Evaluation Question 7

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Underneath is a link to my Preliminary task and its evaluation; I did this with a different team to the one I was in for my main task and the time length for the main had to be 2 minutes long. 

My Preliminary Task

And here is my recent product, my main task. 

I have improved on a lot of skills since my preliminary task, some being my communication skills as this time we had longer than an hour to film our product and we relied more heavily on our team members to work together to get the shooting and editing done, I have improved my team skills as well because of this.

The creativity in this 2 minute film opening was a lot more detailed, because we had more time to add techniques and story line where as in the preliminary we didn't. The 'Panning' technique of our main task was also a lot better and longer in caparison to the preliminary task one.

Our main task started a nice steady pan at: 0:44 - 0:57
The preliminary task started a pan a shaky pan at: 0:38 -0:40
When these are compared, you can see how our techniques have improved since then, to help create a better final product, this is an indication of the progress we have made with techniques.

Soundtrack was also added to our Main task as an atmospheric influence, this made the movie seem more professional as well. We did not have time to add that creative process to our preliminary task because creating a sound track on soundtrack pro would have taken too long. 
Similar creative processes between our products would the use of match on action, both scenes showed great match on action this can be saw at 0:06 on the Preliminary task and 1:06 on the Main task.

What have I learnt during the course?

Since taking this course, I have learnt the technical aspects of how film productions make movies, I have gone through the research and planning structure which taught me camera techniques, editing techniques, rules and script writing rules along with other things, this all prepared me for when filming, I had 2 smaller other shooting stages which helped me handle equipment and learn how to edit sound and film on the Mac software. Which prepared me for the main task. 
What i personally learnt doing this course was that it takes team work to make your product and all the other blog posts relating to your final product because you're only as strong as your weakest link when working in a group. It also takes communication skills as this is import when in the filming stages, not just communication with your members of your group but with your actors and class as well. A great opportunity to communicate was when we pitched our idea to our class, we took the role of "presenters" at trying to sell our movie plot line.

Evaluation question 6

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience ?

A way we attracted our target audience and caught their attention is by displaying the typical themes of a Thriller movie, which is what our target audience will be interested in and seek out according to the gratification theory, according to it they will seek out what they enjoy in movies specifically, so we adhered to what they are most likely to like in a thriller. We used tension music, fast shots and a threat of violence from a mysterious antagonist, we also subverted a stereo type to make the movie more interesting as well, this will draw the audience in with its unique twist.

If we were to have created a trailer this would all be displayed in it in a way to catch our audiences interest and be hopefully what they are looking for, unfortunately a barrier to being a small movie producer like us is we don't have any money to get big named Actors to feature in our film like other big studios have the advantage of doing. This is of course a barrier to attracting our audience but if our audience is seeking a fast paced, jumpy, tension music filled film with interesting subverted stereotypes, who the actors are won't matter.

Movies with similar themes to ours would be Source code, Die Hard, Wall Street:: Money never sleeps and Enemy of the State, all the movies have a similar aged target audience, have fast paced cut shot action scenes, a threat of violence from an antagonist, tension music and interesting main characters.

Another draw back we encountered with our low budget movie was although we had regular movie filming equipment it wasn't as high spec of that of big movie producers, some have electric powered tracking dollys to catch moving action this makes for a better shot, and would have come in handy for making the perfect shot of our protagonist running, it was hard to film just pushing the dolly along the track as the timing had to be right. We also didn't have as many hands to man the equipment so it took more time than it would if it were in more experienced hands too, this all is a barrier in the technical element of making a professional movie. 

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The BBFC classification of our product is 12A, it is the most appropriate for our product because strong language can be used but it would be infrequent and violence would be permitted as long as it wasn't dwelled upon. This gave us a little free range with our dialogue and violence if we wanted to do so. 

Our typical audience member, will be a working class male round about 18 years old of no certain ethnicity, but this film is up their street because they will be at that social age to go to cinemas with friends and will be into such genres as thriller's, horrors, comedies and action. Films like 'Die hard', 'The wolf of Wall street' and 'Money Never Sleeps' will be their favourite films. They will be a typical school boy just starting or in the process of doing A levels, with low income as they will only have a small low wage part time job, we're thinking band E income which is around £3000 a year, which works out as £250 a month or £62 a week. They'll have found out about the film through social and media sites like youtube and facebook, and will most likely have gone to the cinemas to watch our movie or watched it on an approved media streaming site as this is what our target audience member will frequent. 
We expect them to look similar to this, this is Jamie Stewart.

Here is a snap shot of the audience profile from Pearl & Dean's website. It's a Thriller just like our movie, 54% of the audience is males which is what we are expecting for our movie. The age range 15 - 24 is the highest viewing range with 38% of people being around this age, our expected age range is 16 - 21 so our film may similarly have this high percentage.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Just like the James Bond thriller movies, our media product starts with tension music and follows straight into the action, this follows the accepted convention of thriller movies as straight after the ident of most thriller movies it goes straight into the plot of the action. Another example of a thriller movie that does this is Die Hard 4.0, the opening of that goes straight into the action of a man hacking a system a similar opening to our own product "Hacked" see below for the comparison.

Die Hard 4.0 opening scene of a Hacker

Our media Product "Hacked" opening scene of a Hacker. 

Another convention of thriller films is it puts it's titles in the 'downtime' of the action this could mean it can be put on a blank shot like in Die Hard 4.0 or over a non-action shot, as we only had 2 minutes in which to show off of our thriller we put it in the non-action scenes so as not to waste time, as you can see on your left, there is a still from our product. 

The tension music i mentioned earlier, is there from the start of our movie and builds in hope that is raises tension for our audience and makes them wonder what will happen next. This is an accepted convention in thrillers as the music is a key part to a thriller movie, with the right soundtrack it can build tension, suspense and a scare factor.

We challenge the convention of a thriller by subverting one of our characters. Our protagonist is a hacker but does not wear or act like the stereotype of a hacker, he is crossed with a 'chav' persona and so has the attitude and clothing of one. Usually a thriller movie keeps to it's identifiable stereotypes but we decided to challenge the convention and made our main character an intellectual 'chav'. 

You can see the convention of a typical hacker in Die hard 4.0, this hacker is always relying on other main characters to protect him and get him round, but our hacker being crossed with the chav stereotype takes care of himself by trying to escape and run from his antagonist, this isn't common in hackers as hackers are perceived in the media world to be 'nerds' who are weak and defenseless against their antagonist.  

Hacked: Final Cut

Evidence of Feed Back and improvements

We presented our media product to roughly 12 people in our media class, it was played through twice so they could take notes of it and on the third time we decided to make a screen cast so we could collect feedback and see exactly where the improvements needed to be made, we were told to stop at intervals where the improvements were needed and they gave us what notes they had made on it

Our target audience range is 16 - 21, our media group ages are 16 - 18 it's close enough to our target audience so we value their views.


If you watch through the video, you can hear various media members giving advice. We watched this video through and made a list of things we needed to do to improve our movie this meant re-shooting and re-editing parts to make a final cut.

Rough Cut: Hacked

The Editing Phase

We've finally finished our filming on location and now commences our editing phase! 

I'm just going to give an overview of what our media group used for editing software, how it was used and how effective it was to create our movie cut. 

Video Editing in progress

For Editing our shots into an order resembling a movie, we used the software "Final Cut". This is where we created our cuts, match on action and manipulated the clips. We also had access to inserting transitions, filters and motion paths. 
In the picture bellow you can see the classic set up of Final Cut, On the far left pane is where all the unedited clips from the camera is imported to. From there you click on the clip and it appears in the middle screen (The currently black one) In this screen you edit your clip how you want it and finally move it on to the last screen by dragging and dropping it, it will then appear on the timeline (below the 3 panels) 
This is a complex piece of software to use, but it gives the best results for editing and with a little trial and error and practice, we picked up how to use the software. Unfortunately you can't edit sound in this software,  sound will appear with the clips but if you want to manipulate the sound or create a soundtrack, Soundtrack Pro is the software we use. 

Soundtrack Pro

The advantages of using Soundtrack Pro is that it allows you to edit and manipulate several different sound channels at once so that you can (depending on what sound/effect you are after) Alter the volume, change the pitch or cross fade different sounds together to make one continuous sound that flows from several different sound files. Another advantage of Soundtrack Pro is that it contains, within the software a sound library of thousands tracks of pieces of music and sound effects which we can then use in conjunction with the sound recorded with the Foley kit and camera. 

The flow that you can see in the screen shot is our group playing back the clip with our groups Foley sounds. Here we are checking that the sound matches the video footage we have imported in the software .

Our Ident

  At the same time we were working on editing our movie we started construction of our ident 'Lime light Productions' the software we're using is called 'Motion' it's new to us so it took some time to get a handle of it, but we're finally making headway.

Day 3 - FINAL Day Of Filming On Location

Thursday 13th February 2014
Today was our final day of filming and my birthday, yay! Today we had to film our protagonist (the Hacker) and their scenes. This was our busiest and longest shooting day out of the three I have to say, We used a lot of different filming equipment to achieve the various shots to the highest standards we possibly could, this meant capturing 2 or more of one shot just so when we took the footage back to edit we had a choice of shots to put in for particular parts. 

A problem we faced throughout filming today was moving ourselves and our actor AND all the filming equipment from location to location. This was overcome by several car journeys between each of the locations transporting actors, crew and equipment between the journeys. There was a lot of back and forths going on and we realise we would have struggled greatly if we did not have a car on hand. 

Note on Risk Assessment!: We did not foresee that a member of our own team (me) could hurt themselves on the equipment that they have used many times before! This was obviously a low risk but a risk non of the less, if it were on the risk assessment they may have been more careful, this just highlights WHY risk assessments are important procedure, not just for actors but for the crew members aswell.

Day 2 - Filming on Location

Monday 10th February 2014 - 
Today is day two of filming on location, we filmed the establishing shot and our 'Mystery Man' scene. 
We scheduled an hour in which to shoot this which was a bit ambitious of us considering it took a while to construct the crane for the camera, we managed to just about film in our allocated time, we would have had more time to go at a leisurely pace if it wasn't for the fact that we had to wait for the sun to stop shining on the windows of the house and reflect us and the camera crane. This dwindled our time, but by being patient we over came the problem and got a perfect crane shot, with nice affective ambient sound.

Our filming of the Mystery Man was straight forward filming after todays complications, we filmed our actor against a black background as his where about's were meant to me anonymous as well keeping up the illusion. This went well with the right amount of light showing up on the actors face making the shot we envisioned in the planning phase become perfect in the shooting phase. 

Day 1 - Filming on Location

Saturday 8th February 2014

Today we did our first day of filming for our movie. We shot our Antagonist in today's filming, The actor (Josh) turned up in the right costume at our request he luckily had a suit at hand to wear and he took his role seriously and allowed us to film multiple shots with little time wasting. He was compliant to what we needed from him and was easy to manipulate to around the scene to get our perfect shot. 

Here's a snap shot of our filming with the antagonist today

 The wind was particularly strong today and was moving our tripod when not 

supervised, this was the only problem we encountered when filming outside  
today and We 

overcame this problem by holding the tripod in place whilst filming so that the camera was able to get a steady shot and wasn't rolling away because of the wind.

Actors Release forms

We had to get our actors to sign a form to basically allow us to use their image in our movie and show it, if this wasn't signed we could potentially be sued for showing something of them that they didn't allow us to show.

Shooting Schedule

This is our Shooting Schedule. It contains the information for each shot we do in our film so that we know who is in the shot, when we are filming the shot, what we need to be in the shot and where we are filming the shot.

Shooting Schedule for Hacked

Risk Assesment

This is the risk assessment for our film Hacked, its not a very high risk of a film and the risks that we do have are all easily sorted and the likelihood of them happening are all low.

Take a quick look at our draw up:

HACKED Animatic

Animatic Research

What is an Animatic? An animatic is a series of picture taken from the storyboard which are then edited and put together in order, one after the other. It is the sequence that the film will be in and match up to, there will be rough dialogue/soundtrack with it as well to try and bring the animatic to life to see how the film would look if we did it as it was planned out on the story board to see whether the images and sound work together. 

How have animatics developed over time? 

The first animatics started in a not a high technical manner and were very basic, they were made by somebody filming and taping the storyboards and then an editor would edit the footage to an audio track to try and be able to bring it alive. By our standards today this would be very, very basic. We now have the technologies available to be able to create 2D and 3D animatics so this allows us to create animatics that almost look like its real. Although some companies do prefer to still use old fashioned techniques as they feel as that it looks better been drawn with the sound over the top, which is what we have done for our animatic.

What are the types of animatics?

There are lots of different types of animatics, some of them are listed below:
Some animatics are created in 2D or 3D using different software to be able to create it, we plan to be doing our animatic in 2D.
Some animatics can be created by somebody taking a lot of photographs and then editing them together which would get the right pictures of locations, actors etc. This sort of animatic is called a photomatic.
Another way to create an animatic could be by using a repurposed video (this is using video footage which is meant for a different purpose when it was took), this type of animatic is called a videomatic or a Rip-o-matic. 

This is somebody taking a photo for a  photomatic, they are taking a photo of the establishing shot for the start of the scene. They would then edit all the pictures that they took and put them together creating a series of photos one after the other. This method takes longer but if done properly looks very good and more detail as they are the actual locations they will be using.

Which elements of the final film should be included in the animatic? 

The elements that should be included should be: the type of camera shot, we will have to match up everything so if its a long shot in the animatic then it will have to be a long shot in the film.
Any camera movement that we plan to do so its almost exactly the same as what the final product will actually look like, we will be able to see on the animatic if the movement we plan to do looks good and fits in with the context of the film before we actually shoot it.
The sound that we include in the animatic should either be very similar or the exact same sound that we will use. 

What are the advantages of producing an animatic prior to shooting on location? 

The benefits of producing an animatic for the producer of a film would be that they could create a timetable to show what shots they should be doing in the day, where they should be shooting and how long the shot should go on for. It would help everybody as the animatic should help showing where everything should be, props, actors etc. It may also help lower the costs for the production of the film as if everybody knows what they should be doing and how to make the shot then they should be able to do the shot without a lot of outtakes which means they could do more scenes quicker meaning they may be able to actually produce the film quicker than that they would have been able to before they produced the animatic.

The director of the film could use animatics to their advantage because they could see before they shoot the scene if the shot would actually look good so when they get out on to the location they know that it will be good where as if they don't use the animatic to see beforehand they could waste a lot of time and money getting out onto location. It would be quite annoying if everybody who was in charge of making the film got out on to the location to just have to go back so we want to make an animatic to avoid this situation so we make the most out of the amount of the time that we have to shoot our film.

The film composer may find that by doing the animatic they could find that something that they have in mind may not actually work within the context of the film, something could not fit right within the film or their initial ideas might not work, they could try many different shot types to get the right shot that they wanted to so by testing it out on the animatic they can save a lot of time when actually making the film.

The sound effects designers could see straight away if the sound that they want to achieve would actually be possible as they can see back in the animatic the sounds that they are going to have to try to replicate so they could tell the producers if they think they might have trouble doing the foley sound for something so the producers can change their ideas to make it possible for the replicate sound to be produced.

The camera operators can use animatics to see beforehand the movement they may have to do for the shots they are going to have to do, once again this saves time as the directors don't have to fill them in when they get there, they already know the shot types, movement etc. By doing the animatic it saves a lot of time which is valuable. The lighting directors can also see before hand where they need to set up the lights to get the best shot so they can work with the camera operators to be able to get the best shot that they can.

The actors can see what the plan is for the scenes before and what they need to do during the shots, they could say any problems that arise before they go on the location also they could practise any tricky problems that they think could happen. It helps the costume designers because if they see where the scenes are going to be shot they need to think about the locations and what the actors are going to have to wear because of the environment surrounding them.

All of the people involved in the making of the film are greatly helped by the construction of a animatic which is why we want to create one so we get good ideas beforehand what we are going to do out on location which will save us a lot of time to be able to get the best shots that we can which will let us create the best film we can.



This is an example from The World End, as you can see the film exactly matches the animatic they made for the film. It matches what the actors are doing in the film, this is what an animatic should do so this is what we plan to do with our animatics. Every film made would have an animatic of some sort, this animatic is quite professionally done as it looks like an artist has done all the drawing, we don't have the luxury of this so we will be drawing out our pictures and then editing them together. The animatic for films would actually be somebody's job to do as its an important thing to create in the film.


This is the animatic for Iron Man 3, this one is quite different from the previous and will be very different from ours. The designers of this animatic have used very expensive software to be able to produce 3D images and put them all together and for it to create this, its made in cartoon form and it looks almost actually real. This would take a very long time to be able to make this and once again it would be somebody's job to be able to make it, ours won't be able to be like this at all. Its a major Hollywood film so you would expect an animatic such as this.

In conclusion our animatic is going to be very important to us whilst we make our film as it is going to save a lot of time when we go out to shoot and it gives us a good structure to make our film on. Without the animatic we may struggle to make our film in the time we have got so by making the animatic we feel that our film is going to be at a high standard. Overall the animatic is allowing us to make the film and seeing what it is going to look like without actually shooting the film so we can see any improvements that we might have to make.

Storyboard Research

What is a Storyboard?

A storyboard is a series of illustrations or images displayed in an ordered sequence for the purpose of showing early visuals of a film. It is essentially a comic strip used to visualise the scenes in the film.

What are the Standard Conventions?

The basic storyboard conventions in live action films for a storyboard is that it covers camera movements and which shots have been selected for the frame.

What are the benefits to producing a Storyboard prior to filming?

The benefits of producing a storyboard prior to filming is that it informs the production team of the vision of what the film is meant to look like. In addition it helps making filming on location easier since you can refer to the storyboard to check what shot you will be using and if you have filmed each shot correctly to the intended vision. It allows people working on the film project to work more efficiently since they have a guide to follow, ven if on location it deviates from the original plan it can keep a team organised and this vital to stay on track.

Storyboard example from a real media product

Below is a storyboard for the 'Tigris of Gaul' from the film Gladiator. Underneath the storyboard is the scene from the film which would have been produced from the story board. (Notice that in the storyboard the tiger comes into the arena via an entrance in the floor and in the film it replicates this with the tiger emerging from an hidden entrance in the floor.

 

Our Storyboard

This is the storyboard for our film Hacked. It contains 37 frames and a brief description of what shot is used and what will happen on screen in each frame. In some of the frames you will notice arrows indicating where an actor or object is moving in the shot.

Storyboard - Page 3

Storyboard - Page 1

Storyboard - Page 2

Storyboard - Page 6

Storyboard - Page 4

    Storyboard - Page 5



Costume consideration

The protagonist

The protagonist's clothes are going to be stereotypically "Chav" clothes, we want to trick the audience of falling into the stereotype that this is an average Chav, not smart, violent, lazy and underachieving as that is the medias representations of Chavs.  

Age: 17-19

As a matter of fact this is not an average chav, we challenge the chav conventions by making him extremely talented in the art of computer hacking, this is why are film is called "Hacked". Although the chav will still be saw as "bad" for hacking, he uses his gift to discover that there is a corrupt business stealing from the banks.

The costume of our character will be wearing 'trackie' bottoms, and trainers this will help with stereotyping him as a 'chav'. An example of what kind of trackies were looking for is shown above, we will be trying to stick as close as possible to what images will be shown.

The above image is what the protagonist shall wear on top. The connotations of a 'Hoodie' especially a branded one, is that only chavs wear them and usually have the hood up to insinuate ill harm will come to whoever 'messes' with them.

This is an example from a film, Adulthood as you can see from the pictures the main characters in the film are all dressed up in trackies which make the audience think straight away that they are chavs so we automatically assume what the characters are going to be like and how we expect them to act in the film. So we want to try and challenge the stereotype in our film and make our protagonist a clever character.

The antagonist 

The antagonist is going to be a man aged between 18-19, we plan on making him look quite smart so our idea is to have him dressed up in a suit, with a white shirt so with the scene focusing on the antagonist he can pull his sleeves down and adjust his tie making him look quite professional. 

We think this would give off the right impression that we want to as we want him to look smart and professional. We want him to look as if he is higher class to give of the impression of his job being important, the social groups that could relate to this character mainly would be business people as they would have to be dressed like this to go to work. I think the character would be probably a British white male playing the character, he would be straight as a character who played this part would more than likely heterosexual. We feel as a character would be well dressed and looked quite sharp then he would be quite wealthy.

This is an example from the mean in black film, as you can see the character looks pretty professional and we instantly think of him highly and quite an important character all because of how he is dressed. This is how we want to make the audience of our film feel when they are watching it; we want them to think why the man is dressed how he is and what he is up to.

Location research

In this post I will be justifying why the locations we as a production team have chosen are suitable and also why even though some locations might look ideal but practically they are not so good for filming.

The location of the Hacker's house is not in a 'rough' looking area as his character may portray at times but more your typical house in a typical area. Our film is about a Hacker and his family who have been hit badly by the economic crisis and this is portrayed in our location since although they have a house there are no cars on the drive indicating that perhaps the family had to sell them for money. 

 We chose to use the kitchen as the location for inside the house so that we could portray that this is a typical house with evidence that people are living in it. For example you can see a newspaper, bowls and glasses left on the side showing that they have been recently used. Our hacker sits in the kitchen on their laptop whilst drinking from a glass and so would make the authenticity of the house more realistic rather than a plain room which shows us that the house is used. Also the kitchen provides a back door for our hacker to flee from making it an ideal location to film from. 

The approach to the house enables us to build up tension by filming our antagonist walking down the road towards the house allowing us to also use a range of camera angles to portray this but most importantly it shows the audience exactly where our film is taking place which is a residential area. It also shows the audience that the hacker is still living with their parents since someone of the hackers age would not own a house of that size.

For the running scene we identified two sections of streets to be used to film our protagonist running and our antagonist walking. However the first location (below left)

 

















looks ideal however in terms of shooting the film here the ascending hill will make filming a steady dolly shot fairly tricky where as the second location (Right) provides more of a flat surface but also a transition of an environment showing the audience that our protagonist is leaving the residential area and coming to a different location showing the audience that they have travelled from one place to another.

For the confrontation between our protagonist and antagonist we chose a more darker, plainer scenery to raise the tension of the story. The location we decided for this was some garages and an a adjacent alley way for the confrontation setting a sinister mood that the audience will see that something bad is going to happen since the scenery has moved from the tidy built up housing area to some old ill maintained garages and a dark alley way. 

How these compare to real movie locations
In comparison to the house in our location research to the house out of the film Transformers which features a similar aged protagonist, the two houses are generally the same. Both are detached indicating to the audience that the protagonist is still living with their parents since they would not be able to afford a house of that size at their age, neither would they maintain the plants in the gardens showing to the audience that this is their parents house. 

The features of the alley way seen in our location research to the alley way seen in the film Quadrophenia both share similar characteristics. Such as the alley way in both pictures is narrow and confined and also leads to another location. Both alley ways are ideal confrontation locations since they leave the protagonist no where to run. Also they are both dark and untidy sticking to the hegemonic ideology that alley ways are dark, confined spaces which is exactly what these two alley ways are.