7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
Since our preliminary project, I feel that I have learn a lot, when compared to the final piece, the difference in quality, both in filming and editing, is highly visible. During the preliminary, we filmed the basics. Whereas, in the final piece, we filmed multiple angles and different takes on each shot so we could create a better production. I've learnt how to employ media techniques effectively to my work.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Through the process of my media production, I have learned a lot about the technology used, particularly the use of cameras, editing software and blogging. I filmed throughout most of the production, however, in some shots I had to act as a stand-in due to an actor not being able to make it. Due to my camera being mainly a photographic camera, I hadn’t really learnt a lot about the video recording function of it. However, since using my camera to film this production I have learn a lot more about my camera and its functions, allowing me to use it better, and as such, film better.
Whilst I didn’t do the editing myself, I watched and offered help throughout it and picked up a lot on the way. I feel we did well to edit the film together against the difficulties of cutting out scenes which wouldn’t be able to be filmed due to lack of special effects, we edited it in a way so that the audience could put it together themselves and be able to work out what happens. Thanks to all this I am now much more confident using the equipment and I feel that our production shows this well. I had never done blogging before, and it was difficult to get started, but I think that over the course of the project I have learned how to use the features well.
Whilst making our production we stuck to the conventions of the horror genre, we used low-key lighting to emphasise the sinister feeling of the opening, used an eary backing track which contrasts with the shots which makes them feel creepier.
We attracted our audience in many ways, these include; Facebook group, YouTube, and Rough cut viewings.
We created a Facebook Group called ‘StandHardProduction’, This raised awareness for our production and showed the progression of our work through posts. Most importantly from this though, we gained feedback from potential audiences on how to improve etc.
Our YouTube page was updated with videos on scenes we’d tried and rough cuts to give potential audiences an idea of what the final product would look like. Also, as with the facebook group, this allowed us to gain feedback.
http://www.youtube.com/user/StandHardProductions
Also, in our Media lesson we did a rough cut viewing to the class to get feedback from other students and how to improve on it.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our film would tipically be targeted at a male audience in the age range of 18-30 years old. They have a close group of friends who can spread news of the film via word of mouth effectively. They would tipically view horror movies when they visit the cinema as it provides them with an adrenaline rush and movies with blood and gore are appealing to them. Typcical TV programmes would relate to this such as true blood and the sort.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our production company goes by the name of StandHardProductions, this name was chosen as a metaphor of how we planned to go about our work, to work together as a team and stand against problems we encountered. We have a logo which is just a simple SH within a circle, we chose a basic logo as it is more recognisable for the audience. As we only have a small group of 4, and being many roles to fill, some members of the group had to take on multiple roles. I had the role of filming and all camera work, however I did also have to be a stand in actor for a scene. The other roles, such as filming, story boards, mise on scene etc were done by Connor Page, Ryan Newsom and Francesca Williams. We had to create our cast on who/what/which suited the roles, we had Connor Page as the protagonist (the murderer), Heather Steele (not a member of our media studies, but our actor) as the victim, Me as a ‘yob’ and William Page as our stunt double. We had these names come out in our titles in appearance order so it was easy for the audience to relate names to the characters they saw.on screen.
An idea for a distributor is Paramount Pictures, although these are a large well known distributor, they distributed the film ‘Paranormal Activity’ which, made on video for a tiny budget of just $15,000 managed to take more than $107 million from the US alone. So although they are a large distribution company, they do invest time into low budget films as there is a chance they could boom at the theatres.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The character in our production is a serial killer. He is hunting down a woman who has hurt him emotionally and affected him mentally. His persona is based on a typical horror; Killer is after someone, hunts them down, and kills anyone who gets in the way. From his appearance, you are given mystery, from his lowered head, broad stance and by low camera angles.
Low camera angles show off dominance and power. His unsheathed sword shows his intentions, when it is revealed the climax begins to build. Typical codes and conventions of the horror genre influenced us, e.g. his hat being the prominent feature of him when he is first revealed. The hat is made the signature trait that makes him easily recognisable to the audience.
Both the characters Jason (Friday the 13th) and Mike Myers (Halloween) have similar traits with our character, e.g. No dialogue, which helps add more mystery to the character and suspense. Another similarity, all these characters have a weapon to symbolise the intent to kill, and this is helped to be shown off via their stance and lighting. A strong posture and lighting coming from above will create a sense of power. We challenged the code and convention of most characters being shot in a film noir style, which helps to make the audience think evil/dangerous. We tried to keep a slight balance of human to the character without losing the psychopathic feel. We pulled this off by not using a mask, but a hat; this gives a more personal look on the character instead of him just masking his identity.
Later on through the progression of the film as the story gets revealed, we try to get the audience to understand his actions and see him as a human rather than a mindless villain. With Mike Myers, early on in the film Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2007 the audience are given a chance to sympathise with the character, however later on in the film the character loses this as he becomes just a stereotypical villain.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings) Our film is a thriller/horror genre. The conventions to do with thrillers are most often to do with editing and sound. Things such as quick cuts, use of camera angles and specific lighting, Shadows are a big thing, used to create tension and suspense. We filmed in night time, so dim lighting is used, this is a typical convention of the thriller genre. Our production, at the start, is filmed in first person, this is mixed up with the killer shown getting ready. The switch between these creates tension for the audience. The eary music in our production is a slow song, which creates tension. The titles we used have been kept very simple so that they fit in with the codes and conventions of a thriller. The protagonist (Connor) in our film is shown wearing a dark coat along with black trousers and black shoes. He also wears a hat to cover his facial features; unfortunately the hat is light so we could’ve improved with a black hat. The dark clothes make it feel sinister and show that he’s a ‘bad’ character. This is a typical representation of a killer, dark colours making it sinister, and showing mystery, fear, and evil, which creates a threatening image. The victim in the production (Heather) also wears dark clothes; however, she has a red bag to make her stand out. Red also symbolises danger. This informs the audience that something bad is going to happen.
This is ourFacebook group, Connor set this up to firstly draw in people to our productions however, it is also so that we can do some research into our target audience. We can post links to our blogs, our YouTube account and keep people up to date with our production; we also can ask people who follow our group questions such as what films do you like, where do you watch them and many more. we have been able to gather so much information about our target audience due to this group.
Connor, Scott and myself set about recording some sound effects for our media piece “Relentless Possibility”; we researched into Foley art, a technique used by film industries to add sound effects. Connor found a video online showing sound technicians for a popular video game, recording sound effects and then demonstrating how they use them.
This video gave us a lot of inspiration for our video’s audio. We arranged a date where we would go round to Scotts house to record our vegetable genocide; Connor and myself went to town to collect equipment and fruit and veg, we considered health and safety by buying some overalls, glasses and some other protective clothing. We also bought some Tarpaulin, Duck Tape, Bamboo, Tights, Hair Gel, CDs, a Hammer and lots of Fruit and Veg.
We constructed a Pop Shield out of some tights stretched over and embroidery ring, this was to help reduce any hiss sounds the microphone may pick up, it also protects it from any foreign projectiles (banana juice/goo) once we made these we duck taped them on to some bamboo and tapped that to the tripod, positioning it in front of the microphone. We then got started on destroying some fruit, setting up a stand made out of cardboard and wooden beams, using our array of tools we dismembered the fruit; recording the result with Scotts audio equipment and my D90 for visual. Once we had cleaned up the putrefying mess we listened to the result, find some things worked really well and others were a dismissal.
Scott and Connor then went over the recordings at a latter date to compose them to fit our film segments; they did this using Cubase sound recording and editing software they layered the sounds up on top ofeach other to create a stabbing sound. Once they created the ideal sound they exported it and Scott uploaded it to soundcloud for us to download and use when we needed it.
It was then a simple case of downloading it and adding it to our media film, this combined with the editing has helped tointensify the genera of our film.
We have noticed that in our project we lack an establishing shot. This is quite important so we have gone out to film a few extra shots to fill this gap.
(Link here when uploaded)
We are very happy with how they came out, however, there is a problem. With these intro shots added, our film now comes to just over 4 minutes. With the limit being 3 minutes, we are going to have to find a way to cut it down. This is unfortunate as we were very happy with the overall product.
Filming went pretty smoothly, with no problems really arising allowing us to flow through it quickly. It was done over the course of about 3-4 Weeks taking place at around 7/8-10+ O'Clock. The issue we have noticed though is that we haven't included an estalbishing shot. However, this will only take a quick session to get completed so it's no real problem. We plan to get this done ASAP, maybe even later on today (25/03/11).
Filming Location (In day light)
In our rough cut which we have put together, we've noticed an issue with one of the shots. Unfortunatly, in one of the shots of Heather (Dead character), you can see her take a breath. It's only minor and not too noticeable, however it is an annoyance. We don't have time to correct this now so we've got to stick with it.
Over the course of our filming, we encounted that things were different to how we had planned they would go. Whilst it still went fine, it was challenging. We experimented with many different shots and, in the end, changed quite a few of the shots on our storyboard.
We had to improvise for some of the shots, at some point I had to lay down and shoot without the tripod to get the right angle which the tripod wouldn't allow. Quite a few shots were challenging, for example, the panning was more difficult than I thought, when I had to pan both right and down, trying to keep the pace of the character whilst also framing another thing of interest in the shot.
Also, the cameras metering system could not be controlled manual whilst filming, so we experienced some lighting problems. In one of the shots, where the car is started, when the headlights come on the camera auto-adjusts to meter for the bright point of light, which darkened everything else in the shot. Thankfully, however, it wasn't really a problem because we felt that the effect was pretty cool and suited the dark, sinister feel of the film. Another issue with the camera, was that in some shots there appears to be large black bars scrolling down across the shot. I think was due to metering issues aswell, and unfortutantly, I can't fix it now.
We also experienced problems with sound. As we did not own, nor have access to an external microphone, we had to use the cameras in-built one. This microphone was obviously not very high quality, and as such sound is pretty sketchy. There is also the problem of wind distorting the audio. This wasn't too great a problem as we played music over most of the film, but in scenes where there is no music, you can hear the distorted audio. This is rather an annoyance, but there is nothing we can really do about it.
We did try to pre-plan the lighting, where myself, Connor and Scott made a visit to olympus house (Where we filmed) to check out the lighting and to find out, based on the lighting, how we would shoot. The large flood light above the main entrance to the building provided excelent lighting which was very helpful. However, it did turn off sometimes and since we had no control of this we had to pause/cancel filming sometimes.
Running through the storyboard with the DV
We filming using my own Nikon D90 camera but one of the shots we using an iPod. The advantage of using my camera over the DV Cameras provided by the school was that we could film in higher quality and resolution. Also, the ability to change lenses helped. For most of it, we used a 50mm Prime F/1.8 lenses; this allowed us to take good advantage of focus and depth of field. However, the D90, is a photographic camera mainly, with just the side option to record, so unfortuatnly the settings were limited in video mode. I filmed on the standard video mode with the ISO set to 400-600.
Since none of us hold a lisence yet to drive, in the shot where we had to car speeding off we had to use a 'stunt double'. We filmed Connor (Protanganist) climbing into the car, then switched the shot to a different angle where we switched him with his Dad (The 'stunt double'). This allowed us to film the shot of the car speeding off.
Overall, we're happy with the production we have compiled. Here is a link to our final edit;
Here is our storyboard, it is a brief copy as during filming we lost the original copy.
the benifits of using a storyboard is it gives us a good idea about how we want shots and what we want them to look like while story board i have to think about if the camera angle was possible for us and if the lighting would be correct. we used it during filming briefly but as we were filming we thought of new ideas and adapted them to our production and as we went though the filming we realised some shots would look better in different ways .In the origional we put shot duration, sound and lighting and a brief discription of what was happening in the shots.
We had to be efficant with time as alot had to be drawn, alot of shots and at the same time have to make them reconisable for anyone using the storyboard. We obtained the storyboard sheet via mr deVita and used a A3 printed to print it out so it could be drawn with more detail into it also this would make things clearer, a pencil and pen was used to draw/write this.
as you can see from the images we have tried to stick to are original idea as closely as we can here is a comparision of the storyboard vs the video
as you can see we've stuck to the environment shown in the storyboard as before filming we had to go down to the filming location and examine where shots will possibly go. as you can see the charater is wearing the correct clothing as this was decided before the storyboard was created and shadows are drawn in correctly the correct places on connors face
With the final deadline approaching, and the blog behind on updates, its time to get it done. Having been away doing alot of practical work I have neglected to blog aspect. The blog will now be updated over the course of the next few days with whats been going on.
This post is just to say that throughout the past moths the group and myself have been working on the project, this has resulted in myself not posting in a while. however in this time frame we have done a lot of work that we shall be sharing with you shortly. for example we have:
had a meeting with the Werrington police
selected our set
check the lighting
organized everyone
over came many problems
filmed our movie
edited our clips together
and discussed many ideas for ourtitle sequence
I will post more entries over the coming weeks where i will go in to more detail about the above.
We had a meeting with the police to make sure that we would be allowed to film out in public with a realistic looking weapon. After the sargent inspected the weapon, he told us that he was happy for us use it for the purpose of filming.
As of today, all filming has been completed, with a few difficulties.
#1, we had to change actors. Instead of Sophie Stokes playing the part of the victim, due to her coming down with an illness around filming, we had to switch to Heather Steele.
#2 Due to a missed meeting to finalize the costumes, we had to improvise with what we had. Despite this, we feel it turned out fine.
#3 With Olympus house being a building out of our control, the lights of the building which was providing our lighting, kept turning off and because of this we had to wait for them to turn back on to continue filming.
Fran and Ryan painted a board white and wrote helpline and a number so if anyone has any quiries the day we are filming they can call this helpline. However, ultimatly, we didn't need to use this.
