Question 7: What do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

qUESTION

Q 1 forms and conventions

here are the 9 shots i chose from my opening title sequence of my thriller, We followed the pattern of lead blockbuster Panic room, and the sequence the titles appear. This would explain why director, and other important titles are nearer the end, we enjoyed this different order and felt it helped make our thriller sequence stand out.
Our opening does not give alot away, not showing too much of a opening gives more mystery, but alot of the shots gave great indications that something had happend and we would definetly find out if we continued to watch the film, this being similar to the opening of the film "se7en" staring Bradd Pitt. Using over lapping and fading and different effects in our opening it gives a dark and spookey feel, this also comparing to Se7ens opening.

Question 6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing?

How one media product can protray a particular sterotype.

Using only a young girl in our thriller opening, it can be used to our advantage to draw in more viewers in many ways. it firstly attracts teenagers, thinking the film will be aimed at their age group being a similar age to the main character, and can relate more to the story. It can also attract to a wider range as more of a chilling film, as young children usually spook people out, and make films far more thrilling.

This can be in comparrison to a character in the film "dont say a word" were actress britney murphy plays a very dark hospital patient, the following photo shows her in costume similar to our main character Jessica. She also has a comparision of using a stuffed toy, this shows signs of a demented child hood we tried to protray that Jessica has a childhood issue that definetly has unfinished buisness.

Who Would be Ideal For my Thriller Video?
the sort of audience we were aiming for is 16-25, maybe college students, or unviresity students...someone into clever and intreguing films. A sociable person who loves to discuss films, music and telivison! the sort of girl who takes the trip to cinema with friends, or her boyfriend. Not a demented grunger, but a girl with a darker sence of style and twist in imagination. heres a photo of what her handbag would look like!!

Question 8: Audience Feedback and Comments!

Here are some videos that we took before, during and after the screening:

Harry Kinsley's comment after watching 'Of Unsound Mind'

Michael Lewry's comment.

Francene and Alexandra's comment.

The atmosphere before the viewing of all our clips in 'The Green Screen'.

We were pleased with all the comments and found that all of them were postive and was happy that they found that our film was unique and interesting.

Evaluation Q;5. who would be the audience for my media product?

'Farhana, 17, currently studying for her A levels, a particular interest in Psychology, loves to go out with her friends to the cinema, shops in high street; Topshop, River island, Dorothy Perkins'

From this interview that i conducted with Farhana, i feel that she is the main audience for our Thriller film 'Of Unsound Mind'. I felt that she was of the right age group as it is centered around a teenager-- of which she is. I also think it would mainly appeal to her because of her general hobbies and day to day life, she enjoys watching television and films and also has a specialised interest in Psychology, as she does the lesson in her A levels which makes our film even more of an appeal to her.

EVAULATION. Q2. How my media product represents particular social groups

'Carrie (1979)'

I felt that the film Carrie was quite similar to my film 'Of Unsound mind' I think this is especially shown in the two stills above.

Carrie, is about a white, young adolescent female of a middle class origin, this compares fully to the Character in our Thriller opening-- White, teenage female. For this reason i feel that the social group that my thriller film would represent would be young, white, middle class people who may have a particular interest in Psychological thrillers. The comparison of the Mise en Scene in both 'Carrie' and 'Of Unsound Mind' is quite similar with the main characters both in some sort of hospital or institutional gowns. The only difference i found in the two stills is that in my thriller opening the surroundings are in an open area (a band stand) whereas Carrie is in an enclosed environment which could represent being trapped not only in a room but also in her mind, which would have been an effective thing for my group to do to show further representations.

'Carrie' I felt inspired me because though it is an old film, made in 1979 it is still widely enjoyed today and may not be what is considered a 'conventional' Thriller film. Carrie's frame of mind was attempted to be recreated in our Thriller opening, using effects that may give the audience the idea that our character too has powers beyond normal means.

EVALUATION: Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To understand and mantain enough knowledge in the different forms and conventions of opening title sequences we watched several different film openings of all different generes especially openings that are films based on the Thriller genre. The main forms and conventions we found in majority of title sequences are the institutional ident of the production companies always coming immediately at the start of any opening.

These are 9 shots from my title sequence created for a Thriller opening. Our opening i feel both represents real conventions for this kind of media product and but also challenges it in certain aspects. The order of our opening titles are in correspondence of the order they are presented in Panic Room's opening title sequence with the exception of where the film title is placed. However, we realised after carefully placing our titles that Panic Room does not follow the order of titles that a lot of other films have, with things such as the director, writer and producer coming at the end of the title sequence instead of at the start as a lot of films do (in rank
order).
I felt that our opening sequence was most similar to the opening of the film Se7en. In the Thriller film 'Se7en' There are many differences which would make our film seem as though it does not have many or any comparisons to it, however there are certain things within our opening that correspond and are similar to it. In our opening, throughout we used fading and overlapping tools which was also used in the Se7en, mainly of close ups of miscellaneous objects like notes and diaries and books, we similarly did this when overlapped a close ups of a leaf and the teddy which was in it throughout. This is also similar to Se7en because there are various objects that are shown throughout such as note books and sharp metal objects helping to create a theme and set up an idea with the audience about what is coming in the film.

The use of sound in all the opening title sequences indicated the theme, tone and genre of the up coming movie. To show our knowledge of the forms and conventions, whilst creating our sequence we oredered the titles as we thought was appropraite and to how many would fit in our sequence to help illustrate what we wanted present. In our thriller opening 'Of Unsound Mind' we used the convention of an institutional ident to start with. using "candistudios" a low budget production company which could be like a existing company 'working title 2'.

The sound plays a very important role especailly in our opening title sequence, it was the main source that created tenstion, which we also found was similar in many film openings. The soundtrack we created had a constant heatbeat in the background, this made the tension of what would or might happen stronger and therefore more effective and so possibly reveals the pace of the entire film.

The sound plays an important part in the opening of a title sequence, the soundtrack we created was upbeat at faced paced to indicated the fast pace of the theme of the movie and genre overall. "The shinning" uses an orchestral soundtrack to open of which creates an eerie atmosphere and gives the audience a clue of what the rest of the film holds. This is similar to the film Se7en, the pace of the film, steady helps to created the wished atmosphere and so make the audience prepared for what they are about to watch in the rest of the film.

EVALUATION

1) How media product is used, developed, challenged forms and conventions of real media products?

Here is my 9 still title sequence. You could see that there were effects used to evoke a sense of thriller and tension.

Another tool that we used was layering 2 clips together so it presents a scary psychological theme, for example when she's sitting on the ban stand by herself while the walls of the band stand are moving round it expresses that she is in her own world.

For our titles we used a sharp font with a blue effect so it blends in with what the girl is wearing. Moreover the shot of the teddy bear fading out was a useful technique which flowed with the soundtrack but indicated an illusion of it disappearing hence showing an insight of the girls mind in this clip 'Of Unsound Mind'.

We used some long shots and close ups to allow the audience to see every detail of the clip and mise en scene.

Here is the title sequence of Se7en. The shots here are all close ups so it is very effective in allowing the audience to see every detail of mise en scene, similarly to how we used a close up of the teddy bear and 'Jessica's eyes'. The titles are small and in white and kiddish style writing which presents to us that it may be a psychological thriller. Compared to our titles they were spooky and striking and more memorable. Although the title sequence isn't completely similar to our title sequence, we used this title sequence to influence ours as our titles are in different places on the screen just like 'Se7en'. Moreover the effects that were used in this title sequence are similar to the way we used some effects. For example when the girl is on the bench touching the bear, we used a dark suspensed effect.

Another title sequence that we used as an influence was 'Panic Room'. We tried using the style of the titles used in the title sequence on ours which i think we have done pretty well because our titles come out as striking and suit generally well with the rest of the clip. In addition they were presented in different places of the screen like 'Panic Room'.

2) How media product represents our particular social group?

We used a young girls to attract audiences of youths which should attract these types of audiences but through the use of edit and soundtrack of the title sequence it would broaden the audience to those who like thrillers especially psychological.

In comparison to the film ' Fatal Attraction', Glenn Close is a female psycho who kills unreasonably. This similar to our film 'Of Unsound Mind' because they are both female characters which is going to attract the female audience as well as the male audience. Moreover because both are psychological thrillers it will engage those who like to watch psychological films. This character has inspired us to include a female character in our 2 minutes clip because it creates more tension as well as giving the audience ambiguous thoughts to make them want to watch more of the film.

3 &4) Media Institution that may distributes media product and why. How we would attract the audiences.

This is one of the pieces that a group of AS students made and posted it on youtube and recieved 11,458 hits which shows that it has gained a great amount of audiences. This proves that this is a realistic way of gaining a wider audience and since it was a low budget film with limited access to technology, it shows that it can still be distributed and interest others through the use of the internet. Moreover, youtube is a worldwide website that is accessed by millions of people around the world which allows distribution to a greater market and it is easier to be recognised.

Here is another clip of a singer who started off posting videos of herself singing and everytime she posted a video she recieved as many as 15 million hits. This lead to her being recognised and becoming and international singer.

5) Who would be the audience for our media product?

Our typical audience would by young female teens. Here is images of things that will be in a typical young female teens handbag and there is also a video of the target audience and why it would appeal to them.

7) What i have learnt in progression from the the preliminary task to the full product.

Here is one of the first filming activites that we had to do. This shows our steadiness of the camera and how we could use Final Cut Pro to match the clips together and make it flow. It clearly shows that we had a lot of glitches and needed more time to improve it as well as more time to practise with the tools.

And here is out final cut that we did for our final clip 'Of Unsound Mind'. You can see that we have made a major improvement as we explored Final Cut Pro and used many effects. On our first match cut activity we only learnt how to put certain clips into the timeline and not use the other effects on making it more interesting. Moreover our final cut includes sound and more effects and titles which was not included in our preliminary task. This was because it was the build up of learning more on how to use the Dual Macs and the programmes.

EVALUATION: Q8. Audience feedback and comment

Jessica Comerford: These words in the above picture are from Wordle and are the instant reactions and feedback we received from our class before showing it in the cinema. The words that were predominantly used in each groups feedback were 'Effective' 'good' 'shots' 'Breathing' and 'Soundtrack'. Although four of the words on the wordle seem to be quite general it may show that the audience did not fully take in the message that we tried to give across. It however shows that we created a competent piece that was enjoyed and we felt it represented things and feelings we wanted to get across, especially by the word 'Breathing'. A lot of the audience after watching felt that it was very different from other Thriller openings they had seen, with it not being a narrative opening.

Farhana Maleque: The words in the Wordle represent the immediate comments from the rest of our class members once they watched our 2 minute clip. I have identified that the bigger words are the ones that were the most used from the feedback. The students found our 'shots' 'really' 'effective'. Also 'soundtrack' and 'breathing' came up a lot and we were pleased to find that we successfully aimed to make the features of our clip obvious. I am pleased with all the comments and have portrayed a unique Thriller opening clip that the audience was not expecting.

EVALUATION: Q; 3+4- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

This is an example of a random students AS Media coursework which was found on Youtube and had nearly 1,500 hits.

As the media institutions have had great and vast changes over the past 10 years it has meant that thousands of aspiring movie makers or potential actors/actresses have the opportunity to share their work with a much wider audience that was ever possible before when the main media institutions were Newspapers, Radio and Mainstream television. All of which would be near impossible for a young aspiring filmmaker to have an opportunity. This is because of many reasons such as high costs which means that people like myself, a student who does not have enough money or any kind of help within the institutions would not have no source of presenting to a wider.

However with the increase of internet access in homes across the world it has meant that i, like the student in the film from above has the opportunity to share videos with a global audience getting hits in the thousands. The internet is also a free place to advertise yourself and has helped many people gain enough publicity to actually breakthrough into a film making career and also quite a lot of singers have used this institution to further or create a career an example of someone who has done this recently is Justin Bieber aged only 16. His mother started posting videos of him in 2007 on the website Youtube which eventually has led to him

becoming world famous achieving UK and US hits.

The Video on the left hand side is of Justin Bieber before he had gained any fame or even received many hits. The video on the right hand side shows how much he has progressed to the stage that he is now globally viewed on high status televison channels such as MTV. This would never have been possible if the internet as a media institution was not available. This shows that extreme success has now become available to anyone who feels they have talent in a specific area.

Filming on Location

Whilst filming, we had great luck, as the weather was perfect for the scenes we wanted to shoot, with bright sunshine we were able to film clear sunny footage with out rain or cloud. With the chosen location to be outside, there was no problems setting up the tripod, this also kept our star Jessica happy and warm.
A fue problems as you can see in the photo we have taken shooting, is the location became crowded and unfortunatly delayed us filming as we did not want any members of the public in our thriller sequence.

Insparation For Mese En Scene

We also bought a teddy from a local charity shop, to add to the childlike feeling of the coursework. This helped by battering up the teddy to make it look spookier, and to show jess had had it with her a while on her travels of murder, and mystery





. in our Coursework Jess is wearing a hospital gown to show she is an escaped mental patient, or a sick child;. this can be seen in such films like the Sixth sense, or cellular.

skills audit: creation of titles

We used our knowledge of using 'SoundTrack Pro' from our preliminary task and applied it to making our titles for our real clip. We experimented again with different fonts, style and colour to choose the best suited for our clip.

skills audit soundtrack

We used a nursery rhyme song 'twinkle twinkle as well as other sounds in soundtrack. It took us some time to choose a component of sound which matched to the soundtrack that we imported from youtube. When we experimented sounds we chose just a simple ' heartbeat' to flow with the 'twinkle twinkle' soundtrack.

Rough Cut Changes

Once we created a rough version of how our video would look like, we showed teachers in our media lesson. We had very constructive critisisom back, and it was very helpful. "of Unsound Mind" was defiently not perfect in our rough cut video. It had a lot of tweets to be done to. After mary and Mickies help we were able to make changes that would improve it greatly. Fades were added to avoid any sharpness we had(which was a lot).

after personally working on the soundtrack myself with liberty, it was nice to hear wot the teachers had to say and they seemed to be happy with it, so no changes were needed to be made there.

A big issue in our rough cut is there was way too many different effects and they needed to be drastically toned down. Too many fades made it look cheap and childish, and non-profesional at all!

Skills Audit Editing

This is a screengrab of our editing. We used many tools such as: speeding, fading, and layering. In comparison to the preliminary task we have majorly improved by linking shots together smoothly and using effects to make our clip interesting.

Creating Titles

Creating Titles

We were responsable for creating the titles for our thriller sequence. We wanted to create something that matched our footage perfectly, and we found our outcome wos very succesfull.


using the equipment " Live Type" on MAC computers at college, we were able to explore many different

• fonts


• colours


• sizes


• effects


• live effects.

in our filming, our main character (Jessica) wears a blue gown, so our font innitially was ment to be red, but we wanted it to fit exactly. So we changed to a light sky blue, wich we feel matches very nicely.

To make sure they came in suitable orders, we watched the title opening of "panic room" to find wich title should come up when, for example we found it quite rare that the director was shown at the end, instead in alot of big block busters the director is usually shown in the first three titles.

each title lasts a couple of seconds on the screen, some appearing over the footidge at the bottom, or some in suitable places when the screen is blank.

we specifily liked the final title, wich is the title of the film (wich is the only pattern we didnt follow from panic room) it fits lovely with the soundtrack so we felt it would be at peak by showing it at the end on a black background.

Using the live effect called "frigid" this caused our text to move almost as it is vibrating and shaking. This panic, and frantic feel was perfect for our sequence.

After saving each title individually, our other group members (jessica and farhana) placed them carefully were they were suited best on our footidge.

Camera Health and Safety Tutorial

As we used very expensive and vital equipment whilst shooting the footige for our film, we had to make sure we knew exactly how to use the;
camera

tripod

memory cards

hard drive

still camera

USB.

As soon as we were taught correctly by engineers, we happily went out to film on location with out any worries.

Firstly we were shown the Video camera, learning how to use its features, and different camera skills. The things that would highly benefit when filming our coursework. After being shown how to turn on and off, the zoom, focus and so on..we were shown to insert the battery at the back of the camera, as well as inserting both memory cards to maximize the amount of footage we could film.

The tripod was a vital part of health and safety, as incase the camera was not placed properly with the correct farssenings and such the camera will fall or produce unsteady shots.
the usb helped as we had four group members, it saved us fighting over the hard drive, and work was produced at the same time getting it done quicker so we were able to produce nearer to our deadline. The only problem we found is because there was not a designated USB for each group it was hard to find our work once saving it on to the USB from the drive.

Skills Audit: Filming

We went out on a sunny day to film. Because of the great weather we were able to film with efficient exposure to light. There were no distraction except that we filmed near a university which attracted students to pass by in some of our shots. This wasn't helpful as we needed to film again. Overall the location and the weather was perfect to make it a good filming day. Luckily we managed to finish all our filming on the same day.

Location Shots:

Our group found a nice quite square in the east of islington, its quite and spookey location was perfect the only trouble w e had is as the spot wos located next to a University it wos hard to film during the day with such big crowds. and found it hard to achieve the atmospher we wanted. But with careful and clever angles, we seemd to have achieved a remote location.