Evaluation - Q6

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

For our opening sequence we used a Panasonic HDC-SD60. We decided to use this camera as we thought this would make our opening sequence look more professional from the quality of the camera, as it is a Full HD 1920x1080 camera. This camera would therefore be useful for our opening as we believe it would reemphasise our film being a mainstream, whereas if we used more of a 'budget' low-quality camera, our film being widely-appealing may be questioned from our audience. 

What we learnt from using our Panasonic HDC-SD60 camera?

Using this camera, we learnt how to manually and automatically take shots in-focus and out-of-focus, expanding our composition technique. We felt that this feature on the camera allowed us to take our editing a step further, as this made it even more fairly obvious in terms of the power and superiority of our characters in our opening sequence in specific scenes, from the altered concentration. An example of where we altered the concentration of our characters is shown below:

Problems?

Despite learning features of the camera which helped us improving our opening sequence, we did have difficulties with controlling lighting while using this camera. As we knew, lighting was a crucial aspect of our film especially where our genre is arguably a thriller, we needed to set a 'night' mode environment. Even though our opening sequence was filmed during the evening, we still had problems controlling light as we avoided using indoor lighting. This lead to insufficient amount of light, where our characters was not visible in some scenes and where we did use indoor lighting it was far too bright, which wasn't suitable in our case. We therefore then used a small lamp light in the background during filming, which fairly went well as this resolved our problems with lighting as well as set a nice tone colour. 

After all, when it came to editing we was fairly happy with the lighting as previously mentioned, but in some scenes we discovered there was still issues with lighting in some scenes. Specific shots in which we repeated, the lamp light was positioned in different positions in other shots, which therefore meant there was mixed light tone and background lighting when putting our opening sequence together, making it look unprofessional and obvious. This further issue was then dealt while editing using Final Cut Pro, where we used 'match colour'. This allowed us to match the same light of another shot and copy it in the required scenes. The video below shows the altered feature of 'match colour' on Final Cut Pro.

Tripod:


We also used a tripod to control different camera shots, compositions, movements and angles. We believe that using a tripod was essential during the process of filming our opening sequence, as it helped us take a variety of camera shots, movements, compositions, angles as well as improving our technique.  For example, framing - making it more easier and less time-consuming when using a tripod as it reduced the amount of repeated shots required effectively helping us perfecting shots. Also, using the tripod helped us adjust the height and angle of the camera, which was crucial while taking specific shots. Examples, are shown below:

Sound 

For Sound, we used Final Cut Pro for editing. We strongly believe that sound made a significant contribution and impact towards our opening sequence, as we avoided using voiceovers. Therefore, adjustments and editing with sound was significantly important as it is highly reflected to the genre of our film.

What we learnt when editing sound, using Final Cut Pro?

When using Final Cut Pro, we had to ensure that specific background sound was played at specific timings of the film., where appropriate. Doing so, we learnt how to copy and paste certain aspects of the soundtrack, as well as cutting unnecessary parts of the track. We also learnt how to change sound pitch levels, where we had to ensure sound levels where generally balanced and smooth when moving to one shot to another.

Camera shots edited

Using Final Cut Pro, this allowed us to manipulate and edit our camera shots to another level and at the same time expanding our editing skills. We where fairly unaware that we where able to use certain editing skills when filming, and only noticed when we started to get grips onto Final Cut Pro. When using Final Cut Pro, for some camera shots filmed in our opening sequence, we decided to edit our camera shots which we thought would make it look even better.

For example:

Title

For our opening sequence we used a template from Final Cut Pro to create our main title. We thought the template was appropriate for our theme and genre of the film, as we was initially looking for a very similar idea. We initially wanted our main title to appear after a few seconds after the gun shot where at first blood splatter appears; where on Final Cut Pro this was already created, therefore we was fairly happy with it. However, we wasn't entirely pleased with the colour theme of the template as we ideally wanted black as a background colour and red as the blood splatter. After a few attempts using a variety of software such as iMovie HD and Motion, we where still unable to change the main title colours, resulting us to leave it how it is. We made this decision, as the animation of the main title template looked highly professional and made a significant impact for an ending in terms of the genre and concept of our film; and alternative title ideas was not as good due to lack of profession and difficulties creating and editing our main title.

Credits

We used Motion to create our credits in our film. This software helped us to be more creative and thoughtful with our credits, as we believe this also plays a big part of a film. Motion helped us change the movements and transitions of credits as well as timing by using the timeline, where we believe it was fairly easy to function. It contained a variety of font and font effects in which we was satisfied with, therefore a substitute software for our credits was not required.

Production logo indent:

Whilst creating our Production indent, we used LiveType. When using LiveType, we learnt how to create animation effects and manipulate the font using a range of movements and effects. This was also fairly easy to understand and function and we liked the final outcome of the indent. Despite the indent not fully meeting our demand, we didn't want to consume far too much time on our production logo indent as we believe credits and title where more of our priority.

All of our editing was constructed, using a Apple Mac.

Evaluation Task 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Influences -

We began to look at ways to attract/address our audience by first of all looking at our influences. We looked at films in the same genre, which had the same target audience. We then picked out ideas and themes which were re-occurring in these films and implemented them into ours. Below is a short clip of what we looked at and what we found:

From this we were able to find out what appealed to our target audience the most, and how we could establish our film type, its genre and target audience. We looked at costume to begin with. We found out from our influences that a more professional and smart dress code was what all the characters wore in these films and with majority of the films we looked at having a strong male following, we decided this look was the best to go for.

We were also able to identify the props that we should use to make our target audience aware of our film. From the clip above we can see majority of the films which were featured used props such as fake guns and knifes as well as fake blood.

The final aspect we drew from our influences was which themes to include. We found three themes which ran through majority of our influences. The themes of Violence, Murder and Crime. We ensured that we had some features of all three themes, as well as putting in our own ones.

Originality -

We annotated our film to show some aspects of originality which we thought would attract our audience. The annotated film can be found below:

Even though we used our influences to guide us and help us figure out what our target audience want from a film of this genre, we still used original aspects we felt made our film even more effective and would make our target audience very attracted to our film.

We believed our first original aspect which helped us attract our audience was that our location had a full white colouring. From this we believed made our film more interesting as it didn't give away much about the film and gave it a certain depth of mystery. This was perfect for us as we used this to have an unexpected twist and event take place in our film which the audience would not be able to predict. (For example if we were to to decorate our setting to be more run down and dirty, it would be expected by the audience this is not a good place to be and so something bad would be expected to happen.)

Another aspect we really thought stood out was the use of natural sounds such as the door opening and closing, the shoes being taken off etc. We thought these really increased suspense levels as the natural sound was only used in certain points of the film, creating a horror movie feel; in that something might happen at any time.

In addition, another feature of originality we thought we executed very well was changing the dynamic of an everyday routine to make it more sinister and dark. The bathroom scene which features our victim going about cleansing himself of the day, (which most of us do) was made more sinister and dark with the use of fake blood being smeared all across his hands and parts of his clothes.  We thought this addressed our audience well as in hinted the film to follow a crime and violence theme; a theme which is very welcomed by our target audience.

Finally, we were especially proud of our use of lighting, we attempted to create a sort of midnight/film noir vibe to come off our film. We thought this would be achievable through the use of chirascuro lighting. We thought the midnight/film noir feel would appeal to our audience as it allows a different type of film which stands out from the rest of the films in its genre as this film type is very rarely used.

Overall we thought however the use of the mask created a sense of a horror style film and helped us achieve a unique selling point in that it crosses over between genres. Moving from a very modern day mystery to a 1940's style film noir, continuing to horror and finishing on a crime film. Very rarely films cross over between genres and we believed we were able to achieve this well and believed it would appeal to our target audience.

Evaluation task 4

'What would be the audience for your media product?'

After our opening sequence was screened to other media students; the other students answered a few questions regarding our media product. One of those questions concerned target audience and who the students thought our main target audience was.
Below is a picture of who the other students thought our target audience was:

Evaluation task 3

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

After screening our opening sequence to an audience, the majority (5/6) groups agreed that our opening sequence would be a wide-appealing film (mainstream). Realistically, we do believe that our film wouldn't make a lot in the box office due to the low costs of the film. Also, we are fully aware our film budget wouldn't be so ambitious as films such as The Dark Knight Rises as they are produced by a bigger film production company, Warner Bros.

Evaluation task 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Task 1

In what why does your media product use, develop or challenge forums and conventions of real media products?

Difficulties whilst filming and editing

Editing

After filming our opening sequence, we had to do some editing. We had to use a vast amount of different software's to improve our film opening. Using software's such as Final Cut Pro played a major role in our editing as it done most of the job. Features such as trimming, copying, pasting, adjustments with lighting and sound where edited using Final Cut Pro. Also transitions and effects such as the muzzle flash was done using Final Cut Pro. We believe by editing our opening sequence, this emphasised the genre of our film more and help the audience have sense of the storyline in our film. Sound played a big part where we had to adjust sound levels and make sure they flow when moving to different shots. We also had to make sure that different parts of our soundtrack where played in the most appropriate scenes, which increases suspense and interest. Also, having the opportunity of editing helped us use a variety of shot techniques such as the jump cut, which we believe was a really good outcome as we thought having a long scene of our character washing himself up would be fairly boring to watch.

 Lighting using final cut pro.

Credits using Motion.











We used Final Cut Pro for our muzzle flash effect.

We used LiveType for the Production Logo Indent.

To create the muzzle flash, we done a bit of research on how to create one. Below is a tutorial of how to create one, and by watching this video this helped us to create our own muzzle flash using Final Cut Pro:

Animated Storyboard