown up in England and understands the aspects of everyday life in English culture. For example, they’ll understand that most schools finish at three o clock when we use the clock shot.
Someone one that may say boys/girls/relationships as a hobby.
Someone that likes a lot of tension and trying to work out what’s going wrong in his head, also someone that’s a sucker for love stories, but not necessary ones that have a good ending.
Someone that may have has felt alone because of a partner may want to watch this.
People that like solving problems.

Secondary audience;
30-40 male and female who tend to watch programs such as CSI
Hobbies such as puzzles and ruddles
The drifter who enjoys dramas/thriller films individually who fancies watching a hybrid film
Someone that has had a hurtful relationship and can relate to this happening to themself
 Someone with a profession that can solve dilemmas like this, such as a psychologist or a doctor.


Films they may have watched;
Frozen
Green Zone
Misery
A Secret handshake
John Woo
Fatwa
Paranormal activity

They may even watch programs  such as the whole crime scene investigation series, they could watch dramas and soaps as it is also a drama related film.

Question 3

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


Due to our film being of low budget, we couldn’t aim to get attention from companies like film4 and blockbuster because it was just simply impossible they would distribute our film because of the quality aswell. Doing research, I found some alternative companies that are willing to distribute my media product but at a small fee of 50 pound. At sourcewire.com, they offer you permanent coverage of our film which would increase our recognition over the long run. Not just once or every now and then, the websites viewers could constantly see our work which would help a lot, this gives us a small recognition in the world of media, the website may not be well known but at least some viewings will be seen by people that are committed to reviewing independent films.
Another website i found in my research of distributing my media was dogwoof, this media institution is the leading UK film distributor for independent films and often gets a huge audience coming to the website. If these could distribute my work, it would be a huge boost to the viewings as it is quite a recognised distributor, but because it is still unlikely these institutions will produce any of our work, we could self advertise. For example putting my work on all of our facebooks and twitters would attract over an audience of 1000+, hopefully some people would enjoy our work and share it with their friends which will create a bigger audience, also because my target audience are on my facebook page, sharing it with them would be the perfect idea to get a review from some of them to maybe help me when im making a new film in nearby future. Getting a media institution to distribute my opening would draw attention to every aspect of our work in the film, for example. If a huge company liked the way it was hired, they could ask us to help them edit something, which gets us noticed the bigger world of media and not just the independent side. If a distributor decided to place our film in a cinema, it would be during a prime time for my target audience, so weekends. This would increase our gross which could help making our next film more professional due to the lack of funds we had this time.
Another way to distribute films and get wide notice if its successful is film festivals, Locally the BMI at waterloo often host film festivals, if I could get a place and show it to the more successful independent media crew, they could share my project giving it more recognition.

Question 2

Our opening sequence had a brief show of what life is like for Ashley (our main character); We had an idea to create a character like Newt from past episodes of Hollyoaks who ends up trying to kill himself due to the circumstances he had found himself in. Even though his ex girlfriend Janet is not shown in person, she is obviously around because of the text on his mobile phone. This meant we had to show a character that showed love loss and confusion. My genre was a hybrid between drama and thriller, the common theme in drama is losing love and we linked that to our thriller idea. Which means we had to create a character that attracted both audiences, firstly we had show our character to be in a social group (or in this case, lack of)

-He was 13-14 years old
-Working class
-Dressed informally and didn’t have a strict routine when it came to sleeping
- Severely judgemental, especially to himself
-Kicked out for being anti-social towards parents
-Tries to make friends, and when he does often loses them due to not leaving them alone
-Met his (ex) girlfriend in school
-Cherished his phone because it was the only way of him interacting confidently
-Lives with his Aunt who doesn’t take much care in him, due to the fact that she’s only looking after him because she gets child support and spends the money on hard drugs.

This rounded my idea of him to be quite a loner, someone who doesn’t enjoy being upfront and hides behind a screen. The only real person he can communicate with was himself, that’s why he always confides in the mirror. We made him wake up and fall asleep in the same costume so that could show how he is working class and doesn’t really care about his appearance. This was a polo shirt and tracksuit bottoms, which isn’t something you usual go to sleep or wake up in. This shows that he is far from the usual and doesn’t depend on a common routine and doe’s things his own way. We used a few shots of him just standing around while people walked past and he stood still, this was to show that he couldn’t interact with people properly and he doesn’t have anyone to confide in him besides himself, it also showed that people didn’t really care about him. A young teenage boy standing and staring at something for a long period of time will normally concern people and they would question him. But no one did, so this shows how people don’t really care for him. We made him spike his hair up because that’s what a typical 13 year old boy would do. The props of the phone made his persona of only communicating properly through the phone more realistic as we never saw him communicating with people physically, but did through his phone abit.
The sound effects of people laughing at him while he was looking in the mirror made it clear he was very judgmental as one thing that happened in school stayed in his mind all day, even when he was alone and just confiding with himself in the mirror
Everybody would see our character as a freak and someone that wouldn’t fit into society, this is because he didn’t act like everybody else. For example, when he sat in class and a pupil threw a paper airplane at him to show him up, this shows that everybody in his world mock him and don’t show him respect. This is a world he doesn’t like, and you can see this just by the way he walks round always looking down, I wouldn’t say during our opening sequence he looks suicidal. But as he cracks, he starts to become more suicidal and blame himself and not the environment he lives in.

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product follows most codes and conventions of films that are drama/thriller and even aspects of a psychological thriller. The codes and conventions of these are such things that follow the aspects of drama is the boy losing his love and breaking down due to her leaving him, also that it is happening in a school where he is getting bullied. Dramas don’t always have a happy ending, which this doesn’t so this is another code and convention.  Our opening sequence leaves questions like why is he acting like this and what is he going to do, this is common in psychological thrillers as the viewer tends to want to find out who damaged the boy and normally like to solve riddles. Thrillers tend to have unexpected turns, and the turn in our opening sequence was seeing the text from the girlfriend who had broke up with him. We thought of themes such as
Lost
Love loss
Madness
Obsession
All these themes become clear during our opening sequence, especially madness and lost as he is often seen on his own while everyone ghosts around him. We developed around the idea of lost, and at first they was just going to lose their girlfriend, but we decided to make it more interesting and show him starting to lose his mind, which we hoped to achieve in our opening sequence. Ashley  (the main character) starts off as an protagonist, drawing sympathy to himself by constantly thinking and showing love towards someone that doesn’t care. But as he starts to crack, he turns into an antagonist eventually killing himself and his girlfriend; this is another twist people expect in thrillers.
The audience for psychological thrillers normally watch the films and feel uncomfortable, we did this by adding ghosting and black and white, it’s not something you see in everything. It is abstract, which isn’t aesthetically pleasing causing discomfort for out target audience.
We challenged the convention of having a grown man by placing a 13 year old teenager in the film; we did this because we were aiming to attract an audience of 15-23 which would mean that they would prefer to watch someone they could relate to themselves. We also challenged the location, most thrillers are in an eerie place(such as a broken down New York in ‘Cloverfield’ after an alien attack) whereas we used a public school and his aunt’s house to make it more realistic for a 13 year old to be in.
A code and convention we often stuck too was the idea that he was slowly going crazy. This is often seen in psychological thrillers as normally the antagonist is a crazy psychopath such as that main character in paranormal activity who switches from being completely innocent to a demonic being. We followed typical effects and developed them to become more original, you don’t tend to see a blue lens in a thriller film, but you come to expect ghosting which was seen in this film in nearly every hallway shot. This may of creeped out our audience with the effect that real people look like ghosts.  One of our first shots make the audience feel like they are in Ashley’s position, this is done through a point of view shot. This point of view shot was to show everyone how human he is, it is the view we all wake up to see.  Comparing Ashley to Robert Neville (Will Smith) from ‘I am Legend’ we see how differently the characters our interpreted, in ‘I am Legend’ he is instantly seen as a hero, that is capable of anything, whereas Ashley looks weak, this goes against the normal hero stereotype in the thriller film. A drama although its not a film, which we could relate our storyline too is most soaps, but a soap that sticks out straight away is Hollyoaks and the ‘newt incident’ where he started slowly breaking down due to mental problems and went to kill himself because of a schizophrenic outburst. We followed the traits that Newt had as he slowly broke down.
We challenged the convention of sound, if you listen to our opening compared to se7en you can definitely see the difference; because our film has aspects of drama in it, we didn’t want to creep out the Audience, which se7en does. We wanted it to sound odd, but also fit in with the audience we were aiming for.