Location Planning Discussion.

In our non contact session today, Me and the rest of the group decided it would be a good time to try and crack on with our Location Planning process now that our Storyboarding is successfully finished. As always, we decided to go to our usual location for discussion and carry this brainstorm out in a similar fashion that has served us well in recent weeks.

We used the script we created just recently to help assist us in our location planning, Joseph got this script up on his phone and then I took charge and stood at the board prepared to plan. We worked this planning logically, Joseph would tell me the shot, then we would discuss what location ideas we could use and listed them on the board and labelled the shot #1, #2, #3 etc. This helped us get a better idea of what location each shot would need instead of just talking about general locations. We did this for every shot and then we went back, and nominated several locations that would suit best, since then we have been doing some research into the accessibility of the ideas we wish to use. One location that we found we would need alot would be The Lighthouse Theatre which is a local theatre, so in aid of this I immediately contacted the manager of the theatre regarding this, this email can be found below.

Click the image to view it in large view.

I believe that this discussion has helped us decide what locations to use but more importantly gave us a clearer idea of the sort of setting our shots will have and we now feel that we have an even clearer idea of what our final product might turn out to look like, we must now look into securing these locations and making sure we can get use of them, once we have done so we will provide pictures of all the locations we have decided to use.


Below I have provided some pictures that Joseph and co took during the discussion -

Joe writing notes for future use.

Full brainstorm - Short one, just for confirmation

Vimeo & SoundCloud.

Vimeo -

In recent weeks gone by the school filter system had picked up on some explicit content on DailyMotion, the site we formerly used to upload and publish are video's for our Blogger, this meant that we had no means of showing evidence of any further video's we created, to try and overcome this problem a few of us spent some time searching for a new website that provides this service and one of the class came across Vimeo. Vimeo is a well established website that provides a fast, easy and effective video uploading service. This is perfect as it will allow us to provide the examiner and our teacher with proof of a variety of different video's we may need to upload, such as different audience reactions, practice shots etc for our planning and research to our finished Teen Horror Task.

SoundCloud -

Another problem we faced was the inability to upload music tracks onto the internet, as we had never been able to do so with DailyMotion, as we did with the above we went in seach of a reliable, easy to use and trustworthy site that, again we came across a solution, this time it was SoundCloud. SoundCloud is very easy to use, it requires you to set up an account very easily and then you can simply select your audio track, rename it and upload and it will be uploaded fairly quickly. This will help us with a number of different things, for example we can now produce a number of different pieces of audio for thing's such as Original Sound Tracks and we can publish them to our Blogger via SoundCloud, this will help the examiner see we can use a wide range of technological aspects.

Storyboarding

Now that we have completed our discussions and brainstorms and finished the script, our next plan was to conduct the storyboard for us to use as a guide later on in the task and to give us a stronger idea of the way we will lay out our production and what the final production will appear like. In the abscece of Jordan, Myself, Pav and Josepeh took iniative and went and collected some A3 sized storyboard from the Media Suite and began to storyboard, as Jordan contributed alot towards the script yesterday, we had no qualms or disappointment in completing this without him whilst he is unable to attend school due to illness.

Me hard at working constructing the Storyboard for our teen horror film Breaking The 4th Wall.

We went to a classroom in the English block and logged onto the computer, loaded up my blog and got the script viewable for us to read from our seats on the interactive whiteboard. From this we could see what we needed to include everything that the script listed, this included audio and sounds, camera angles and movements and label each shot 1, 2 ,3 etc accordingly. Me and Joseph took responsibility for the illustrations whilst Pav took responsibility for the writing of Type of Shot, Movement, Location and Sound etc, and was in control of the computer.

Below is what we came up with:

1st Page of the Storyboard - Includes 6 first shots with location, camera movement, sound etc.

2nd Page of the Storyboard - Includes the 7th to 12th shot with location, camera movement, sound etc.

The final 3 storyboard sections including with location, camera movement, sound etc.

Now that we have completed the Storyboard we are ready to move onto location planning, from constructing our storyboard I feel we all benefited massively as we now have an even more in depth idea of how our film will look and can asses for any floors or errors that may play against the effect we wish to have with this piece of media. We will have a third group discussion over the course of the next 7 days and see where we wish to go from here. This will allow all of our group to stay informed and communicated which will be vital in the success of this project.

Producing The Script

 

Today Jordan Mander and I set to work on producing our script, we made sure to include a number of different aspects in this piece of work including all visuals, audio, diaglogues and types of camera shots and angles. We have provided a print screen of this script below, we followed the rules of script writing shown to us by Mr Henton, these rules are: The font must be Courier, any soundtracks, audio effects and dialogue must be in CAPS. Above is what we produced.

Now that we have this done we can now move onto task 2 in the process of tasks we need to complete in order to get the best quality product at the end of production, tomorrow we will take our time to conduct a full storyboard, we can use this script to our advantage because it can be a sort of basis as what we have to include in the storyboard.

Screenplay Decision Making

Today Myself, Jordan, Joe and Pav took it upon ourselves to go and do another group discussion. As we have been left free to crack on with the tasks set we knew that to do so we needed to discuss and decide how we plan to set out the opening titles and scene, we went to the room previously used to try and discuss and illustrate these ideas and that we did. We decided to include new aspects into our movie project including big camera flashes between titles and camera flash noises that are overly exaggerated and prolonged to unsettle the audience. We also want to include different cut shots to cause a sense of unknown amongst the viewers, this amongst other things that we will include in our script that will be provided in the post above.

We thought this was beneficent hugely to the group, as we could take our ideas from the previous meeting of the group and adapt and improve them, but more importantly make important decisions on which shots, props, locations and even actors we are to use. We have all the ideas we need in place and we are working hard to maintain the high quality of work we have set the standard for so far. We have discussed our thoughts with a number of highly experienced figures in this subject within the school and they are looking forward to being involved with the acting of the opening and are excited to see what we can produce.

Below is a few snapshots of us in action at our latest meeting - 22/11/2011.

Jack (Me) & Pav discuss ideas and share thoughts

Jack (Me) & Pav at the end of our group discussion.

Portrait Picture - Mr Craddock

In our previous lesson with Mr Craddock on 18th November 2011 we were asked to submit a portrait picture that we have taken, having learnt about the different aspects that create a quality portrait photo, such as lighting, rule of thirds and looking space, amongst others I set to work and below is what I created

This has taught me that it isn't just focus that makes a good photo but many other aspects, I feel this also links into my work for Mr Henton, the creation of my teen horror opening titles and scene. Things such as lighting and rule of thirds will help me with my camera skills and set me up perfectly to go and film a good piece of footage for this task.

Media Lesson Content | Update In Schedule | Deadlines.

In today's lesson we were asked by Mr Henton to make our way to the Media Classroom rather than the Media Mac Suite. When we arrived we were asked to be sat and silent, he wanted to talk to us about a number of things including Media Success, Blog Management, To-Do-List and Deadlines.

Media Success and Blog Management - The reason I have included these two parts of the discussion into one section of this post is because they are very strongly linked together. The key to success at this stage in Media Studies is maintaining the management of your blog is kept at a high standard, this includes keeping all posts analytical rather than just descriptive, this means the user should explain and anaylise rather than just describing and giving an overview on proceedings. Another thing that will help good Blog Management is good time keeping, this basically means not just leaving everything to the last minute and doing a number of blog posts in one night, it means updating your blog as and when things happen. We have also been told that over the 3 month period we should be updating our blog of research and planning etc every other day, this means the amount of posts we should have on our blog should be 45.

We should also make sure our blog contains mass amounts of presentation and should look loved by the user, this means making sure all colours go easy on the eye and it is laid out correctly and in an orderly fashion. But to obtain the high marks we need to make sure we include research into similar products and explore the potential target audience in order to get a greater look as to what needs to be included in our product to make it suit the audience and work better all round.


Deadlines -

To-Do-List -

Below is a list of things that we have to do before our deadline of January 4th 2012 - This is all of the research and planning that needs to be completed before we can start to film footage for editing.

• Script - The script should include a number of different aspects that we wish to include in our media project. A script doesn't just include dialogue, this is merely a misconception that alot of people seem to believe. We must include aspects such as visual, dialogue, audio, soundtracks, amongst other things. To ensure that we can produce the best script possible we will be hosting another discussion session in which we can brainstorm ideas for the script and finalise any thoughts and make decisive choices that will allow the go ahead of the script writing.
• Storyboard -  This piece of work should be completed on the A3 storyboard sheet that we previously completed storyboarding for our preliminary tasking upon. These can be obtained from Mr Henton himself, Reprographics or the Media Suites and should be used sensibly and responsibly by the groups. We need to include photographic, audio or visual recordings as evidence of us carrying out this task and show research put into conducting this along the way and provide this all on our personal blogs. The storyboard it's self should include a number of different aspects in filming, things such as camera shots, angle and movement of the camera, along with sound and location of each shot. 
• Location Planning - This should be completed preferably with pictures of the chosen locations and should match up to the locations planned to be used in the script. We have chosen to include video evidence of our locations as it will help us get a more realistic effect and help us visual better as to what our final product will appear like. We have also decided to get a number of secondary back up locations incase one location is unavailable or unsuitable nearer the time. Pictures and video footage shall be posted to our personal media blog, using embedding from Youtube on the video.
• Casting -
• Filming Schedule -
• Risk Assessment -
• Shot List -

Main Task Brainstorm

Today me and my co-workers spent over an hour of our own time brainstorming ideas. We went and found a free classroom in which we could use a whiteboard and we set to work. We set 3 different branches of what we wished to brainstorm ideas; Location, Visual and Audio. We then went onto give branches coming off each initial branch with ideas springing of them.

What we were looking for -
Audio: When thinking about audio for our opening titles and scene we had to try and remember not to plan to far ahead. This is because if we find a track that we really like we may start to try and fit the scene around the track, when it should be the other way round. However we did start to brainstorm some basic thoughts and we wish to remain undecided on this until the future. We came up with a few thoughts of using a certain Barrack Obama speech where he touches on a New World Order within our opening titles if it links in productively, we feel this would set the scene and give our opening a professional look. Our inspiration for this was the opening titles of Dawn of the Dead where they include press interviews of important figures touching on important subjects. We also wish to vary the volume of all our sounds and any OST we wish to vary in sound and go from loud to quiet to continuously put shock through the audience and keep them on edge and jumping at the loud sudden sounds, Jordan mentioned on creating our own OST using Garage Band on the iMacs available within the schools very own Mac Suite, he also said that we should link up the music keyboards to the iMacs and productively create our own soundtrack, these our all brainstormed below and all up for selection when we finally get round to selecting what options we wish to include within our audio for the main teen horror film task.

Visual: As for visuals we focussed more on the type and vairety of effects we wish to include within our opening titles. We thought about including a brick wall and then suddenly a section of the bricks start to break and smash out the wall leaving the gaps where the bricks formerly lay spelling out 'Breaking The 4 Wall'. However upon further thought we have decided this maybe a little to difficult to replicate and have pushed it down the pecking order of ideas but we will try our very best when the time comes to give it ago and hopefully make it work, Pav mentioned using a piece of software called Fireworks to try and create this idea so we will definately have to keep that in mind when it comes to it. Another idea our group came up with was to include Illuminati shadows, what we mean by this is cutting The Illuminati Symbol out of the paper, getting the room dark and shining a tourch onto the paper to get the shadow of the symbol on the wall, we feel this will improve desired effect and create a spooky and devilish atmosphere within the audience.

Location: In terms of location the discussion were slightly briefer, going with what we plan to do from the pitch we know that we have to address the issue of a 'west end theatre' & 'views of audiences queing up for the antcipated show'. I came up with the idea of using the local theatre in Kettering called The Lighthouse Theatre, if permitted to do so we could que crowds gathering and queing for a well watched show at this theatre and also get any footage of the theatre needed, but we need to keep in mind that we will need permission from the theatre autorities to do so. Another idea we manage to come up with was using the drama stage in school, the drama stage gives us good access to a stage with a big red curtain, this could be used as back up if our plans for The Lighthouse Theatres fall through, we feel having a back up plan is good because it means we have less chance of coming unstuck later on in the production process.

This is what we came up with:

I have also attached a couple of further images of myself and my group during the brainstorming session. (Below)

(Jack) Discussing ideas with the group in front of the brainstorm.

The group as a whole with the brainstorm behind.

Audience Views On Original 60 Second Pitch

Today Me, Joseph, Pav and Jordan undertook the task of showing our original 60 second pitch of which I didn't feature in as it was filmed before I changed groups to some willing viewers. We selected a few people to watch our pitch and give us there honest opinions and thoughts upon it and tell us how they thought the film might lead next.

We initially planned to film this using the Macs but then realised that Daily motion was blocked and decided to record it outside of the media suite in a spot with better lighting, we used Pav, a fellow member of our groups iPod to record the views in 480P quality, as the pitch was being viewed off a phone the audio of the pitch was poorly picked up by the iPod, I have decided to take the audio out from the clip up until the views and replace it with the original audio off the Daily motion video available on my blog. To do this I downloaded a piece of software called Audacity, this lets you record any audio streaming through the computer, I recorded the audio of the pitch and replaced the original pitch audio picked up by the iPod with the new and improved pitch audio. This enhanced audio and made it clearer to hear, I then merged all 3 of the audience recording together using Sony Vegas Pro and uploaded it straight to YouTube where I then grabbed the embed code and slotted it into the Edit HTML section on Blogger.

 Below is a recorded clip of what we collected.



From this I believe we can come up with further inspiration and ideas as to what we can incorporate into our main horror film task of creating the opening to a horror film. It is a great piece of research because now we have something to look back upon and see what the audience would like to see added and what the audience feel should be kept from our pitch.

However after watching and getting the thoughts of the audience we have decided to:
.Change the basic concept of the idea to make it less simple
.Added a meaning to the film (Illuminati)
.Added different twists to make it less predictable
.Changed the storyline

Opening Film Pitch

In today's lesson Me and my group presented a pitch that we produced in yesterdays lesson about the opening of our horror film. Below is our pitch, we have tried to include all the different effects we wish to go on to include within our film including different types of visuals, audio effects and different footage and camera angles. We have also included the basic ideas for our opening titles such as the Barrack Obama clip, and also what titles we are to include such as production companies etc.



We recorded the audio for this clip using a voice recorder on Joseph's (Group Member) Samsung Galaxy S, he then sent me this audio through Skype and then I put it into Windows Movie Maker and put images of the speakers over the audio accordingly, I then published it to YouTube straight from WMM and used the embed code into this post to get the above.