This blog is now closed.

Finished!

At last, everything is complete! These past couple of weeks have been stressful in terms of getting things done and to a standard that I'm happy with but it was totally worth it. We've managed to achieve so much this past year and I'm so happy with the outcome. We've had really good feedback from everyone and I can't wait to see what we produce next year.

Evaluation Question 7

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

Evaluation Question 6

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

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation Question 3

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

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 1

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

Update Vlog

In our vlog, Olivia and I gave an update on how much we have left to do. By our deadline, Friday 22nd of April, our evaluation questions and blog have to be completed. After this we will begin focusing more on exam preparation.

Evaluation Preparation

Here are some brief notes I have made for each evaluation question: 

Response from Showcase Evening

At the showcase evening on Monday the 14th of March, we were able to gain some feedback from the students that attended it. It gave us an insight into what their opinion of our opening was and what they liked/didn't understand. 

We had a good feedback about the drone shots, it being one of the most popular camera shots in our opening. Our audience also really enjoyed the scenes in which the 'demon' appears. 

Screenshot for Showcase Evening

We have chosen this screenshot to be used on our questionnaire as we feel it is the most memorable moment in our film opening and one that the audience will be able to remember. 

Finished Film Opening

Our finished film opening:

Narrative

If our opening was to be made into a feature length film I believe it would follow the story of a supernatural being (in this case being a demon) inhabiting the bodies of innocent people. In order for it to be resolved, someone will need to act upon these strange occurrences and try to solve what has been happening. I also believe that there should be multiple 'demon' like people as it would create a sense of mystery as to who they are and where they have come from. To add to that, the masked antagonist will add to the mystery of the whole film.

Film Opening Update Vlog

In this vlog we gave a brief summary of what we have done and what we now need to focus on. We have completed our opening and uploaded it onto YouTube so that people are able to view it. A few days before we uploaded it, we were able to acquire Mr Coopers help with the voice over, which we have now layered over our footage to come up right before the title of our opening appears. We feel that it helps with the narrative of our opening and allows the audience to understand what they are about to see. 

Evaluation Questions Mark Scheme

Level 4 16–20 marks 

• Excellent skill in the use of appropriate digital technology or ICT in the evaluation. 

• Excellent understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production. 

• Excellent ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.

• Excellent understanding of their development from preliminary to full task. 

• Excellent ability to communicate.

For the other levels, 1-3, change the word 'Excellent' for:

Level 3:  'Proficient'

Level 2:  'Basic'

Level 1:  'Minimal'

7 Evaluation Questions

The questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are:

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

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

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

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

5.  How did you attract/address your audience? 

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

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

Left or Right?

I found this particular article rather interesting and it stood out to me as I could easily relate it back to our own footage. The article discusses how the direction your actors move across the screen affect the outcome and how your audience perceives what is about to happen.

 

 

This footage was shown to a group of participants who responded that watching the actor go from the right side of the screen to the left made them have more negative feelings than the footage in which the lateral movement went from left to right. The article said that our brains have been programmed to think this way as our culture views left to right movement as an indicator or progress. It is still not officially determined as to why we think this way but the study from Cleveland State University aims to figure it out scientifically.

The reason that I could relate this back to our own footage was that the shots in which we were walking from right to left, the 'demon' would appear on screen. The beginning shots which shows us walking from left to right give a false sense of protection and independence, which changes to vulnerability when our movement is in the opposite direction.

Voiceover Preparation

In preparation for our voice over I had come up with a few ideas which we could use, originally thinking that we would only be using one of them. We have now used the idea below as a quote at the beginning, almost giving an introduction to the whole opening before the narrative has been heard.

'Be gone from this place children of earthly form, for this pool you idly draw ripples in is deeper than you know, and the streams which feed it are where the fountains of Darkness lay.' 

For our voice over, we then decided that the idea below would be best. It explains our opening without giving too much away and it allows the audience to understand what they are viewing rather than missinterpreting it.

Demons are haunted by the vastness of eternity. They are forced to transmit from one being to another, never knowing when the end will be for their tormented souls. They cause the once peaceful land to become disturbed by their callous ways and the innocent souls of individuals to join them. 

On Monday we are hoping to record the voice over, hopefully getting a variation so we are able to see which one works best with our opening and once this has been completed, we should be finished with our opening. (Fingers crossed!)

Voiceover Ideas

So it's leading up to the deadline of our opening but we thought to make our opening seem much clearer to the audience, we should add on a voice over to the beginning. Over the last couple of days I have been researching and coming up with some ideas as to what we could use.

- It has been two weeks now since the disappearance of two girls in Winchmore Hill, England. The inattentive teenagers had been walking in a park, oblivious to the fact that there was an evil spirit watching their every move. 

- Demons are haunted by the vastness of eternity. They are forced to transmit from one being to another, never knowing when the end will be for their tormented souls. They cause the once peaceful land to become disturbed by their callous ways and the innocent souls of individuals to join them. 

- Be gone from this place children of earthly form, for this pool you idly draw ripples in is deeper than you know, and the streams which feed it bear the names of old places, the low places, where the fountains of Darkness lay.

These are not the final copies and can be changed if necessary. We also had the idea of adding a bible quote, specifically addressing the ways in which demons are perceived, however, I have yet to look further into it. 

'Devil' Opening Scene

https://www.openbible.info/topics/the_devil

'Fallen' Opening Credits

The movie 'Fallen' has been one of our inspirations for our opening as it goes with our ideas of Semra being a supernatural being. The credits have been designed to fade away, almost as if there is a presence floating around. These credits go with the plot of the film as it is based around someone who is an ancient and diabolic spiritual being. He is 'supernaturally condemned to eternally transmigrate at will between unwitting and susceptible human souls who act as hosts for possession.'

Film Opening Feedback

During our spare time today, we decided that filming a feedback video would be beneficial to us. We decided to get our feedback from Mac 4. There was a technical difficulty at the end as it started to lag and then froze but you are still able to hear her comments. 

Group 1 Filming Vlog 2

We've finally finished the filming of our main shots! We still need to complete the opening shots which we will be using the drone for but as the weather has not been on our side recently, it's been very difficult to get the shots we need. However we hope that by the end of Christmas we will have all of the footage and so when we get back to school in the new year, we can get on with finishing the editing.

Update

Here we have a short update vlog from Olivia and Semra on how we have progressed with the filming of our opening scene. We finally found a font that we were really interested in using and we've also been able to think of a name. As Semra said, we have named it 'Oblivion' and it goes really well as the definition is 'the state of being unaware or unconscious of what is happening around ones self'. It goes perfectly as Olivia and myself are unaware of Semra throughout the whole of the opening. 

We have finished the filming process (well we hope so anyway) and now we need to go on to doing the drone shots and also the editing of the second half of our filming. We then need to go on to edit the writing within the opening. 

British Film Institute

10:30 - Welcome and introduction to BFI ( Mark Reid ) 

10:35 - Introduction to the study ( Tom Woodcock)

 

10:40 - Session 1 : Conventions of film openings ( Tom Woodcock)

 

11:30 - Break 

 

11:40 - Session 2 : Anatomy of the Titles and Student Task ( Tom Woodcock )

 

12:15 - Lunch 

 

1:15 - Student task exercise report back 

 

1:30 - Introduction to Corin Hardy and The Hallow (Tom Woodcock)

 

1:35 - Screening : Opening from The Hallow

 

1:40: - Q/A with Corin Hardy (Director)

 

2:30 - Session 3 : Making your own film opening (Tom Woodcock)

 

3:30- END

                                         

Representation of Age in Media

The show 'Skins' is based on the individual lives of college students going through their A-levels. It represents youths as being rather rowdy and not caring what consequences may come through their actions. Throughout the series it shows the teenagers getting into trouble with police and parents but although it represents teenagers in a negative light, they are also represented in a positive light too. Throughout the series it shows the teenagers helping their friends and other people out, despite them being represented as selfish and rude. The older generation is also represented in this show, however not as much as the younger generation is. During a lot of the series they are shown looking down on a lot of the teenagers for their actions. 

'Father Ted' and 'One Foot in the Grave' represent the older generation as grumpy and arrogant. Both of the television shows show the ladies as rather ditsy and the younger male in 'Father Ted' is shown as rather unintelligent. The oldest men in both of the television shows are presented as extremely opinionated and do not take much of a liking to the younger generation.

The media represents the younger generation as lazy and violent while the older generation is represented as grumpy and narrow-minded. These representations are rarely ever true and well, if they are, they do not apply to the whole younger/older generation.

Fonts

Sound and Music

We managed to find a website which offers un-copyrighted music and have decided that a piece of music that we will layer over our filming is one by the name of 'Welcome to HorrorLand'. We are still in search of other pieces that we will be able to use which hold a lot of tension. 

Group 1 Filming Vlog & Extras

Our first day of filming seemed to go as planned as the weather stayed great for the whole time we were there. The ground was rather damp and muddy as it had been raining the day before we went to go and film but this did not prevent us from getting the shots we needed. So far we have managed to film and edit all the videos we captured and we have ended up with about half of our opening done. We now just need to go onto the sound we will use in the background of our opening and if we manage to find a rather good one, we will be able return to our location and use that as a guide to what we need to film next.

This is a short video of Semra getting under the bridge for the first time. It took quite a while to get the right shot and I felt extremely bad for her as the water was absolutely freezing! 

Group 1 Vlog

Starting our filming has been a big challenge for us as the weather has been absolutely horrible recently and as we are doing our filming over a number of days, we need the weather as good as possible on every day we go so that we have continuity. We were going to go on Thursday but it would have been far too dark to film by the time we would arrive there. Because of this we have decided to go fairly early on Sunday morning so we can try and get as much footage as we can. We need to use a drone for some of the first opening shots but we can wait to do those as we need to focus on getting the main shots done before it gets too cold and the weather gets even worse. 

Gogglebox

Clip 1 - Doctor Foster

Clip 2 - Luther

Clip 3 - From Darkness

Scapegoat

Storyboard Videos & Pictures

Shot 1

Shot 2

Shot 3

Shot 4

Amy and Olivia's Location Vlog

Although I was not able to go and visit the location of where we will be filming, I can see some good ideas of where we will be able to take our shots from the pictures and the short vlog that Amy and Olivia took. We hope to re-visit the location (this time as a whole group) and possibly even start the filming of our two minute opening. 

Location Pictures

Questionnaire Summary

From my questionnaire, it is clear that I was able to receive a variety of answers. In total, 30 people were able to answer my questionnaire, 18 being female and 12 being male. I ended up asking people between the ages of 15 and 64 and this helped me to gain a wide variety of results.

In order for me to get the results I did, I signed myself up to a website named 'SurveyMonkey' which allowed me to create my own questionnaire. I was able to get my dad to send the link of my questionnaire directly to his colleagues at work and I was also able to send it to my sister and her friends. I feel this was one of the best ways to receive my answers as the website would put my results directly into a bar chart or pie chart.

From question 3, we are able to see that the most popular genre of film is comedy, the next most popular genre being action. Although horror was unpopular between the group I surveyed, we still chose to do an opening with a horror genre as we feel it is the most effective genre to do and one that will be popular with a wider variety of other people.

Question 6 clearly shows that horror is very unpopular, the next unpopular genre being action and then rom-com. Although I got an unpopular vote for horror, it is much easier to produce a horror film and it is much easier to achieve a horror effect rather than any other genre, especially when you have limited materials to work with.

From my results I gathered, the majority of the people I surveyed said that the first ten minutes of a film is very important to them whereas only a few said that the first ten minutes was not important. In addition to that, I also got a majority vote on whether the actor choice influences them on whether they should watch a film or not. I had 21 people say that it did influence them and then 9 who said that it had no influence on their choice.

From question 10 you are able to see that 14 people out of 30 said that they are more inclined to watch a movie if they have seen the film poster for it. However, 16 people said that it did not affect their choice if they were to watch the film or not.

Questionnaire Response

Question 1. What is your gender?

Question 2. What is your age?

Question 3. What is your favourite film genre?

Question 4. What is your favourite film of that genre?

Question 5. Who is your favourite actor/actress?

 Question 6. What is your least favourite film genre?

Question 7. How important is the first ten minutes of a film to you?

Question 8. Does the actor choice influence you when deciding whether or not to watch a movie?

Question 9. Name three things that you need to have in a film (e.g. love)

Question 10. Do you choose whether to watch a movie by the film poster?

Questionnaire

Q1. What is your gender?

Q2. What is your age?

Q3. What is your favourite film genre?

Q4. What is your favourite film of that genre?

Q5. Who is your favourite actor/actress?

Q6. What is your least favourite film genre?

Q7. How important is the first ten minutes of a film to you? 

Q8. Does the actor choice influence you when deciding whether or not to watch a movie?

Q9. Name three things you need to have in a film (e.g. love)

Q10. Do you choose whether to watch a movie by the film posters?

Our Pitch

This is our 25 word pitch which we presented to the class. We were able to gain some helpful feedback which we were then able to apply to our initial idea. It also helped us by giving us an understanding of what people would like to see in our two minute opening. 

Luther Storyboard

Storyboard Example

Here's the George ASDA advert, filmed at ECS:

The storyboard of this advert: