Media

Year 12 media
At the start of year 12 we have looked at opening sequenses. The films we have mainly been studying are Dirty Harry and the usual suspects. From doing work on opening sequences i have found out that there is much more to films and that there are always messages that the audience has to find out, how the music and different camera angles effects the mood of the scene. no when im watching TV and films i am much more observant and i pick out things. Out of the two films we have studied so far i preferred Dirty Harry, i found there was much more to write about, like the different shot, music and location. Whereas The Usual Suspect was much harder to write about, maybe because it was done more individually.










180 Degree rule-

It was important that we used this technique in our preliminary video.The 180 Degree rule is a technique that has previously been used in Film and television. It is a basic rule that says that two characters (or elements) in the smae scene should always have the same left/ right relationship to eeach other. If the camera passes throught the imaginary axis that is connecting the subjects, its called crossing the line. The new shot that is created from the other side is called a reverse angle.

Preliminary Task

For our media coursework we have been asked to produce a short clip. We must include a character walking in through a door, exchanging dialog with another person and the 180 rule. This is a practise film, it helps us as a group to get a feel of how to make and edit the video and work as a team when creating the real opening sequence to our film. My group consists of David Fear, Emilie Campbell and Maddy Page.

Filming

As a group we came toghether and shared some of our ideas, we all had the same kind of idea for the genre of the scene. We started to brainstorm some ideas we liked and what would be suitable for the task, not too complicated and not too simple. We started to put a storyboard toghether showing all the different shots we would use in the video. We decided the story would be David is a patient waiting at the Doctors for some test results and i am the doctor who has to deliver the bad news. After we made the story board while we were filming we decided that we should include some other shots of David while he was waiting for the bad new, we did a close up of his face and a closeup of him shuffling his feet to show his eager and nervous emotions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZEiNtaft_Y

Filming- We had to decide very carefully on the location, we wanted the sequence to look authentic.

We placed some chairs in a corridor and used this space as a waiting room, then for the doctors office we booked a meeting room and rearranged all of the tables to make it look altough there was only one desk in the room. I think that these locations were fairly effective because they were both new and modern. We had previously tried some other locations but we did not like them as they were not very authentic. We eaech took turn to use the camera when we could, to make it fair and also so we each got an equal amount of expeirience with filming.

For our scene we did not require any costumes or props, but since we filmed over a number of days we made sure that we were wearing the same clothes so that the scen looked authentic. The only thing we needed to do was change around the setting of the tables and chairs so it look as realistic as possible.

We shot the vidseo over a number of days becasue we did not have enough time, so David had to make sure he was wearing the same clothes as the previous day.

After we finnished filming as a group we spent a double lesson picking out the best part of the filming process and editing them. We tried most of the effect that were available on the sony vegas system at school, we found that fading each part helped to show the mood and also having the peice in black and white reflected the mood David would be in. We chose to speed up a section to show how it would feel waiting for the news,he would be very anxious and it would seen like hes been waiting for hours.

Evaluation- Overall i am very pleased with the way the preliminary task went. I think we covered all the area that we needed to and made the genre clear, using so effective techniques to clearly show the mood. The most effective techniques i think we used we the black and white and also the fade out at the end of some shots, i think these help clearly express the mood and feelings. I think my group worked very well in the preliminary section, we listened and considered each idea and there was no disagreement between team members. Also i think the group was succesful because there was a fair even amount of work done between all members. The thing that we can be improved the most for the next task is the sound. The main problems were that there was some sounds in background and it was sometimes hard to hear what the characters were saying.

Genres

In the film making inductry that are a number of different film genres to attract different people and fulfill what everybody want from the film they are going to see. Genre is one of the biggest reasons why the film idustry is so big today. Knowing about all these styles in depth helped us tomake a desision on how to have our preliminary peice. The mai genres used in the film inductry are : Action, Adventure , Horror, Comedy, Romance, Fantasy, Sci fi and Children/ Animation films.

Action


Typically in this genre of film the story will mostly be described through physical action and rather than dialog. The action film will usually be based aroud one person and they will become the hero in the film. People like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Claude van damme are very well known for these types of films and have gone onto other Genrers too. The Action Genre is closly linked to The thriller and adventure for its violence and
the Hero style characters. There are some very popular "Rambo", "The Terminator", "James Bond"and"Die Hard". These films are recongnised as the best action films in the world.




Horror

The Horror genre is designed to scare and startle veiwers. Most horror films are based on a villain, the film plots usually involves death, the supernatural or mental illness. Early black and white horror films included things like Frankenstein, Dracula and the Phantom of the opra. Some film are said to have been based on true stories like The Exorcist and The texas chainsaw massacre.

Comedy

e most popular. It has developed alot since the early days in the 19th century, peoples ideas of humour change and there are different types of humour making this genre very broad. Some people will not find films like American pie funny but they may like something more like Norbit. American pie is more for teenagers/ adults whereas norbit is a film thta people of all ages can enjoy, someother genres like horror can not do this and all of the films have to be restricted for older people. The comedy genre has an edge on other genres like horror because they are for all ages whereas horror is only for older people.

Romance

In romance films directors try to show touching and passionate strorylines that usually revolve around two people and their story of falling in love with each other. Most romance film will include charcater falling out getting back togherther and the troubles they go through. This happens in love actually but instead of there being only one couple there are several different situations.

Musical

In the musical film genres through out the film there are usually several songs sung by the main characterters in the film, along with dance rountines they are used to develop the story and express the characters feelings. Grease is a good example of a musical, the characters mood always changes with the style of music.

Children/ Animation

The animation film genre produces some of the most popular films such as Toy story, Aladdin and The Lion king. Most of the top animated films have been produced by disney and pixar. The advantage to animation film is that anything can happen, and with different technologies developing the genre will be able to broaden the genre and bring in new styles of film. For example older film are being reproduced into a 3D version of the film.

Main task!
For our main task we have been asked to construct a 2 min opening sequence. As a group we were really stuck as what genre to choose we saw that many other groups had been using the thriller and crime genres, we decided that we wanted to do something a bit different. We considered all different genres, the comedy genere attracted us but we decided that it would not be suitable for the task that we were given and would be difficult. After looking through all the possible genres we looked at the Children/ animation genre and put toghther the idea of using stop motion. we looked at all of the popular animation film and all of us thought that a film like toy story would be good.






Films that inspired us

Toy story is an animated film based on a group of toys coming to life when ever no humans are around. It is very popular with the child/ family audience. The main characters are Woody the cowboy (Tom Hanks) and Buzz lightyear (Tim Allen). The story is that Woody is Andy's long time favorite toy until he recives Buzz lightyear for his birthday one year. Woody and Buzz compete to be Andy's favorite toy, and in the process Buzz get's lost and Woody tries to help get him back. Toy story made $39,071,176 in just the first five days of sales and a worldwide overall of $361,958,736.







Small soldiers

Small soldier is about two different groups of toys battaling against each other. A small family toy shop buy some of theses toys, the toys have millary computer chip them that were originally designed to go in missiles but they got put into the toy to make them as realistic as possible. This is a bad ideas as the commando elite try to take over, they try to destroy all Grogonites and they destroy anything in their way. The movie stars Gregory Smith and Kirsten Dunst and co-stars Tommy Lee Jones and Frank Langella.who were the voices of the action figures. Dreamworks pictures released small soldiers on the 10th of July 1998 and the reviews on it were mixed.The films budget was $40 million and it made over $78 million in the box office.




Pinocchio

An inventor called Gepetto creates a wooden puppet and calls it Pinocchio. Gepetto wishes that pinocchio could become a real boy so that he could have a son. His wish comes true and he now has to look after pinocchio like a father. so throughout the film the audience are shown all the trouble that pinocchio gets him self into and how his conscience,Jiminy Cricket helps him get throught them. Despite the fact that pinocchio is one of the most popular animated film ever it has never done commercially well, it may have been due to the time periods that it was released.

Filming

The camera we used for our media peice was Panasonic SDR-S26. We borrowed this camera from school, no one in our group had their own video camera. I think that this camera was good, it was a practical size it had a good zoom and the picture was very clear. we just had some problem uploading what we had filmed onto the computer because this is a HD camera.




We came across some problem when filming like the time of day. We had to make sure that the weather was the same each time we were filming outside and also it was hard because the time we were it would get dark really early and we had to keep film after school so we would have a limited time of filming. We found it hard to find days where all of the group member were available to film and we had to split the filming over a number days. We could not do it at weekend either because some of the member had work. We used establishing and long shots around the village and down davids street to show the filming location. we used a range of other filming techniques panning, tracking, mid angles and closups. Like when doing the preliminary task we took turns when filming so everybody got thesame amount of filming experiences, also when doing the stop motion part we had to keep rearrange the toys and it took a long time so we took turn holding the toys up and moving them all.

Props

The props for the films we used were childrens toys that each member of the group brought in from younger siblings. We used a range of different toys from cars to teddy bears. we also included the toys from toy story Woody and Buzz lighetyear.We also borrowed a mega sketcher, we decided to do the title of the sequence on here using the stop motion technique. We used a tripod for out camara to make sure that every shot we took was as good as we could make it, we had to refilm certain parts because we did not have a tripod and we did not feel that the shot were suitable for the opening sequence.

Sound

For our sequence we used both diagetic and non diagetic sound. We used music for when the stop motion is ona nd all of the toys are moving around and we had David having a conversation with me. Non diagetic sound are the sounds that are edited into the peice to add effect, for example there is usually always background music added. The song we actually used was Reeling by the band Passion pit.

Costume
For this opening scene there was no real costume needed, the only thing was that we need to make sure that david was earing the same cloths as the previous days we were filming.


Editing
We used Song Vegas 8 to edit our peice on. we found this fairly easy to use but we had problems with the stop motion pictures, each time we had to add or take part for the sequence each picture had to be moved up and down which was a big waste of time. Apart from that the Sony vegas editor was good because of the editing options and effects it offered.
Characters

David is the main actor, we chose him to be the actor because we were actually filming at his house so it made it easier at some points for example when there was only a few member of the group available to film it was okay because the filming location is his house. Also out of all of the group memebr we decided that he would be most suitable for the role. We would have got an actual child as the role but there was no one available for the time that we wanted to film but we did not need a child it would have just been more suitable.

Location

This is the room that we filmed in, we chose it because of the bright colours. also we had to take coonsideration in how we would get the loaction, two out of four people in the group live in eye so we chose this room. We thought it would make more sence to film in eye thwe majority lived there, i am the other member that lives in eye so we had to decide between the rooms in each others house. Even though I have younger sisters their rooms were not suitable because of the colours, they are both bright pink. Also we could not get them to act in it becasue they are too young and it would not work right.

This is where we filmed some clips of the video and also the steet that David lives down.







After creating the video and showing it to some people we were given some advice and we decided to change the storyline, which meant refilming some parts and creating a new storyboard. People said they really liked the stop motion section and that it was the most effective part, so we worked around the ideas and hed to create a new idea to go with it.

Evaluation

1)How does your media product use develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?

The opening sequence to any film is very important, it must be clear so that all of the audience understands what is happening also it must capture the attention of the audience. Most importantly the audience must be informed who the main chracters are and where the film is set. It is important to show the audience what type of genre the film is, we had to make sure that the camera work, setting, costume, location and lighting all worked toghether to create the right feeling for the genre. For example i think that filming the piece in a child like room was very important because it is easier to belive that there are many toys in the room and that they would come out of the wardrobe and cupboards around the room. Also the room was good because of the bright colours, right away the audience see that the film is not going to be and action/ thriller film. At the start of the film we did an establishing shot of the main character (David) so tha the audience clearly knew who the main character was, in most film the first character who is introduced is the main character. As well as establishing who the main character was we also did some establishing shots across the village where we filmed so that the audience knew the location. We did not have many options when it came to filming the toys moving becasue of our low budget, it would have been impossible for us to create a proper animation film like some of the Disney and pixar film like Toy story, The filming technique we used was stop motion. This done much easier because it is only taking a large number of pictures and placing them close so that they play very fast. Also the music helped to represent the genre of the film, it was joyful music that brought a good feeling in when the toy came out.

2. How does your media product represent different social groups?

Overall in the opening sequence there were only two actor, Me and David. The reason for this is we did not have many options for people to act in the film, both me and David had no problem acting inthe peice we feel quite confident infront of the camera. Orginally we planned for the part to be acted by an actually child but we could not find any children available or suitable for the part. This was not too much of a problem because the room actually belonged to david and the toys look like they are coming out from realistic places that they had been lest for a long period of time. Some of the toy were actually his from when he was a child. There waas no costume required for the sequence, both me and david dressed casually how we usually would when going out to make the film look authentic just two ordinary teenagers.

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

Film four distributes many low budget british films. It is very popular they develop and co-finance a slate of smart and distinctive feature films like the Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire, Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky and Shane Meadows' This Is England. All of these low buget film have been succesful with the help of film four and all of the film recived good reveiws. Film four is known for helping low budget films, it has proved that not every successful film has to have had Millions of pounds spent on it. Not many other media institutions look at low budget films so it is most likely that Film four would be more interested. There are other places that may be intrested in the video such as the BBC and some smaller more channels but the genre of the film may not be suitable for the channels and may be abit different to what is usually shown. But Film four shows a wide range of films from grease to i robot.

 4. Who would be the target audience for your media product?

The genre of the opening sequence is a family film, meaning that it must be suitable for all ages and this means that there should be no swearing and violence. All of the film that we got insperation from were all family freindly film and right away we knew that there would be no violence in the video and that it would be given a U certificate. Right away from the start when we were first given the task we knew that we did not want to follow the crowd and produce a crime/thriller style video, it was hard for to think of an idea because we had no idea of what genre we were going to choose. Each group member went away and researched some film, came back with a list and we narrowed down our favorites. We did not think of the Animation/ cartoon genre right away because we though it would be very hard for us to create the animations, but we soon realised that we could use stop motion. I think that our peice should mainly be aimed at children because it would capture their imagination and get them thinking about their own toys moving around behind their back, whereas with teenagers/ adults they know that it is not possible for toys to do this.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

The main feature of our video is the stop motion, but that does not appear until half way through the video. After reciving some audience feeback we found out that the storyline was quite difficult for the audience to understand. We decided to delete some clips because they were dull and did not really do anything in the story I think that we tried to include to many different shots rather than considering if the storyline was easy to understand and effective. We had to re-film some new shots we included some establishing shots of the location and a conversation  with many different camera angles such as close ups and panning shots. We did so that the audience found the opening sequence easier to understand and better to watch. While filming these new shots we had to work around the Stop motion section because most people who saw the video said that they liked it.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Throughout the time period of creating the opening sequence i have picked up a lot of information about how to use all of the technolgies used to construct the opening sequence. Despite already learning about different camera angles and shots when studying for the media studies exam I can now name more, this helped in the production of the video because i made many suggestions while filming. After using the video camera and the photo camera i am now familiar with both peices of technology, i know how to chnage from mode to mode, what each mode does and how they could fit in the video. My camera knowledge expanded alot from what i had already learnt from doing the preliminary task. I also know how to use a number of different camera brands and models because of the different cameras we have borrowed from the school. I think the most important new skill learnt is how to use the Sony Vegas editor because it is vital to us while editing because the opening sequence would not be very good if we did not edit it. It gives us the chance to add different effects to the video, for example we were able to speed up the stop motion so that it flowed better and looked me like a video not a group of photos.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel that i have massively improved from when we were doin the preliminary task for a number of reasons. I think that we have impoved in every area, in our preliminary task we did not even use a tripod so we already improved in one section. I think that i have grown in confidence since doing the preliminary task, for example when we were producing the preliminary i did not share any of my ideas because i was not sure if they were correct/ suitable i did not have a very wide knowledge of any film techniques so i could not give much input into the group and took the backseat only doing things when being asked to and not on my own.
While filming our Preliminary i did not really use the editing equipment because i did not really understand how to use it, but observing some of my team mates on it i soon picked up how to work it. When filming our preliminary task we were a bit reckless and did not think about back ground sound so when we got the footage onto the computer we could hear loads of sound in the background and it made the scene less effective becasue there was supposed to be a silence to reflect the mood that david was in. On our final product we made sure that in all of the loactions we filmed at there were no unwanted background sounds. When we created the prliminary task we did not use many of the effect that were available to us on sony vegas apart from the blaack and white effect.