Navigation of my Blog, For the Moderator

Dear Moderator

Welcome to my individual blog! Thank you for taking a look around it, there is also a link to my groups blog on the right (underneath the 'labels' list) which I hope you also will enjoy looking at. You will also find a link to George's, Despina's and Natasha's blogs, who are the other members in my group, as well as our teacher's central blog called 'BLK FOUNDATION YEAR 12' which will allow you to view other student's blogs and other group's blogs.

My main labels I have chosen for my individual blog are research, planning, production and evaluation which are for my preliminary task and my main coursework task. Some of these posts were created before I was put into my group and all are done individually by me. 

I have posts from evaluating my preliminary and main task as well, along with the two sequences at the top, which I hope will be easy for you to view as they will stay at the top of my blog.

My group blog shows a collection of work our group put together and through our posts we hope you can get a feel of the stages our group went through, how we found our coursework task, what ideas we had and then see our progress to a successful finished product. Our opening sequence is also linked to my group blog.

Both blogs have easy navigation with clear headings for the labels and then some sub-labels included when wanting specific posts, including posts labelled with my name on the group blog as these posts were produced by me. It is also in date order to see the journey my group and I went through and how we've improved our media skills throughout our task from November 2009 to March 2010.  

Thanks again for taking the time out to view my blogs,

Ella May Wilkinson  

Candidate Number: 4895

Closing Post

As our coursework is now finished, and my teacher has signed off my evaluation, my blog will now be closed.

Hope you had fun looking around

Bye

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

Brief for Preliminary Exercise

To create a short sequence in which a character had to walk through a door into a room, sit down and half a short conversation with another charater. This task was to use continuity and make a seamless sequence.

Brief for Main Task

To create a two minute opening of a film, the film can be any genre and have any story line.

As I have only started doing media this year, the prelimnary task was the first time I’d gone through the process of planning, filming and editing. The prelim was a much shorter task and less was required for it so from this I learnt the basic process which was able to help me and aid me through our main task.

During the planning of the preliminary we had to produce paperwork such as storyboards, shot lists, shooting schedules and these processes were also repeated in the main task. I also learnt how to work in a group to make decisions and listen to everyone’s ideas, and then for the main task how to blog these ideas and the planning process. 

During the filming of the prelim we had to follow continuity rules learnt in lessons such as the 180 degree rule, doing match on actions, 30 degree rule and also how to show a conversation using shot reverse shots. We used all these techniques in our main task apart from shot reverse shot. I also got to use the equipment in the prelim and learn what each piece did, in the main task we had more equipment to look after so I had to take more responsibility of it and I learnt more about the setting up of the equipment and also the paperwork for taking the equipment off site.

During the editing in the prelim and main task I learnt that a lot of the footage filmed was not needed, this was so both had continuity and worked together as a believable piece of media. In the main task even though this was a very important part we also had to look at adding effects and creating titles so the prelim helped make the editing a slightly faster process. In the main task I also learnt how to use certain programmes not used in the prelim such as Livetype. 

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Hardware

Pros

+ All hardware was quite small and had its own bag so it was easy to transport and take to shoots

+ Camera -Easy to use, and we had learnt how to use it already in the preliminary exercise

+ Good quality microphone

+ Tripod could change levels

Cons

-          Expensive so needed a lot of responsibility

-          Pag lights had risk of fire

-          I wasn’t that used to the camera so had to spend time learning to use it

-           Camera had settings we didn’t know how to use so we could have cut out some of the editing we did after if we knew how to use the effects before

Software

Adobe premier pro CS3

Pros

+ Editing our film was quick as we had used this programme for our preliminary exercise

+ We easy to apply the effects we used such as fade to blacks, ghosting

+ We were able to create our recording sign on it

Cons

-          Wasn’t able to make the our credits so had to use other programmes

Livetype on Apple Mac

Pros

+ Was a large variety of effects, fonts

+ We were able to change the speed of the effects and how long we wanted them to last

Cons

-          Had to export it to put it onto our sequence so wasn’t able to preview it with the film immediately

-          Was a new programme to all of us so we had to learn how to use it unline premier pro

-          Was quite a complicated programme to use

Soundtrack Pro on Apple Mac

Pros

 + Had a large range of sound effects and we used it for our heartbeat and typing on the credits

+ Wasn’t difficult to use

Cons
- Had to be exported
- Was a new programme to us so had to use a small amount of our time learning how to use it


Our Group Equipment

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

o   We chose the genre of thriller because many people enjoy this genre of film

o   We chose the theme of rape as it isn’t a common theme so people will be intrigued by it and drawn in by the fact it is a new type of film

o   We followed the classic narrative of a film but played about with the order, which attracts an audience which enjoy traditional films but are looking to try and something slightly new

o   We used flashbacks to give the movie creativity; people will want to watch a film that is slightly different and has a more creative side, and possibly more artistic side

o   Our opening contains a shock when the victim is attacked through her door, this shows the viewer that this film will be more than a film that taps into your emotion but it also is out to shock you and possibly make you jump when showing the rape

o   Suspense is used in the music and through the flashback showing how unaware the victim is that something is about to happen. The music builds up throughout the piece so the audience are waiting and are expecting something to happen. And the flashback shows the lead up to the attack not giving away exactly when she will be attacked.

o   We used continuity rules and to make our opening sequence make sense, and look polished this way audiences won’t look at it and find it too complicated to watch

o We created a facebook group for our screening to reach out to our age group

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

TARGET AUDIENCE PROFILE

Age- 13-30

Gender- Male or Female

Film Tastes- Thrillers, Psychological thrillers, Horror, Independent films

Target Audience

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

GPH is our production company- we focus on making films that are realistic

-          Situations of teenagers and young adults

-          Quite gritty films that get quite deep and involved into situations

-          Emotional films that look at the emotions of the situations and the deeper effects

-          Psychological thrillers, that are more intense

Example of a film it might produce

THIRTEEN 

DONNIE DARKO 

PHONE BOOTH 

Our films would first be shown at independent cinemas, and then possibly be demanded like paranormal activity. 

 We would then begin to show it at mainstream cinemas such as Cineworld and Vue.