Evaluation Question Seven

Looking back at your preliminary task, What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your full production?

Before we commenced filming our opening sequence, we conducted a preliminary task which aloud us to experiment with the equipment and editing software we would be using for our opening sequence and iron out any problems we had with the cameras, software and Apple iMac computers. It also gave us an opportunity to learn camera angles that are effective when filming an opening sequence as they help to add realism. We focused on four different camera angles; Match on action, Shot/reverse shot, 180-degree rule, and the panning shot. 

Match on action

Match on action

Over the shoulder shot

We were given the task of creating a short scene that involved a small amount of dialogue and involved conflict of some sort. We decided to make ours comical, displaying a pointless argument between husband and wife about leaving the milk out. Since completing this task at the very begging of our project, we have learnt so much and are now much more confident with the equipment, the editing software and the shots we should use to make our film as professional, realistic and effective as possible.

Over the completion of our project we have learnt that mise en scene plays an integral role in making a film realistic and maintaining continuity. For our preliminary task we were restricted with the props we could use and where we could film as we had to stay in school and only had two hours to come up with what we were going to do resulting in us not being prepared with props or costume. We used a school corridor as it was the only place available to us and seeming that our film was about a typical household argument, this setting made the film look false and extremely unrealistic. We also only had one prop available to us, a mug, which did add some amount of realism to the action but the action still seemed out of place.

The importance of mise en scene with the pen and paper.

In contrast, for our opening sequence, we had a long time to plan exactly what we were going to do and where we were going to film. We were also able to plan costumes and props. As our opening sequence was based around a modern day family home scenario, we filmed in an average sized family home using everyday household props such as a teddy bear and plastic cup. We also dressed our actors in modern, every day clothes. We set up the house and made sure nothing changed during filming to maintain continuity throughout. We learnt that mise en scene is very important in adding realism to a film with the location, props and costumes.

Over the project we learnt that camera angles are essential to telling the story and making it believable to the viewer. The match on action shot we used in our preliminary task was not actually needed to tell the story and we only used it because we had to include that type of shot. This made it less effective. In our opening sequence, we used a match on action shot to add to the scariness and thriller theme of the film. This shot was used when we see Jessie opening the door from the back and the camera angle shifts to the front of the door and we see her face and her frightened facial expressions. We have learnt that camera angles are essential to conveying to the audience a characters emotions and personality. For example, a person with power would be shown by a high angle shot while someone with less power will be shown by a low angle shot to visualy display to the viewer that they are smaller and less important.

High angle

Low angle

During the course of constructing the preliminary task we picked up some basic editing skills, learning how to make cuts in our footage and upload videos from Final Cut Pro X to youtube. Over weeks of playing around with the software we learnt how to add and take away audio from our clips, add subtitles and titles over our footage and how to add effects to ensure that the lighting was the same in all our clips, making sure that continuity was maintained. 

From our preliminary task to our final piece, our opening sequence, we have learnt a lot. We have found that mise en scene, camera angles and editing are the most important parts of making a film realistic and believable. 

Evaluation Question Six

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

While making our opening sequence, we used numerous pieces of technology and computer programs to produce, film and edit our opening sequence and to present our research findings on our blog. 

Through the research process, we used various programmes to present our finding and the development of our ideas for the opening sequence and our film company as a whole. 

The computer website Blogger (www.blogger.com) was essential to our project as we used it to present all our research, ideas, production logo and our opening sequence all in the same place. This website allows you to make a blog for free and this is a great way to present all our work as it places it all together in a very structured order and means our work can be accessed from anywhere from everywhere in the world that has access to the internet. 

During the production stage of our opening sequence we used a Samsung WB25OF camera. This was a great camera to use as it is lightweight and records in high definition with life-like colours and extraordinarily sharp details to give a professional finish. During our first filming session we struck a problem. The camera run out of charge as rather than turning the camera off when we were not using it, we left it on. This resulted in our first day of filming running over our scheduled timing. To avoid this in our future filming sessions, we made sure we turned off the camera anytime we were not using it.
We decided not to use a tripod in our opening sequence as we feel that if our footage is slightly shaky in any places it will only enhance our final product and will increase the thriller feel of the opening sequence.

We used an Apple iMac computer throughout our project and it was essential for the success of our opening sequence as we used an application found on Apple iMac's to edit our opening sequence as well as our production logo. This application is called Final Cut Pro X and is where we uploaded all our footage from our filming to construct our opening sequence. We went through all our clips and arranged them in order. We had filmed each scene at least twice so we could select the one that we felt was the best, adding quality to our final product. 
We cut, merged and added text and effects to our film to reach our finished product. We had never used this editing application before but it was simple to use and didn't take us long to pick up the basics and then build on them to end up producing a high quality, professional product. Final Cut Pro X gave us access to effects and audio settings that are not available any where else which enhanced the quality and uniqueness of our opening sequence.

Throughout the research period, we used a range of programmes to present our findings. We used Final Cut Pro X to edit some videos we created as a group to show some of our findings. We also used an internet programme that we were all new to called Prezi. This was a very creative way to display our findings and it showed what we wanted to say visually. Prezi is a free internet website that allows anyone once they have made an account with them to create presentations and save them for access anywhere across the world with internet access.

Through the process of creating our opening sequence, we discovered that producing a film is a very time consuming and technologically demanding process. The slightest mistake such as taking two shots at slightly different angles can result in a total loss of continuity, removing any sense of realism the viewer felt before this point.

The filming process takes a long time as you have to get the actors to do exactly what you want them to and this can take a while, especially if the actors are inexperienced. We were working with three young children and this sometimes made filming time consuming as they didn't properly understand what we needed them to do so we had to take each shot several times. On top of this, they often got distracted very easily which again lengthened the filming process.

In the editing stage of our opening sequence we were extremely thankful for the editing software we had to hand, Final Cut Pro X as it was integral to the production of our opening sequence. It allowed us to add effects to our footage that are available hardly anywhere else; apart from professional standard editing softwares. Even with this exceptional editing software, the process of cutting and merging our footage took a very long to ensure our opening sequence ran seamlessly from beginning to end. 

Evaluation Question Five

How did you attract/address your audience?

To be able for our opening sequence to be seen by others there is a range of ways we used for this to happen. 

We uploaded our opening sequence on youtube for others to be able to view whenever and wherever. 

We also personally addressed others to ask what they thought about our opening sequence and what they liked about it. this is what they said.

Evaluation Question Four

Evaluation Question Three

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

This is the logo for our chosen production company which is Film 4. 

Funny Games is a film that Film4 distributed and has a similar juxtaposition of the music to the action that we did. 

Evaluation Question Two

How does your media product represent different social groups?

Actor No.1

Tom Broomfield: Age - 13 Gender - Male

Tom's character within the production fits the category of a 'typical child' as it is not stated what his name is. He is generally put into the same social group as the other two children, as being the apparent 'victims' of the situation however his visible older age suggests that he may be the most mature child of the group, however this idea is contradicted when he is the first child to be caught by the unidentified dangerous character in the plot.

Actor No.2

Jessie O'Sullivan: Age - 6 Gender - Female

Jessie's character is probably the most important of all of them within this production as she represents the 'victim' character of the story. As she is the youngest of the children and also a female, the audience see her as stereotypically vulnerable and due to this, the audience generally side with that particular character. Within the production we see her playing with toys and wandering around, in contrast with the other two children who are doing written work or are on their phone. This adds to the vulnerability of her and again highlights that she is the youngest and most helpless of them all. Additionally, the prop used by this character was a small stuffed bear which is a stereotypical prop used to accent the infancy of the child and make them appear to be reliant on other characters.

Actor No.3

Kit Bispham: Age - 12 Gender - Male

Kits character is a minor character within the production, as he is not of a significant age in terms of the situation the children are in. He is nor the youngest or oldest character meaning he, as well as Tom's character can be put under the social group of a 'typical child' who, like the others, appears to fear the character who is looking for them. It is important to have characters like this, or the importance of the significant, protagonist characters would be lost.

Actor No.4

Mark Broomfield: Age - 48 Gender - Male

Marks character is the protagonist of the production and is the cause of the situation that occurs, being that the children hide from him. His character is probably the most stereotypical of all the characters, being that he appears to be a dangerous, scary symbol who the other characters are fearful of. He is the eldest character, meaning that steriotypically he holds most of the power and control (he is to be feared, not fearful) contrasting with Jessie's character, representing two polar opposite social groups. The way that you can only see his feet throughout the whole first half of the opening sequence, makes him substantially more mysterious and adds to the effect of his character. However, when finding out who he actually is (the children's father) the stereotype of the character switches to one of a friendly, older character. We see this from the change of music and change of low angle shot which makes someone seem feared of evil, to a high angle shot of him holding the young girl and hugging the older children.

Class

The family presented within the production are a typical middle class family. This is clear due to the setting being inside an average family house, and the clothing and props that are used.

Race

All of the characters are white, however this was not intentional as other children with other ethnicities were considered for the roles, however the children we chose had to look like the father, played by Mark, who is white.

Gender

The protagonist in the production is a male, and the main victim is a female which conforms to the stereotype of the man intimidating and overpowering the woman as they are more physically powerful. The low angle shot used when the little girl is found in the cupboard with the male figure towering high over her also intensifies this view of man's dominance over women. 

Evaluation Question One

In what ways does your media product (opening sequence) use, develop  or challenge forms and conventions from real media?

Improvements and Adaptations

Sound

While editing we decided to change the music in our opening sequence because we had one song, "Tonight You Belong To Me" playing throughout the whole sequence. This song worked well as it contrasted the thriller concept and created a 'creepy' tone to the sequence. However, we decided that just using one song limited our options and by using another instrumental song our opening sequence will become more complex and tie in better with the thriller theme. 

We found an instrumental song that works perfectly with our opening sequence called "Insidious Theme". This is the soundtrack to the motion picture 'Insidious' and it's creepy violin and 'heartbeat' sound effects create a sense of tension and suspense. 

We will merge the two songs together to create a louder, more intense background music and fade out the beginning and end of each song to make it run smoothly.

Cast

We had previously planned to use two young girls and a slightly older boy in our opening sequence but we were unable to fulfil this as one of the young girls we had planned to use, Sienna, was unable to make the filming dates we had planned at very short notice. Fortunately, we had planned for such an event and already had a backup in place; Tom, Florence's brother.

Although Tom is 13 while Sienna is 5, he still conveys to the audience a young, defenceless child who has no chance of defending himself against an older, seemingly powerful, domineering and dangerous man. In our opening sequence the cast will now consist of two young boys, Kit and Tom, a young girl, Jessie, and Mark, a middle aged father figure. These actors still match are original plan as we didn't base our opening sequence on gender. In the planning process we focused on the theme of our opening scene and had backup actors in place for such eventualities.

Production Logo Reviews

We conducted some market research to discover how people in our target audience receive our production logo and if our creation has been successful. We sat a collection of randomly selected people down who we intend to be part of our target audience and asked them a selection of questions:

• Do you like our logo, if so why?
• Does the production company name fit well with the logo?
• What genre do you think our opening sequence will be?
• If we tell you our genre is thriller, do you think it fits well?
• Is there anything we can improve?

After asking these questions we have come to the conclusion that our logo fulfils all the qualities required for a high quality, professional and memorable film production logo.

Feedback

This was the feedback we got from our teachers and as a group we are happy with it as we are aiming for a high A grade.
To improve our blog we were told to "make sure all element of your opening sequence put together act as a package". This was in reference to our production logo as the image of a rose does not really match are production company logo, 'ExtreMedia'. We do not want to get rid of the image of a rose as we feel it is very effective for our opening sequence as it clearly relates to our genre. 
Therefore, we will create a sub-production company entitled 'Fallen Rose' as this relates the image of the rose and also makes the company more memorable to the viewer.

By doing this, we will complete all the action points we need to complete to achieve the highest possible grade.