Friday, 15 April 2011

Pictures from scenes

Evaluation-7

Working in a group; in a group we learnt how to work together and what each member had to do in the group. Group work and communication was necessary in order to get ideas and thoughts across. And through our group work we learnt how to communicate better and how to organize our work and distribute it to the three members in the group.

Operating video cameras; as a group we learnt how to operate the camera. We learnt how to keep the camera steady and how to make the sequence look seamless. We also learnt how to zoom in and out of shots. We learnt how to do different angles of the shot. We also learnt how to handle the camera smoothly without making it shake, and look unreal. We also learnt how to use the camera without a tripod.

The 180 degree rule-
After our preliminary task we learnt about the 180 degree rule, and we were fully aware on how to do it, and how not to break the rule. And it was very useful because we knew how to do a technique in our film
preliminary task was to learn the 180 degree rule in order for our opening sequence to be consistent and not break any conventions. This task was vital as we learnt new things.

Evaluation-6

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

Mini Dv Cameras
The main equipment that was vital to my production was these cameras which helped us film our film sequence. First of all i had a fully new experience on how to use a mini dv camera. On this i learnt how to video footage accurately without using a tripod. I learnt how to rewind and cur out footage and film over it, I learnt how to take pictures on the camera. I also learnt how to use the camera steadily without needing an tripod. A tripod was only used for very steady and smooth videoing.





Final cut pro
Final cut pro was a professional apple suite that we used to edit and make our whole film sequence including the music. It was another vital piece of our production without this we wouldn’t of succeeded in making our production. On final cut pro we learnt how to put on all our footage, we learnt how to edit our shots, make them into the sizes we needed, For example zoomed in shots that we needed. We learnt how to make our production look seamless. On final cut pro we also learnt how to edit the colours of the shots, how to make the shots go faster or slower and do on. We also embedded our music into final cut pro and edited it according to our different scenes. Overall I have learnt how to
• How to upload footage.
• How to edit footage in terms of color, speed and font.
• How to add music on to my footage.

Blogspot; Blogspot- another important site that helped us put all our work together and show what we had done for all our production we learnt how to upload images, videos and all our work. We learnt how to create a blog, make a background and how to put all the vital information on there.

Evaluation-5

How did you attract/ address your audience?


We attracted our audience through our film storyline by making a scene that is rather confusing to the viewer. It challenged the reader and made them think what is happening in the scene. For example during the scene we used jump cuts, we filmed two sequences and made them seamless by very cleverly editing them together for example while the girl was walking into the toilet, there was a implication of someone following the girl when someone was walking up the stairs to the church. We made the scene really confusing so that the viewer would be in two minds, to discover what is actually happening in the scene. Our titles where in red to imply death or blood. We also decided to put the title of the film at the end this would engage the reader to watch the whole sequence and see what its called, and make up a story in there mind of what might of happened. The music was very eerie, dramatic and scary. I edited the music and put in a child singing to make the viewer think what is happening and make them frightened. I edited quite a few pieces of soundtracks that actually relate to what’s happening in the scene, this is what mad the scene more attention grabbing and exciting but frightening at the same time.
We can also attract the audience by making websites about our movie where people could see clips of the movie, write in what they think of it, do quizzes, play games and so on. We can make leaflets for people to read, we can also make posters and put them on billboards, bus stops to advertise our film even more to a bigger extent. We can also use viral marketing over the internet, so when people are on yahoo trying to access their email they can see movie clips. So these ideas would be great for advertisement

Evaluation - 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My opening sequence was a horror movie scene therefore as a group we decided that the rating for our production is 15. So it is legally permitted for anyone under 15 to watch no-one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No-one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work (Shown on www.bbfc.co.uk) So our film was aimed at people aged over 15, widely aimed at teenagers therefore this is why we made a decisions to have our film at rating 15, because most of the characters were the same age, and other teenagers can relate to the movie well likewise done in other movies where the age rating was in relation to the characters in the movie. Also the scenes in our film were not suitable for people aged under than 15, as the music was spooky, there’s some violent looking blood scenes there was also the atmosphere for kids to view wasn't suitable in our terms. Our film was aimed for people who liked thriving horror movies, and frightening scenes and not for people who preferred comedy,rom-com's or thrillers. Even though in some people's views our film could be looked at as a mix of horror and thriller.
Our film wasn't aimed at a particular gender, however we felt the most dominant gender in most horror movies that we have seen, was men who had more dominancy over the women. So we challenged this convention and used a lot of women in our scene. However this didn't mean that it was aimed at women, it is aimed widely at both genders like every other horror film.
Our film wasn't aimed at a particular class or social grade. Anyone who wanted to watch the film and who could purchase it cans imply watch it but we didn't aim the film at any class or social grade.
Furthermore my film wasn't aimed at a particular ethnicity group. However in our scene we have predominantly used characters of an Asian background but we didn't purposely pick an Asian background, it was just the actors we used, so hopefully this wouldn't affect the type of ethnicity that would view our film. And we have made the production for all ethnicities.

evaluation-3

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

Many different film studios, TV companies would consider distributing our horror film if it is attention grabbing. A typical studio that would release my horror film would be ‘hammer films’

Hammer is a London based production subsidiary of Exclusive Media Group and a legendary British film brand. I feel that hammer films would be an ideal company to distribute our film as they specialize in horror movies, for this reason my film would be suitable to them, they have also had great releases such as The Two Faces of Evil and Dracula. And as they are well known for having great horror movies this would ba an advantage to us, because more people will want to see the movie, knowing the suceeses of other movies they have distributed.



Sky would be an ideal distributor for our horror movie. As they are so popular and have a wide variety of movie channel's were loads of people watch home movies on, we could benefit a lot from there advertisements and viewings of our films after its release. They are a major company around the world, and this will benefit our movies, and its profits.


Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is another major distributor in the media industry, and I have learnt a lot about there success in films. They don't do much horror films, but I think if they did more horror films alongside the action, comedy and other movies they would have a wide ranges of audience around the world, they have loads of there own channels, so it would be great to have them releasing our movie, we could advertising our film to the greater masses. We could make loads of profits working with them.


You Tube would be another ideal advertisement site for my film,, there is a lot of opportunity for me to target my potential audience which is mostly teenagers, and You Tube would be great as it is accessed mostly by teenagers and other age groups which will give me a wide range of audience, not just in the UK but worldwide You Tube is also accessed. On here others like cyber geeks can advertise my film, by helping us gain more viewers, and just like Avatar was re-constructed on You Tube by cyber geeks, the same can be done with my film, for advertisement reasons. It is also easy and quick to access the feedback and views by people about my film. Which is great for considering changes for future films.


Warner Bros is one of the major film studios; it is a subsidiary of Time Warner. It has released many horror movies such as Final Destination, The exorcist, Trick 'r' Treat and Nightmare on Elm Street. Warner Bros have made great profits, and are famous worldwide. They have made loads of successes in the media industry therefore we could benefit from this if we wanted our film to become a big hit.

Evaluation- Question 2

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

In the opening scene of my film the gender is more women than men which is unconventional in horror movies because the gender is more likely to be aimed at men, more than women. And in the majority of horror films the men have dominance over the women but this is not shown in my opening sequence. But we have tried to achieve the opposite and making the women dominant (i.e. girl haunting another girl).
The age of the actors/actresses in the opening sequence of my film show that they are fairly young in their teen’s between 17-22. This wasn’t aimed to just the teenage groups it is aimed to a wide range of ages, but however we decided to have two teenage girls, and was purposely set like this, due to our storyline, there are some horror movies which have their film based on children and there are some which include a mixture of genders, so our sequence wasn’t something new to age types. There isn’t much of a social grade taken into consideration whilst making the opening sequence because it wasn’t to us relevant to our storyline, and the majority of horror films don’t take into much consideration of social grades, exception of some, (I.e. where rich people are being killed or big haunted houses owned by rich people) The ethnicity is mostly aimed at Asian teenagers in my opening sequence, however again this was just due to our actors, and not purposely aimed at the Asian ethnicity group for any kind of reason. The main actor is a female which is quite unconventional to horror movies, well the majority I have seen so therefore we purposely made the main actor a female.

Evaluation

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


In my media production i and two students made a opening film sequence. In our horror sequence we tried to use forms of conventions to challenge the reader. In our opening sequence we used eerie music for our horror opening this is a typical convention used in many horror films, such as ‘Halloween’ where eerie music is used to show the audience something is going to happen. Our music tempo and frequency increases to make the audience get tenser at times to relate to what’s happening in the scene, and make the audience more impatient to see what happens next in the clip. In our opening film sequence we also used red titles, which gives implications to the audience of blood and death, this is also conventional in horror movies likewise done in ‘Halloween’ and ‘red dragon’, where there was different colours used such as orange, yellow and red which are related to horror/thriller movies. We also made some of our clips very dark, dull and dramatic which is another commonly used convention used in horror films. To send out to the reader negative connotations of the movie after the opening sequence. Also to make them more frightened. We also in our sequence challenged the conventions. Instead of every typical horror movie we never followed the way they put their titles, most horror movies have their titles at the start of the opening sequence however me and my two partners decided we should challenge the conventions and place the title at the end of the scene to make it unusual to other horror movies and people can relate more to our film after watching the opening scene to our title name ‘‘Vengeance of the dead.’. I also feel we challenged the conventions because in most horror movies their are a majority of male dominance in the opening scenes, however in our opening scene a girl is shown more dominant over another girl rather than a man. We also challenged the conventions because the reader is left to think if the opening sequence is either horror/thriller because we have both aspects of each genre combined together. We also used the concept of graveyards and woods within our locations used in a horror film such as ‘cemetery man (1994)’, as graveyards have been a long-lasting tradition in horror movies so we choose to put this idea in our sequence, as our film is also to do with a dreadful death.

Task 6- Storyboard

This is a photo of the story board that we made.

Schedule
What was needed in order to film -
· Mini DV camera
· Tripod
· Face makeup for Aneesa
17th January 2011- planning
18th January 2011- planning
20th January 2011- planning
24th January 2011- planning
25th January 2011- Story board draft
27th January 2011- planning
31st January 2011- Story board final
1st February 2011- Looking at locations - graveyard
3rd February 2011- practice filming in graveyard
7th February 2011- Practice filming in toilets
8th February 2011- Film church scene
10th February 2011- Film graveyard scene
14th February 2011- Film more of graveyard scene
15th February 2011- Film scene in toilets with Sanya
17th February 2011- Film scene in toilets with Sanya and Aneesa
18th-28th February- holidays
1st March 2011- Filmed scene in Aneesas garden with brother.
3rd March 2011- Filmed more of the garden scene.
7th March 2011- Made opening titles.
10th March 2011- Continue making opening titles.
14th March till 18th April 2011- Editing
19th – 21st April- Adding music to the opening sequence.

Thursday, 14 April 2011

Task 7,8

Task 7- Role allocation;

There was three participants in our filming and production we all played different roles in our film. The director was Sobia Umar. We all helped in with parts of the filming, parts that some of us couldn’t do properly we would get the other team mate to help to get the filming right.
Again as a group we all had an open discussion about what was happening in the scene therefore we all put ideas together to form our opening sequence, however there wasn’t a writer because we had no verbal discussions in our scene, and therefore we neither needed a script to write.

Task 8- Casting

Aneesa Raiz – Was the young girl who gets killed at the start. Props that were used were items like a balaclava to cover the man’s face (Aneesa’s brother) and items that would hide his identity. Aneesa was also the ghost who came back to haunt the other girl in the scene (Sanya)
Used special make up to get the ghostly effects on Aneesa’s face, to make her look more scary and real.

Sanya Hussain- Was the young girl who was getting haunted by Aneesa. Used make up for blood on mirror and her face, not many props were used for her parts. She wore casual clothing to show she was young and trendy.

Task 3- Uk Film Council Research

Uk film council: Popularity of the horror genre I used for my opening sequence
Films released in the UK and Republic of Ireland by genre, 2009, ranked by gross box office there was 35 numbers of releases. 7.0% of all releases, 66.7 Gross box office releases (millions) , and 5.9% of total box office. The top performing title for my genre was Final Destination.
Films released in the UK and Republic of Ireland by genre, 2009, ranked by average widest point of release was for horror genre 158, there was 35 number of horror releases in 2009, and 66.7 Gross box office (million)
Films released in the UK and Republic of Ireland by genre, 2009, ranked by average box office gross per site for the horror genre was 12,052 per site (£) again 66.7 Gross box office releases (£ million) and 5535 total sites.
Compared to the horror genre, thriller and rom-coms haven’t made more releases than horror and the performance wasn’t as good as the horror genre. Shown on http://sy10.ukfilmcouncil.ry.com/4.1.1.1.asp. However thriller and rom-coms have more Films released in the UK and Republic of Ireland by genre, 2009, ranked by average box office gross per site. For thriller there was 16,173 average box office per site releases (£) and for rom-coms there was 22,647 releases, much higher than thriller and horror. However horror had more total sites.

Narrative conventions of;

Horror; horror films are designed to frighten and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films feature a wide range of styles, from the earliest silent Nosferatu classic, to today's CGI monsters and deranged humans. They are often combined with science fiction when the menace or monster is related to a corruption of technology, or when Earth is threatened by aliens. The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not usually synonymous with the horror genre. There are many sub-genres of horror: slasher, teen terror, serial killers, satanic, Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. See this site's Scariest Film Moments and Scenes collection - illustrated.

Romantic; A sub-genre for the most part, this category shares some features with romantic dramas, romantic comedies, and sexual films. These are love stories, or affairs of the heart that center on passion, emotion, and the romantic, affectionate involvement of the main characters (usually a leading man and lady), and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story the main plot focus. See Greatest and Most Memorable Film Kissing Scenes.

Thriller; Thrillers are often hybrids with other genres - there are action-thrillers, crime-caper thrillers, western-thrillers, film-noir thrillers, even romantic comedy-thrillers. Another closely-related genre is the horror film genre. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations. They are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. The acclaimed Master of Suspense is Alfred Hitchcock. Spy films may be considered a type of thriller/suspense film.

Saturday, 2 April 2011

Notting hill (opening scene)


Notting Hill is a 1999 British romantic comedy film set in Notting Hill, London, released on 21 May 1999.
The screenplay was by Richard Curtis, who had written Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Produced by: Duncan Kenworthy

Directed by: Roger Michell.

Film stars; Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Rhys Ifans, Emma Chambers, Tim McInnerny, Gina McKee and Hugh Bonneville.

The scene unfolds to show the scene set in a market, where there is fruit and vegetables being sold as well as clothes and other items. There is a close up of all these different people buying things, in the background you can see the camera horizontally tracking Hugh Grant walking through this market. There are mostly middle class people there, this is shown through how people are dressed casually and are shopping at a market. Upper class people would be shopping in malls. Moving on the day is very sunny and bright, Hugh Grant is happy and cheerful, and seems very pleasant making conversations with other people.
The music is very soft, calm and romantic; this might imply that Hugh Grant is in love. The music also talks about the weather this is significant to this scene because of the different weather change shown from a sunny day too rain then snow.
The camera horizontal tracks Hugh Grant through the whole scene, he is dressed very smartly implying that he might have a status or might be walking home from work. In this scene there is a majority of Caucasians, and black people and not much of other ethnicities.
When it’s sunny, It signifies happiness, and when it is dull, rainy and snowy it shows how Hugh Grant is feeling down and sad, shown by the emotions on his face. At the end of the scene when the sun comes back it shows he is happy again, implied by the smile on his face.