Queston 8

Last blog that is going to be made this year J Ahh what a long journey it has been , but this very last blog , is going to be the progress in which I have made , from the very first opening that we approached. So i am basically going to compare the first opening preliminary task to the very last actuarial thriller that we made.

So, the prelim, this was our first film and now that I have made my thriller, the prelim, seems very badly made and low budgeted, the camera work for our prelim, seemed excellent at the time, which was understandable because we were new to the editing and sound, however now that I have made my thriller, I can see that the angle shots very badly recorded as well as it seemed very unprofessional. The image that I am using is a long shot, as you can see that this shot was not very well done, you can see that the angle used wasn’t completely straight I think this was because we never used a tripod, this caused the angle of the shot, to put us in a disadvantage because it didn’t follow through smoothly. However, with the prelim it allowed us to practice using different shots, it also helped us understand the importance of different shots, we realised that our camera work was a fail because we tended to use constant fades to make it look as smooth as possible. In our prelim the story line was not easily assessable; it was quite hard to understand, I think this was because of the lack of coordination as well as angles and shots.

So in our final film , we decided we had to work on our mistakes , we made sure we used a tripod for every single shot , it was time consuming but made a very big difference to the shots. The way we done this was we made sure we followed a variety of shots, from older the shoulder close up long shots point of view Est. In addition, because we didn’t use many shots in our prelim we made sure we included them, the funny thing is we had too many much cuts in our thriller that we had to cut down on them. More over another problem with our prelim was the lighting it was very poorly used, the lighting had a big effect towards our prelim it made it look like it was dark even though it was set in the morning, however in our thriller, we made sure that the lightning wasn’t getting in the way we used it in the most effective way possible and watched it through before we left Kerens house.

PROPS

So the props used for the thriller, was excellent, I will say we used the right types of props in inherence the understanding of our thriller. For example the cigarette was very effective, as it showed that the character was stressed.  Also the alcohol at the back ground, showing the audience that he is a drinker as well as giving the sign that thing’s must be on his mind....

I would say overall prop use in I.C.U was used very effectively almost the whole 2 minute thriller was to do with the importance of props. For example the main prop was the disk that was an indication showing that he is getting watched. However in our Prelim we had hardly any props, we had nothing, and our prelim indicated hardly anything. I say from our prelim we had made a MASSIVE improvement when it comes to PROPS. The location of our prelim was in college this gave a very UN serious tone towards or prelim it seemed like it was a very low budgeted film, it did not look professional at all. This caused the poor lighting and the bad scenery. However we were very blessed when it came to the location as the location used was in a house and the weather alone that day was great so he reflected the light over. Also the costume that the individuals where wearing in our prelim did not take the story line seriously it made it seem like effective and UN serious. However in our actual thriller , the costumes where planned well, the man posting the letter wear a suit indicating that it is sent from a serious person and the main character faysal , in the beginning wear boxers to show that he got out of bed and demonstrating the normal norm.

EDITING

The editing for our prelim wasn’t the worst but it was bad compared to our thriller , we learnt different ways of using final cut pro as well as we were getting familiar with live type and soundtrack pro. We had less cuts in our prelim and more dissolves and fades because of the amount of shots we used. I would say when it came to the editing of our thriller, we tried to do the best we can do, the editing I would say was a big improvement from the prelim it came out much more smoothly the sound the titles came out more effectively. Aldo the main improvement I believe the sound, in our prelim was very poorly however in our thriller, we made sure we picked a suspenseful sound so it can contract the best of its ability when it comes to our thriller.

TEAM WORK
The teamwork in our prilim was ok , but it wasent the best as it could be i think this was becuase we dident really no each over that well,but over the weeks we got more conftable with each over and it made it easy for us to giv our opinion on things. whilst editing we all took turns and contributed on things. however in our prilim it was really one person doing the editing and the otehr perion dealing with the camera ect. but we over came that and contributed.

When getting audience feedback , we saw that many people saw a big improvemnt from the to filmingwe done , they saw that we took on board our mistakes and over camethem onour thriller. i think this was done by communication between our peers and teachers. Also the sue of technology allowed us to make this thriller, at the start of making our prilim we did not no anything about edditing we where struggling and finding the programe new , but over the weeks we improved astonishingly we leant how to use live type and sound. in our prilim we used final cut pro for our titles now we used live type and found better and more profesional.

Evaluation - Question 7

Question 3 - Who is our target audience

This is a summary of the target audience

Looking from a different perspective, I will imagine that a lot of women may be interested in this thriller, mainly because it is male dominated and women may go watch it for the characters.

Media institutions that distribute our thriller. Questions 4 &5

The internet has allowed us to distribute our thriller to a wider audience; this I think will help us understand who our actuarial audience is. In the beginning we believed that our audience is based upon teenagers, but let’s see after we distribute it on the internet.  Already our thriller will be getting a cinematic screening amongst our fellow thriller makers. This will help us see what our fellow peers think about I.C.U , after the cinematic show this will allow me to ask my fellow peers if they would pay £8.oo to watch this thriller.  It will also be released on 200 copies, allowing other members out of the age group to see it also.  My main aim is to show my thriller too many different age groups to see which ones it aims towards the most. The internet such as you tube videos will allow many different age groups to see our thriller , especially face book , because it has many different age groups on that social network. This thriller done by students called GENESIS has got many hits as well comments, this is defiantly a way of which we will be following. The views on this thriller are a massive 19,715 which shows that their distribution through you tube has helped their thriller get watched. Also By posting this link on face book so that face bookers can click on the link and watch it on you tube this  will get more viewers also as it advertises it, also as it is a low budget student video , it will also be released on vimeo as it has an inderpendednt low budget production company.

These are the diffrent places where our thriller can be distributed at

 

Also in order to promote , we would promote our film with no cost on newspapers like METRO , becuase they are very commen newspapers.

I would also consider advertising it on leaflets , magazines bus stops and Tv adverts because both men and women watch tv adverts.We would also think of some potential sponsers , i suggested Tv adverts such as neghbours or home and away as they are well known watch Tv series , this is a  part of a particular style of marketing for our thriller.

how does your media product represent particular social groups? Question 2

I chose to look at a film called stepfather , this was a thriller that inspired us the most , we as a class all watched this thriller , we indicated that from the opening sequence the man is doing his normal daily routines , but  however he seems to see dead body’s but still carried on as normal.  From the opening sequence there is only a man introduced this indicated that he is the main character, the man in this thriller gives out a very normal imagine of himself, this is only the first half of the opening. Likewise in I.C.U the same principle is applied, the main male character is doing his daily routines, but the weary music behind it gives a sense that something is happening, The similarities are that the personality and character these males bring out both in Stepfather and ICU is similar both give out a normal image of them self, but however something is going on. However, the difference is that the situation is different, in stepfather he sees dead body’s but in ICU he is getting recorded seems like he is getting followed.

Evaluation -question 1 conventions

 

 The first box has an image of the title. The shot is in clear bold writing. We have also got similar writing as our one is bold also. In addition the background colour for DEXTER contrasts very well with their bold red writing the same applies to I.C.U the black is great with the white writing.

The second shot is an over the shoulder shot of the man looking into the mirror, we have a familiar shot when faysal is looking towards the laptop, this I think is great in to different ways, as both the mise en scene is used very wisely in DEXTER he is looking into the mirror, however in I.C.U he is looking at the laptop our key prop.  The third shot is a very close up shot of the male actor shaving, however here we do not have a similar shot but one that can match is when Faysal is brushing his teeth using a prop, just like in Dexter when he is using a shaver. These closes up shots allow the audience to see the normal activities these individuals are doing but a very suspenseful meaning behind it. The 4th shot  is the most familiar  shot we have with DEXTER, this is a very close up shot of a plug hole , however in I.C.U this shot is not a close up shot and is not a main shot , in ICU the character just spits out his toothpaste into the plug hole. The next shot, is just a close up shot of a prop, both these shots must give an indication of something in particular, in Dexter the shot of the egg, is amazing it is clearly shown to give some sort of indication of something, in ICU the close up of cigarettes are there to show that the character is stressed and has some sort of tension about something. Another conventional shot used is the mid shot of the characters face, in DEXTER it may show stress and some sort of suspense; however in ICU this is just a mirror reflection of the character.

Overall, I believe Dexter is the closest we can get to comparing; however we have also used interxuality from “the stepfather”

 

Evaluation - Feedback from Audience, Question 6

Evaluation- Question 6 audience feedback

 

I have also promoted my thriller, using face book and YouTube; this has me a overall feedback and evaluation of my thriller. This has allowed me to see whether I have done well, by getting these feedbacks I have got both positive and negative feedback, which has given me an overall picture of my success.

We discovered in the end that, this thriller will more likely to appeal to adults then teenagers, but some will have an interest also.

We asked some students in class “is this the type of thriller you would watch in the cinema”
These where the responses

“I think it was good, and I would love to see what was behind the story of him getting recorded”

“It isn’t really my thing, but that’s me personally but overall I think it is very suspenseful and interesting”

Then after the cinema I asked some students what they thought of our thriller.

“I love the digested sounds, it was very creepy especially the door handle bit”

“The shots where marvellous, this is defiantly something I would love to watch”

So out of 10 ,  7 said that they would love to go watch this film and all these students are at the age of 16 to 17 , shows that this can be our target audience after all.

Our Final Edit

This is our final edited cut of our opening for our thriller, I.C.U

mise en scene

Our mise en scene was their is create a very excited and shoked impact towards our audience, we wanted our audience to wonder why this character has been recoreded. our cigerrets and pakage gives out our biggest props in the thriller. we decided to use a cigareete to simbolise stress and tention. i think our most powerfull shot would be the over the sholder shot of faysal when he identifies that he has been watched , and also the fact that we see beers and wine next to his laptop simbalising and evaualting that he is a drinker and he may have stress.

 

in addition , when josh the delivery man was wering a black suit simbalising that he has come from a very important place, and he is doing an imprtant job. Also faysals simplae dress sense gave a sense of normality in addition to his actions waking up brushing his teath.

 

 

today we was currently using live type to edit our mucic , this was very hard to use at first but we got use to it as time went by. it was very hard vhoosing what music to use becuase we had to find the right ones to match our thriller , at mommenst it was very funny as we had laughs at some of the sounds. But on the otehr hand very stressed as time was ticking. the songs we have decided to use fit our movie but we found that at times in our thriller it did not work quite aswell. this caused conflict at times because we dident no what one to choose. in addition after it all worked out we looked uder instimentals and found our perfect song.

final day before deadline

Today was a very stressful lesson, we were trying to finish everything at once we were beating the clock but could not do it as we had to go over time so we can try finish our thriller. We had so many aims that we had to achieve during that lesson.

1)      Finish sound

2)      Put in producers

3)      Fix title

All this had a lot of work that had to be put in, it was a very hard and nerve-racking lesson but we got it done at the end. One thing I learnt from this experience is that I should NEVER LEAVE THINGS TO LAST MINETE!

This is the type of title i would like for my thriller , some space in between the writing to give a sense of responsibility aswell as fear. As our thriller is based on a man getting recoreded , this kind of writing gives a sense of revnege in a way. Also as the writing is in block capitals it gives a tense supensufull bold feeling that something fishy is going on. And this is everything we want our audiences to get when watching our thriller. Sp this type of title is one i will put my hand up for.

what titles that i suggest

Titles have to give a good indication of how the story line is going to be, so in my opinion I believe we should have a sort of block writing title, sensing that the story line is going to have some sort of grudge or anger towards it.
I.C.U – for example using Impact font.
In my opinion when looking at a DVD cover or a film cover , I do notice the title along with the picture , I think the title gives a sense of discovery when it comes to our thriller.

our rough thriller

on ths 17th march , we had to finish putting all the clips together and putting it on our blogs , this was quite hard as our thriller was very long and we had to cut the clips in order for it to fit 3 minetes, but we got through it we edditied our clips but decided to leave out the titles as that would come last and soundtrack because all that we thought shpuld comel ast. however we took a long discustion to disscuss how we were going to put the titles on and what type of music to use , and how both of these features are going to impact out thriller. we had to think about what type of music going to tell out mystirious story.

Mistakes and improvements

One of our biggest improvements from our previous recordings was that we did not take enough clips, so this time for our actuarial thriller we took a lot of different shots for each scene. This was a great advantage as many clips came out wrong but we had back up shots. However one scene as I have mentioned before had some faulty issues as one of our peers was recorded in the background. But this was ok as we recorded once again. However our biggest mistakes we realised was that we should have had some pictures of the character so it gives a bit more information of the persons background, this had many arguments and disagreements as some believed that having pictures would give the story line away, but some on the other hand thought that having pictures will give a better indication of the story line.

mise en scene - PROPS USED

These are the most important props that are used in our thriller, all this props give a clear indication of every action , every prop has has a reason for its display in the thriller. props are crusial equipments as they help tell the story.

22 march edditing diary

Today we included all our fades and jump cuts into our thriller; it was a very hard lesson as we were beating the clock as we had only two whole lessons to finish everything. By the 25 march we would have to include our titles, music and finish our blogs. In that lesson we started to do our titles we first thought of some names that sound professional and then included them. My aim for next lesson will be to try and finish our background song and put in all our sound tracks.   

thriller diary march 15th

on the 15th of march , we finished putting all our chosen clips on the time line in order. after that we had to cut some of our clips due to the fact that the thriller was very long and we had to cut it to 3 minets. thsi was very hard as we had very good clips and it all fitted very sucsesfully , but it had to be done. After that rushed our self to finish before the lesson ended as we had to put it up for our ruff cuts,

thriller diary 10th march

On the 10th of March we started to edit our thriller. We started off by selecting our shots, as we took many different angles of each shot. This was quite hard as many of us had different opinions on different shots, but we eventually made our mind up within half an hour. Then we started to think about how we were going to place our clips on and what order it was going to be in, this took most of the lesson.