evaluation

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
It very much takes from the horror genre of films. It uses similar openings to horror movies, using scenic shots and fades. The washed out, almost monotone colouring with silhouettes are typically 'scary' as are churches, faces in stone and the mysterious stranger. It challenges a contemporary audience however, as it isn't set in America with some teenage/young attractive hero. There are many films which don't conform to this norm but they do not reach a mass market. The Wickerman for instance uses a middle aged policeman as the hero, my film too wouldn't appeal to a mass market. The Shining another psychological horror, uses a young boy and his mother as the heroes, and uses the father as the villian, unusual heroes and antiheroes only add to the suspense and shock. The score also sounds like a classic horror soundtrack. It, like the music in say the shining, (which I think was fantastic musically) is used to increase tension. It also fits in well with the rural 'olde worlde' nature of the film. I have used the task of filming an opening sequence to attempt to create an atmoshpere of foreboding and impending horror without the use of CGI.

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The only character seen in the piece is a middle aged man dressed in black. This combined with slightly folky music woud drastically reduce appeal to a younger audience. The piece targets a more mature audience. Although I think many people all around Britain will be able to relate to the film, the characters and setting are far more tangeable to the average brit than a Monte Carlo casino or fantasy land. Everyone will have seen a shadowy figure at somepoint in their lives, and been intrigued by them. I also hope the piece gives a real sense of place, and fell that it would appeal to the residents of Eat Anglia, as well as to people who have spent time on the North Norfolk coast.

• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A small British film company, looking to promote British cinema might want to showcase new talent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_film_studios that is a list of potential distributers however many are historical names and no longer exist. obviously hammer would be ideal (as they are famous for horror) but they don't really operate anymore, they are just a name. In 2007 new owners took over and announced £25 million would go into making new films, as far as I know nothing has been made yet. However, cheaper and perhaps more realistic, would be to use the internet as a tool to showcase the film. With millions of users, youtube can lead to videos being seen all across the world. Furthermore the BBC has websites promoting British short films, and this too would be an ideal location for the film's showing, however the site lacks the traffic that youtube receives. it is possible that this film is ideal for a late showing on film4 or BBC4 or other similar arty channels.

• Who would be the audience for your media product?
Mainly male people interested in horror films, who go to arthouse cinemas. The audience would be relatively old as the film isn't very pacey and doesn't feature young people. The film certainly isn't for teenagers who do not like things which are different from the usual dire films fed to young people by the media. Only people who activly seek out films like this would find it. I feel the natural audience would be film buffs and film students.

• How did you attract/address your audience?
I tried not to patronise them as I did in my very first piece of film that
I made at 6th form. I left a lot to be worked out by the viewer and a lot of interpretation and imagination can be used by the viewer. The sense of mystery I created would attract and intrigue my film enthusiast audience. I think visually my piece is good looking the scenery is beautiful and some of the shots are dynamic and interesting. The ability to relate to the setting and character more than in say Avatar, could also be a bonus. Though the pace of the film remains quite slow like European film, this could intrigue the audience as it may well be something they are not used to.

• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Well, I hadn't used a camera seriously before and never used editing software before, so I learnt how to use both in a slightly professional way. I also learnt about the difficulties in keeping continuity in mise en scene between shots, luckily I was able to edit the footage on imovie to make it all look the same. I learnt of the limitations of stabilisation, many of my shots which appeared stable and level while filming turned out not to be, many shot were also grainy I had possibly selected the wrong setting for the location.

• Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The need for meticulous planning luckily it was only 2 minutes long so I was able to cobble together something that pleased me from my footage, but that is only because I had around 40 minutes of footage, and alot of that 40 mins was unusable for a variety of reasons. I feel I should have practiced with the camera more, focus panning et cetera. The need to shoot everything multiple time, having options in the editing suite was very useful, as many shots turned out to have issues which at the time I missed. I realised the importance of a full location scout. Much of my film owes a great deal to the two trips i made to find my locations as well as time psent trawling books and the net. I also discovered the importance of having simple shots, and plots in order not to distract from what I was trying to portray, and as not to be over ambitous and end up failing miserabley.

An updated version

I should have uploaded lots of versions really, as lots has been added, taken out and changed since the original, and it would have been good to document my changes with screenshots and videos. . . but it's taught me some lessons for next year!one change i made was adding a sound bridge of the ropes taping on the mast, i did this using a pencil and a can of coke, but i tried lots of other stuff like aerosol cans and chair legs.

Props and Costume

Props - The letter is old looking the writing loopy this fits in with the backwards nature of the village, the writing can't be raed and the letter is discarded, this intrigues the viewer.

Costume - the jacket is long and black, the character it shrouded in shadow and clothes which reveal little. The character often has his hands in his pockets which again suggest a sense of mystery.

video clip g322

1. the media is not global, though broadband etc pass territorial boundaries the media is still localised
2. should show examples of global and local in exam, eg bollywood success
3. cultural imperialism, as countries become dominant eg states they become more powerful in the media and we see America as a norm. we are surrounded by American films businesses and television programs.
4. diasporic media is when people take their media culture with them when immigrating
5. local level people have a very mixed media model and access both global local and diasporic media.

social status race

bowie kicks them out so he is of better standing the two men battle to show of their achievements
the staff are almost slave like offering them with anything, but then when bowie arrives they are kicked out and the main characters then have a certain awe for him. the 'member of the public' s opinion is dismissed and is described as a 'tiny ant' and stupid and ignorant. the man he bickers with believes himself to be superior and has a posh accent as well as suit compared to a leather jacket. the guys in a mac and a tracksuit are dismissed by the two smartly dressed women despite their name dropping, their are very few ethnic minorities in the text, there are a few as extras. but it is mainly a white cast. two of the black people are talking to each other and there is no inter racial interaction. A bouncer is also black.

more shooting ideas

wooden door, choice of doors, pub, shop, sweets, church, pagan, eyes watching, some people stood outside pipes, shifty behaviour, taxidermist, butcher,

I settled for some shots of churches, i only had 9 seconds under the 2 minute limit, but I removed some of the transitions to add some more pace towards the end of the 2 minutes, i also shortened some shots which lasted too long. so i actually had around 30 seconds to play with. I tried to graphically match the floating bench which provokes thoughts of floating bodies, i used a swinging chandleler in a church. I also decided to include more faces this time church gargoyles to add to a feeling of being watched, a further shot which adds to this feeling is the shot through the gap in the flint wall. The film ends with the man walking into the church which gives the clip more purpose.

I shot at 4 different churches around my local area and visited a further ruined one, but it was totally un-usable.
i was hoping to use a somewhat shabby unused church to imply that the village wasn't very christian.

film openings- www.artofthetitle.com

i might try and finish my 2 minutes with the character presented with a choice, maybe of two doors.

I watched the shining the other day, it started with beautiful shots of a journey through an isolated and harsh envinronment. The film used fading in the initial shots. I think this is a good sign that my film is relativley similar in opening, as The Shining is one of the best horrors I've seen, so recreating something similar without even having seen it shows I'm on the right tracks. The Wickerman another of my favourite horros starts in this way also.

changes

I re watched the wickerman opening; they used fading in between shots so I added them to mine. My film was 1.21 after the first cut I added some more scenes but may need to record more footage.

Might need to work on the titles. They were fairly plain, but in the end I fitted them into nice areas on the screen, where they don’t obscure anything and are clear to see, I used a curly hand-written-look font, which I think matches well with the oldy worldly feel of my opening.

I tried an effect called old school, which made it yellow and grainy, I then tried black and white and finally de saturation, I had a low contrast for a while but then decided it looked best on a high contrast.

The music was made by Harry on reason I asked for an eerie nautical folk song, and I think the music also echoes the wind and isolation.

I also slowed some of the scenes down subtly to about 95% because he was walking too fast. I slowed a shot of a seagull right down it looked very dramatic. I sped up some shots of clouds drifting past a church by over 2000% I was scared it would look gimmicky, but I think it is a nice effect and adding high contrast to the shot added depth to the clouds and made the church a completely black silhouette. Which could represent Christianity has left the village, and paganism is rife. I used fades in the initial shots, but i had them throughout but i decided it was a bit ponderous like that, so i removed them as he enters the village and it gives the character pace and purpose, as well as keeping the audience engaged.

Video

feedback

what do you think of my roughcut?

Targets

1. I want to decide on the correct mise en scene experimenting with effects colour and saturation.
2. i need to document my work regularly and in depth.

Looking back at my footage

I am pleased with the content but the shots are fuzzy and often wobbly. My first draft the shots lasted too long, i'm very glad i took so many takes and in so many different ways as a large percentage of my recordings were unusable. I am also glad I avoided dialogue, it's not required in the first 2 minutes of a film and it would have been very hard to make it sound authentic and believable. In many of the AS films I have seen the speech was awkward and clunky.

Music and sound

I spent alot of time looking for music, initially I was planning on writing to a band called the Decemberists who have multiple dark nautical folk songs, which were perfect for the piece. I did manage to find a very similar sounding piece on a music website, and it had no words which was even better, but you had to pay to use it. So in the end i used my friend Harry a music tech student, the specification i gave him, were: horror, nautical, folk
and I think he came back with a fantastically fitting piece.

One sound problem i had was the variation in wind noise between shots, further more some had me tlaking in the background, so in the end the vast majority of the shot were muted. The gulls and waves were preset sounds on imovie.
You can also hear the sound of the tape whirring in some of the shots.

A little bit o' research

Titles and credits

Maybe on the horizon
On the village sign
On the shop sign

However my latest story board doesn't have the village sign or the shop sign, but i had intended to shoot it in several different ways and several times, so i have more choices in the editing room.

story boards

The rest of the film.

The man will continue through the village, he will take residence in the pub or with an old lady. Later on he will get entangled with the strange local religion, he will attempt to halt the murderous pagan shaman, much like in Hot Fuzz.

Locations

Try to imagine it in bad weather with some creepy folk music about drowning or something. Comments about places you liked/didn't like would be appreciated.

Reccy

Here are some pictures I took while location hunting. I edited these on photoshop, bleaching out the colour and darkening the sky (it was a clear day). I also tried to show perspective echoing the isolation and seclusion the general colour of the mise en scene helps to achieve this as well. I tried to make sure that there were no modern items in the background, and where they are unavoidable I will cover them with portable trees or a cloth. The shot with the red flakey boat was one of the most striking locations I found, the boats and things in the foreground were just as i wanted they looked ill cared for, and them sitting in the mud with the tide out was great. The face in the stone was creepy and i will use it to give a hint of things to come later in the film, much like the eye in The Wickerman. I took about 90 pictures and 10 videos.

Film pitch

An isolated backwards village's equilbrium is disturbed by the arrival of an outsider, suspicious of the goings on at the coast. A psychological horror dubbed a modern day wickerman.

I want a black and white or drained dull colour opening shot, I want it to be an extreme wide shot panning slowly to the left to reveal the isolation of the land. The titles could fit on the horizon or be twitchy like 'The Simpsons' titles. The font should be curly and hand written. Possibly in pencil stop motion on a parchment like paper.

This book has lots of good images i used for inspiration.

The wicker man

The wickerman starts with scenic views of the Scottish coast from a seaplane, the shots are simple establishing long distance shots, as is the editing, which has no effects.
As like in many horror films, the opening two minutes seem benign, probably to add to the shock to come, the only hint is a strange eye painted on the boat. It is accompanied by some Scottish folk music which gives sense of community and ruralness. The mise en scene is bright light and beautiful.
there are many blues and greens, the costumes and housing are picturesque and rustic.
I want to create a Wickerman like film, set in a possibly the marshes of North Norfolk, involving a secluded rural village where odd beliefs are practised. I think it would have to be set sometime ago as however secluded some villages are around here, I doubt that they are pagan!
I think a similar thing could be easily achievable however I’m not sure how interesting it will be. To be honest, I don’t see the point in making the opening two minutes of a film because very often they are very plain and simple, I may have to break with convention and produce something that dives straight into the horror in order to best showcase my abilities, but I think by doing this we lose the suspense and some of the creepiness, perhaps I could do something creepy and harrowing but doesn’t bear direct relevance to the rest of the film, like a flashback, or a murder or ritual not involving the main characters. Perhaps a shot of daily life before the arrival of the ‘hero’.

Film openings- www.artofthetitle.com

Sherlock Holmes - i loved the ending credits. The brown paper newspaper headings and cobble stones, immediately take the audience and immerses them in the world of sherlock homes, and for me the best films are always the ones, in which you forget you are watching a film and are totally immersed in the world, portrayed.

Coraline - I thought it was one of the coolest openings ive ever seen, I love stop motion. I also like the embroidered titles which fit in with the puppet thing and looks alot more interesting than a computer font pasted over the top of something, the sherlock holmes calligraphy also looks good.

Plan

• Research into similar media texts and analysis of their forms and conventions: watch as many horror films as i can.

Ideas:

Film openings: look at the link to ART OF THE TITLE SEQUENCE.

Break down your choice of film openings and analyse them like they’ve done on the art of the title sequence. This should help focus your attention on the importance of titles. Don’t forget to discuss mise-en-scene, camerawork, editing etc…


• Audience research

Ideas

You must have a clear idea of your target audience. You need to carry out a number of audience research tasks and document how these have helped to develop your production work. I will expect to see some edited footage of audience interviews/focus groups at work etc…

Focus group while i'm watching the films .

A summative post giving a 25 word analysis of who you think your audience is.


• Planning

Ideas

Pitch
Treatment
Script Mood boards
Location shots Storyboard - filmed as an animatic (take stills of each frame and cut together on imovie)



25-29th after school research
30/31st location scouting
1-5th planning story boarding
half term shooting
editing from then on till deadline/when finished - this is a long period, i will have time to address any issues that occur.

Jerry Maguire

Jerry Maguire is a successful and talented bullshitter, he gets what he wants he is smarmy, aggressive and obsessed, but now in a midlife crisis scenario (though still begin around 30) he has begun to question his job.

Kevin Spacey - Leister Burnham- american beauty
He is a very unhappy man, he is bored, insignificant and solitary. His wife and daughter look down on him, and he agrees with their opinion. He is downtrodden. He blends in to the background and has a mundane repetitive sterile existence. He has hopes for recapturing his 'lost' passion and excitement for life.

My character - Is a 50 something man who lives by himself he is deemed mad by everyone. he is a taxidermist, and he is in love with the girl next door and stuffs her, and then the policeman investigating, then the girl family. he uses them like puppets. the film ends with a cheery musical number performed by the stuffed people puppets.

Analysis of text examples

I think the first piece of text a mid level 3. I think the contents page is poor, the text doesn't stand out and the picture background is blurry and seemingly bears no relevance to the text. I like the image on the front cover but again the price blends in with background. The photoshopping of the girl on the double page spread show good use of IT. THe use of language is not accurate with both grammatical and spelling errors

The second piece is terrible level 1 or 2, the text isnt clear and on the double page spread overlaps slightly onto the next page making it very hard to read. The white background look unprofessional. There are several examples of blurred images, also the repeated use of exclamation marks I find lowers the tone of the magazine.

Audience Research

I want to show a focus group a series of film openings that clearly portray different opening styles exciting dramatic event, narrator et cetera, and ask them their favourites and pros and cons. And record them. Family and friends i can also look at the films myself and note my own opinions.

Also some facebook polls, maybe with links to youtube (AS other students work)

i think i'm a 7/10 interviewer. I started with easy steps before building up to controversial issues, there were moments of silence but as it was improvised i think it can be forgiven.

Audience of my film

Art house cinema city go-er.

Average read of MOJO

The average MOJO reader is a 40 year old man, who whilst being 'hip' when young it trying to hang on to this. He is a family man and middle class, he dreams of breaking out of the shackles of his life. He reads MOJO as an escape and reminder of his youth. The adverts say mediocracy is a sin, and our man is very mediocre but wishes he wasn't.

Brain storming ideas for practical work

1. I want to learn to be as professional as possible. learning skills that i can use later in life.

2. i want to work by myself unless the other person does exactly what i say.

3. Your a genius here is £50, A*. This could be a professional piece of work, the editing and filming are flawless, they are well chosen shots, each one has meaning in relation to the text.

Print

A punk magasine would be easy to make. Picture of flynn some rippped page on the pages, mixed size fonts, badges, some safety pins spray paint newspaper clipping et cetera, done graphics doing product design.

Film

Art clever title sequence like ending credits shot of 300 or the titles of heroes. alot more work but could be more fun interesting.