In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e of film openings)
In general, our horror film doesn’t really apply many of the main conventions found inside a horror film. We have chosen to go for more of a political horror rather than such horror forms as a thriller or action. Because of this it means that we have chosen not to include conventions such as the fake scare, the ignorance towards a threat or the stranded victim convention. However in order to create a real horror atmosphere and be able to let the audience identify the genre that this film will fall into we decided it would beneficial for us to include a convention that is most commonly found in Slasher Horror’s, this is a convention that includes a character being killed in the opening minutes of the film.
Our horror was thought up based of personal idea’s and thoughts that group shared, our original idea has been altered an awful lot in order to gain the best effect of the audience. Our actual location and the way we filmed out shots was inspired from a music video that we felt helped to build tension and focus a lot on one character, Lupe Fiasco – Show goes on. The main shot that we decided we thought could work well for our production that we spotted during this music video was the shot I have included in the video below, we felt if we could track the movement of our main character towards the stage it would help the audience focus on this character, become gripped to the character and then have him killed and taken away from them, something they wouldn’t expect. I have also included our version of this shot to show the effect we were going for.
Below I have constructed a 10 minute video that includes myself analysing the 14 key shots that we picked out as a group, I talk about the reasons why we decided to pick this shots. I also discuss the way we constructed the shots and to how we feel this has benefited our production and in what way we feel it has had an overall effect on the final product.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Evaluation 2
How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?
In our production, we decided to go for someone that is far from the biggest person we know, we decided to choose someone who was of a smaller build for a number of reasons. Firstly because we feel that using a small build of character will lure the audience into seeing this character as less of a threat, this is good because when the actual murder happens they will be in more of a shock and confused about how this has happened. We feel this will help to engage the audience and make them feel as if there’s more to this character than meets the eye. We also wanted them to feel that even despite the size of the illuminati, they are far superior to use and have the power over the normal person, this is important to setting the scene and the plot of the story.
In terms of how our product represents certain social groups, there is one main point to discuss. This is again that about the character, we decided to go for on outfit that was inspired mainly by the hit film, V for Vendetta. The mask is commonly associated with the illuminati and secret services/freemasonry, worldwide. We felt that by including this mask, that the audience could easily relate to this type of story plot, the illuminati and V for Vendetta, which automatically will strike fear into the audience.
The image at the top of the screen shows just how we were inspired by V for Vendetta, we wanted to achieve a look that would incorporate not only the mask of ‘V’ but the secrecy of him, we used Monks robes rather than the conventional full black, to achieve this look. I also believe that the picture of our character (right) shows him to look powerful and almighty, this is shown by the way his hands are risen and his body posture and positioning. The fact that we chose to keep our character covered and keep the level of secrecy will make the audience expect the worst of him and try and figure him out as character.
However our character does have differences to the social group he most represents, the key fact that our character doesn’t use any sort of conventional weapons and uses more of an improvisational weapon in order to create a more memorable and authentic effect on the audience is something that our production team took a great level of care and went into great detail in selecting. We also feel they share great differences in there build, ‘V’ is shown to be a great, tall, well-built character who could dominate any victim with his bare hands, whereas our character is smaller and looks to be less of a threat, which was the deception we wanted to lure our audience into.
In our production, we decided to go for someone that is far from the biggest person we know, we decided to choose someone who was of a smaller build for a number of reasons. Firstly because we feel that using a small build of character will lure the audience into seeing this character as less of a threat, this is good because when the actual murder happens they will be in more of a shock and confused about how this has happened. We feel this will help to engage the audience and make them feel as if there’s more to this character than meets the eye. We also wanted them to feel that even despite the size of the illuminati, they are far superior to use and have the power over the normal person, this is important to setting the scene and the plot of the story.
In terms of how our product represents certain social groups, there is one main point to discuss. This is again that about the character, we decided to go for on outfit that was inspired mainly by the hit film, V for Vendetta. The mask is commonly associated with the illuminati and secret services/freemasonry, worldwide. We felt that by including this mask, that the audience could easily relate to this type of story plot, the illuminati and V for Vendetta, which automatically will strike fear into the audience.
The image at the top of the screen shows just how we were inspired by V for Vendetta, we wanted to achieve a look that would incorporate not only the mask of ‘V’ but the secrecy of him, we used Monks robes rather than the conventional full black, to achieve this look. I also believe that the picture of our character (right) shows him to look powerful and almighty, this is shown by the way his hands are risen and his body posture and positioning. The fact that we chose to keep our character covered and keep the level of secrecy will make the audience expect the worst of him and try and figure him out as character.
However our character does have differences to the social group he most represents, the key fact that our character doesn’t use any sort of conventional weapons and uses more of an improvisational weapon in order to create a more memorable and authentic effect on the audience is something that our production team took a great level of care and went into great detail in selecting. We also feel they share great differences in there build, ‘V’ is shown to be a great, tall, well-built character who could dominate any victim with his bare hands, whereas our character is smaller and looks to be less of a threat, which was the deception we wanted to lure our audience into.
Evaluation 3
What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?
Having spent a good amount of time surfing the internet, comparing a wide range of potential institution's that we feel would be interested in distributing our small media production we have come to a conclusion. We decided that a company such as Maxim Media would be very interested in our type of production as they pride themselves on 'distributing a large range of independent horror and shock films to a potentially worldwide audience'.
The fact that they specialize in distributing only independent films played a key role for us in making our decision to select Maxim Media as a preffered institution to distribute our film. What this means is instead of distributing large, big budget blockbusters such as The Hills Have Eyes or Saw for example, they will specialize on low budget films that our without any real backing in the media aspects, advertisement or even financial backing. This is perfect for us as our media production was an extremely minimal budget piece of media that was without any backing of any sort from anyone! This means that Maxim Media are the type of company we would approach if we wished to find distribution from a company, we would choose them for that reason alone.
However that isn't the only reason we may have for selecting Maxim Media, the fact that they also specialize in a wide range of horror AND SHOCK films is another key point that should not be ignored. In terms of horror, our film doesn't really include a wide range of blood, guts and gore, however, it is more of an investigative shock/horror, in the fact it keeps the audience guessing and trying to figure out what might happen next. Because of this I believe that a institution that specializes in a wide range of horror movies will be better suited to a production such as ours because we have tried to become innovative with our ideas and our production, we have tried to create something that is new and fresh. It's for this reason why we believe Maxim Media would once more be suited to our production of, Breaking The Fourth Wall.
Having spent a good amount of time surfing the internet, comparing a wide range of potential institution's that we feel would be interested in distributing our small media production we have come to a conclusion. We decided that a company such as Maxim Media would be very interested in our type of production as they pride themselves on 'distributing a large range of independent horror and shock films to a potentially worldwide audience'.
The fact that they specialize in distributing only independent films played a key role for us in making our decision to select Maxim Media as a preffered institution to distribute our film. What this means is instead of distributing large, big budget blockbusters such as The Hills Have Eyes or Saw for example, they will specialize on low budget films that our without any real backing in the media aspects, advertisement or even financial backing. This is perfect for us as our media production was an extremely minimal budget piece of media that was without any backing of any sort from anyone! This means that Maxim Media are the type of company we would approach if we wished to find distribution from a company, we would choose them for that reason alone.
Evaluation 4
Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?
(Left) Dean Houghton is 17 years old and is a student at Kettering Buccleuch Academy; he is a sixth form student who lives in the Northamptonshire area of the UK. He has a strong passion for media, film making and film consuming. He spends his spare time creating short films and researching into a future in the media/film making business. His love and knowledge of films is also shown in his place of work, the local Odeon cinema screening company. Dean is your average, young, outgoing and athletic teenage boy who enjoys nothing more than spending time with friends.
Dean, as mentioned enjoys spending time consuming media aswell as creating it. His favourite television show is The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is a horror-drama which includes a Zombie Apocalypse in the US. The show is much americanised and is aired by an American TV channel. He likes this show because he says “As a TV show I find it really gripping, I really enjoy the drama element of the show aswell as the horror of the show. I find that these two aspects work very well because I believe it’s like watching your average drama, but you’re constantly on edge as to what might happen next because you’re aware of the horror element it has to offer through the means of Zombies, blood, guts and gore. For me, it’s the perfect mix and it has me totally hooked!”
Dean went onto comment about his love of scary films aswell as TV shows, “ I’d have to say that horror is by a mile my favourite genre of films. I have a huge passion for all types of films, but horror films just have that extra edge, that buzz that other types of films just don’t bring. They have the ability to put you edge, aswell as grip you and get you thinking, for the full 2 hours. I just don’t think that other genres of films can compare to horror, they don’t get you fearing, sympathising, they don’t have you jumping out your skin at every twist and turn, and that’s why, for me they’re the best types of film.” He later explains, “In terms of my favourite film of a horror genre, I’d have to say v for Vendetta would probably have to be it. It has that extra twist to it that other horror’s don’t, I like how it challenges conventions rather than copies them. I love how it is a very smart film, it’s clear to everyone that the storyline has been thought out well and that’s why I love it.”
Dean enjoys all different types of music, but his favourite type is Acoustic. Dean has recently been to several different music gigs, including his favourite artist, Ed Sheeran, who performed at a HMV event in Nottingham earlier this year. Dean has been a keen admirer of Ed since even before his rise to fame in 2010. He is constantly listening to Ed on his iPod and is a keen follower of Ed on Twitter. However he does also enjoy listening to a wide range of music that include the likes of Gyptian, The Enemy and Green Day.
My reasoning for believing that our media product would be well suited to someone such as Dean is because he shares a strong love for horror products, he has told us his passion for this type of films. He commented on how his favourite type of film is V for Vendetta because it is a very intelligent film that has a very well thought out storyline, he believes that this type of film is very appealing to his type of audience. As we used V for Vendetta as an inspiration we feel that he is a perfect target audience for us to use. This is why we used him as a model for who we wished to target in our production. We also feel that this type of film is something that there is a strong market for and the type you could imagine seeing in a cinema, Dean’s love of cinema’s is shown in his job alone, and for this reason aswell as many others we believe that he fits the perfect bill for our target audience.
Dean, as mentioned enjoys spending time consuming media aswell as creating it. His favourite television show is The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is a horror-drama which includes a Zombie Apocalypse in the US. The show is much americanised and is aired by an American TV channel. He likes this show because he says “As a TV show I find it really gripping, I really enjoy the drama element of the show aswell as the horror of the show. I find that these two aspects work very well because I believe it’s like watching your average drama, but you’re constantly on edge as to what might happen next because you’re aware of the horror element it has to offer through the means of Zombies, blood, guts and gore. For me, it’s the perfect mix and it has me totally hooked!”
Dean went onto comment about his love of scary films aswell as TV shows, “ I’d have to say that horror is by a mile my favourite genre of films. I have a huge passion for all types of films, but horror films just have that extra edge, that buzz that other types of films just don’t bring. They have the ability to put you edge, aswell as grip you and get you thinking, for the full 2 hours. I just don’t think that other genres of films can compare to horror, they don’t get you fearing, sympathising, they don’t have you jumping out your skin at every twist and turn, and that’s why, for me they’re the best types of film.” He later explains, “In terms of my favourite film of a horror genre, I’d have to say v for Vendetta would probably have to be it. It has that extra twist to it that other horror’s don’t, I like how it challenges conventions rather than copies them. I love how it is a very smart film, it’s clear to everyone that the storyline has been thought out well and that’s why I love it.”
Dean enjoys all different types of music, but his favourite type is Acoustic. Dean has recently been to several different music gigs, including his favourite artist, Ed Sheeran, who performed at a HMV event in Nottingham earlier this year. Dean has been a keen admirer of Ed since even before his rise to fame in 2010. He is constantly listening to Ed on his iPod and is a keen follower of Ed on Twitter. However he does also enjoy listening to a wide range of music that include the likes of Gyptian, The Enemy and Green Day.
My reasoning for believing that our media product would be well suited to someone such as Dean is because he shares a strong love for horror products, he has told us his passion for this type of films. He commented on how his favourite type of film is V for Vendetta because it is a very intelligent film that has a very well thought out storyline, he believes that this type of film is very appealing to his type of audience. As we used V for Vendetta as an inspiration we feel that he is a perfect target audience for us to use. This is why we used him as a model for who we wished to target in our production. We also feel that this type of film is something that there is a strong market for and the type you could imagine seeing in a cinema, Dean’s love of cinema’s is shown in his job alone, and for this reason aswell as many others we believe that he fits the perfect bill for our target audience.
Evaluation 6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this production?Below I have produced a powerpoint presentation using Microsoft Powerpoint Presentation. This slideshare version ofthe powerpoint includes the different type of software, equipment and technologies that we as a group have used during our time creating this production. Evaluation Question 6
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Evaluation 7
Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity edit task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?The slideshow below consists of a number of comparisons between shots that were taken during the creation of our groups preliminary task and shots that were taken during the main horror opening scene task. We have analysed a number of different shots, techniques and camera skills that were used for different shots and also gone into detail as to what we feel is the good and the bad points of each shots. We have picked out the poor shots from the continuity edit and shown how we have improved these types of shots in the main task.Evaluation Question 7
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Sunday, March 18, 2012
Breaking The 4th Wall - The Première
The Breaking The 4th Wall team our proud to annouce that after many months of hard work, determination and more hard work, we have finally come to the end of our long grueling task of creating the opening scene to our teen horror movie. Myself, Jose, Jordan and Pav our all very happy to have finally completed what has been one of the most challanging tasks yet for us during our long educational career but feel what we have produced is something we can all be very proud off.
Today was the day in which the group came together for what will be the pneultamate time taking into account our evaluation. We came together today in order to burn our production onto a disc, aswell as our preliminary task which will be shown on a DVD menu for presentation purposes. We also today printed our disc with the Breaking the 4th Wall title. This art-work is something that we our also very proud off as we all believe it will add to the first impression the examiner will have when presented with our disc.
I have decided it would be beneficial for my blog to include the final production so have decided to upload the production onto Youtube, I have then gone onto include this video below -
I hope you enjoyed watching our production.
Today was the day in which the group came together for what will be the pneultamate time taking into account our evaluation. We came together today in order to burn our production onto a disc, aswell as our preliminary task which will be shown on a DVD menu for presentation purposes. We also today printed our disc with the Breaking the 4th Wall title. This art-work is something that we our also very proud off as we all believe it will add to the first impression the examiner will have when presented with our disc.
I have decided it would be beneficial for my blog to include the final production so have decided to upload the production onto Youtube, I have then gone onto include this video below -
I hope you enjoyed watching our production.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Final Editing
Breaking The 4th Wall production team would meet in the media suite for what would appear to be the final time we would edit together as a group. Having gone over what we felt could be improved and what we felt needed tweaking and also, what we felt should be kept the same, it was a simple matter of going in there, armed with our notes from the previous review of the previous edit and doing the task in hand. We sat ourselves down at the iMac, opened up Final Cut and set to work on our edit, Jordan, once more lead the way with confidence and ideas flowing from the rest of the production team.
The main task on our hands was inputting our score and then adjusting certain shots and clips to fit with the beat and flow of the score. This was a task that turned out to be quite difficult at times as it often meant cutting clips to suit amongst other things. However we feel after spending 1-2 hours trying to adjust this that we have come out with a product that is once again improved to what we had when went into the media suite. This on it's own is a huge bonus for us as a group as this was the main aspect of our production that was missing, the reason this was such a huge problem is because we opted to take out any dialogue and background noise form our recording, this means that without a score our production is without practically any noise and is left motionless and the atmosphere as good as ruined.
To conclude on this short editing post, we feel that including this score has helped us to try an achieve a more authentic and professional outcome of a product. We also feel with this score being put into the picture that we have helped ourselves to try and create a more horror-type-genre opening that will create a better level of tension and also help to grip the audience with the change in shots and cuts according to the beat of the music. All in all we feel pleased that this score has been input because ultimately we believe it will help to push the production into the higher mark bands and be more realistic in comparison to the image we had in mind during the start of our production.
The main task on our hands was inputting our score and then adjusting certain shots and clips to fit with the beat and flow of the score. This was a task that turned out to be quite difficult at times as it often meant cutting clips to suit amongst other things. However we feel after spending 1-2 hours trying to adjust this that we have come out with a product that is once again improved to what we had when went into the media suite. This on it's own is a huge bonus for us as a group as this was the main aspect of our production that was missing, the reason this was such a huge problem is because we opted to take out any dialogue and background noise form our recording, this means that without a score our production is without practically any noise and is left motionless and the atmosphere as good as ruined.
To conclude on this short editing post, we feel that including this score has helped us to try an achieve a more authentic and professional outcome of a product. We also feel with this score being put into the picture that we have helped ourselves to try and create a more horror-type-genre opening that will create a better level of tension and also help to grip the audience with the change in shots and cuts according to the beat of the music. All in all we feel pleased that this score has been input because ultimately we believe it will help to push the production into the higher mark bands and be more realistic in comparison to the image we had in mind during the start of our production.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Final Changes
Today me and the rest of The Breaking The Fourth Wall production team sat ourselves around a computer in the media suite here at KBA and decided it would be beneficial to go back over the most recent effort at an edit for our production. Having watched over the production several times and mentally noting down different parts of the production and the edit that we all felt could be improved upon we then decided to create a task list of different shots, edits and effects that we still felt could be included in order to improve the overall effect of our production.
The main part of our production that we felt could be improved upon was the shot shown in the screenshot below, we believed that this could improved because of a number of reasons. Firstly we felt that it lacked the same type of visual quality that the rest of the production brang with itself. Secondly we felt that the lighting in the shot was very poor and it made it very difficult to withold the effect that we were targetting as a group from the moment we set the ball rolling back in September. Our third and final justification in deciding to take away this shot was that because we felt that a POV shot was not the type of shot we felt would create the most tension in our production, we felt the need to keep switching between shots that were close up on our character and long shots of the character making his way to the stage. For these reasons we decided to withdraw this shot from our production and instead of replacing it, we have decided to edit it differently to suit this withdrawal.
As a group we feel that we have benefitted hugely from being able to have the luxury of this meeting, this is because we have kept to sharp deadlines in order to give us this free time at the end of the year. This meeting has allowed us as a group to improve our production hugely in the fact that we now feel we can create a better level of tension and improve the suspense that our production is trying to create. We all feel that now we have done this we can look towards the final step towards completing this production and start burning the production onto the disc.
The main part of our production that we felt could be improved upon was the shot shown in the screenshot below, we believed that this could improved because of a number of reasons. Firstly we felt that it lacked the same type of visual quality that the rest of the production brang with itself. Secondly we felt that the lighting in the shot was very poor and it made it very difficult to withold the effect that we were targetting as a group from the moment we set the ball rolling back in September. Our third and final justification in deciding to take away this shot was that because we felt that a POV shot was not the type of shot we felt would create the most tension in our production, we felt the need to keep switching between shots that were close up on our character and long shots of the character making his way to the stage. For these reasons we decided to withdraw this shot from our production and instead of replacing it, we have decided to edit it differently to suit this withdrawal.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Production Meeting - Score
Today, myself and the fellow members of The Breaking The 4th Wall production team came together for what may become one of our very final meeting's as a production team. However it was business as always for the team, on the agenda today was the final tweakings towards our final, finished product. The soundtrack or score as it's known in the world of media is something that can make or break a production therefore, we personally believe it is of huge importance that we ensure that we make the right decision when it comes to selecting our score.
Earlier on during our production, in the pre-production stage we did a huge amount of research and planning into the production of our score and looked at a number of different producers that we could bring into the group and use as a hugely valuable asset. Aswell as this we also decided it would be beneficial to look into the idea of creating our own score, if this failed we had a third plan, we could have a number of different sources of royalty free audio tracks that we could input into our production in order to gain the desired effect.
In terms of producers, a few big names we looked at bringing in were the likes of Charlie Spring, Zhirkov Liedbitter and many others. However we decided that going with a more reliable asset such as Charlie would be something that we can really be sure of success with. This is what I had to say about Charlie in the late weeks of 2011 -
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Beta Editing #2 - Production Team Review
3 days on from completing the second full edit of our production, Breaking The 4th Wall, myself and the rest of the production team decided we would go over the edit. Having time to take in and re-watch the edit we had created we were now better prepared than ever to discuss and review the pro's and con's of this edit in comparison to what our image of a final product was at the beginning of the production. We took ourselves the usual boardroom in order to sit down, around a table, paper and pen in hand and let the discussion begin. We all contributed and came up with a number ideas that we feel can be taken into consideration during the THIRD edit of Breaking The 4th Wall, below are some of the idea's we discussed -
The first point that we discussed that we felt could be changed was that off the opening JFK footage, we felt that we could shorten this down in order to try and input more of our own recorded footage into the production. We felt that including as much footage as we did wasn't really needed at times and really didn't help to build the tension in the intended way. However we felt including this JFK scene was very important as is hugely allows us to set the scene and the story of what the actual production is about.
Another key point that kept popping up during this reviewing session was that off the POV shot that was included in the previous edit linked at the bottom of the post was that we felt that the shot was very blurry and didn't really help to keep up with the high quality of the rest of the production. The reason for the poor quality was that the lighting within the shot was very poor, this mixed with the factor of the quick movement added to the poor quality of the shot, this is something that couldn't be noticed at the time of filming, however identifying this now will help us improve the overall quality of the production.
To wrap things up for this post, the group feel that coming together in this manner for a second time was once again beneficial for everyone within the production team and will help us all to improve the production and target a higher mark band for the entire production.This allows us to be confident going forward that we are doing all the correct things to bring success to the group and all achieve the high grades we desire and quite simply deserve after the hard work and effort we have put into every single stage of this production. We all feel the this meeting has benefited us and given us a rock solid plan of what to do in order to improve future edits. We will now move onto the next edit as I said in a few days time and we look forward to seeing how that goes.
The first point that we discussed that we felt could be changed was that off the opening JFK footage, we felt that we could shorten this down in order to try and input more of our own recorded footage into the production. We felt that including as much footage as we did wasn't really needed at times and really didn't help to build the tension in the intended way. However we felt including this JFK scene was very important as is hugely allows us to set the scene and the story of what the actual production is about.
Another key point that kept popping up during this reviewing session was that off the POV shot that was included in the previous edit linked at the bottom of the post was that we felt that the shot was very blurry and didn't really help to keep up with the high quality of the rest of the production. The reason for the poor quality was that the lighting within the shot was very poor, this mixed with the factor of the quick movement added to the poor quality of the shot, this is something that couldn't be noticed at the time of filming, however identifying this now will help us improve the overall quality of the production.
To wrap things up for this post, the group feel that coming together in this manner for a second time was once again beneficial for everyone within the production team and will help us all to improve the production and target a higher mark band for the entire production.This allows us to be confident going forward that we are doing all the correct things to bring success to the group and all achieve the high grades we desire and quite simply deserve after the hard work and effort we have put into every single stage of this production. We all feel the this meeting has benefited us and given us a rock solid plan of what to do in order to improve future edits. We will now move onto the next edit as I said in a few days time and we look forward to seeing how that goes.
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