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

I have learnt a lot in the progression from my preliminary task, to the main film product, & these videos show that. I'm going to explain how I have improved the titles, music, transitions & locations from the preliminary task to the main task and what I have learned in the progression from the preliminary task to the main opening...

                                 

   Preliminary Task - 'The Deal'                                               

Main Film Opening - 'Loanshark'

Titles...

We have definitely improved on our titles from our preliminary task, to our main film task. We chose a plain simple font, which did not match the genre, this time round, we chose a font which looked a lot more interesting, and really matched the genre of our film opening.

The colours were also very bland, we chose black, and had the text over black & white moving images. We changed that, and instead went for a metal coloured title, with a black background. We thought, after we had done the preliminary task, that the audience may not be able to see the text clearly, and we had to change the colour, so it was easily visible. This made it seem inconsistent, so we decided for our main opening, to go with a black background so it's easily visible & it looks a lot better than before.

Transitions...

We chose to use the same transitions used in our preliminary task. We thought they looked good before, and we also used colour fades, they allowed us to easily transition between text clip and moving image, without looking too odd, or digital. We kept the transitions the same length, and learned that certain transitions can signify the meaning of a scene, for example flash back transitions. We didn't use digital transitions as we knew most films nowadays don't use digital transitions, they use cross cutting, fades and super imposing to go from one shot to the next. 

These clips show the same transition we used, in this case we used cut to go between one shot to the next shot, in both the preliminary task and the actual opening. We thought that this looked really effective and wanted to use it in the actual task. I think we did it a lot better in the actual shot than we did in the preliminary task. 

Music...

In the preliminary task, we used music from YouTube, and credited the artist in the credits, we had to look hard to find music which we thought would really fit. We ended up going with a dramatic piece of music, it did fit in with the genre and what was going on on-screen. When it came to getting music for our main task, we decided to enlist the help of some sixth form music students to help create our music. We told them we wanted something dramatic, but using guitars, drum & base, and some sad piano music. When we got the finished pieces of music we were amazed at how good they sounded. I think the music we used in our preliminary task wasn't as good as the music we used in our main task, and the music we used in our main task was fitted a lot better with the genre, than the music in our preliminary task.

I also learned that sometimes you have to edit music with another editing software before placing it on your film. In the preliminary task there were periods of silence, and the cutting of music was awful as I couldn't fade out the music, and I didn't know I could use audacity at the time. When editing the main opening, I realised that I had to edit the music first before I could use it, therefore I was able to include fades in and fades out, and there weren't long periods of silence instead. 

Locations...

We were restricted in where we could shoot, we decided it would be easier filming in school, as we were all busy outside of school, we managed to make some areas look quite convincing, such as the kitchen scene, which was actually shot in our common room, and the field shot, which was shot on out school field. I think we chose our locations a lot more carefully this time compared to our preliminary task, as in some scenes, it still looked like a classroom, rather than a meeting room. However, when I got the feedback, I noticed that some said that a variety of locations could have been better, so in future, we may think about filming outside of school.

Overall I think I have learned a lot & improved from the progression from the preliminary task, to the main task. My editing skills have definitely improved, so has my camera skills, I definitely have improved the planning, and thinking about what location would be good, how to set out a shot, what to include, how to layer the titles, and have improved my teamwork skills. My analysis skills have improved, and since doing media, I have learned to look at the small things when watching films and TV shows, I notice the different shots, the continuity, music, transitions, titles etc. and has really opened my eyes and made me think more about the production of films and TV shows.

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

I decided to create a video, explaining how all of the technologies I have used have worked together to create our film opening sequence. The programs I have used are Google, YouTube, Serif MoviePlus, Audacity, a video-camera, & outlook (so I could share any videos, information etc with the other members of the group).

Evaluation - Audience Feedback & Comment...

For this question we decided to interview a group of boys, aged from 16 to 19, about our film opening. We asked them about the editing, shots, what they liked, and what could be improved. I also interviewed my mum, to get a varied response from young males to women aged 40+. Overall the feedback was good, they liked our editing, choice of shots, music, dialogue/drama, and thought that the sound assets could have been improved, more variety in locations, improving sound quality, choice of camera and lighting.

Here is feedback from my parent:

 What did you like about our film?
It was good. It was a good  first performance. The titles were good, and the way you did them was very effective.

What did you think about the editing?
I thought that the transitions were effective, the cuts were good.

What did you think about the shots?
There was a good variety of shots, depicted the scenes very well, was able to see clearly, no blurry shots, good camera control.

What could be improved?
Maybe changing the gun, and how he came out holding it, but apart from that everything was good.                           

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

This is how our film would be distributed. I discussed whether it's independent or mainstream, marketing, cinemas it would be shown in, & media promotion...

Evaluation Question - Who would be the target audience for your media product?

I decided to do a montage of photos showing what my target audience would have in their bag. Because our target audience is men, aged between 14-35, I had to guess as I'm not a man! I did some research, and chose items which I think would be in our target audience's bag. I have also done a wordle for a little lifestyle summary as well.

As I said, I decided to write up the lifestyle summary of a member of our target audience as a Wordle, I thought it was different, and creative. It goes as follows;

'Tom, seventeen, aspiring college student, loves going to the cinema with his friends, loves grunge/rock music, plays the guitar, loves action/thriller/horror movies, hates doing homework, doesn't like doing chores, can be quite lazy, shops at River Island, Topman, trendy, wants to be in a band.' 

Evaluation Question - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

'Loanshark' Main Character Vs. 'Taken' Main Character & 'Mission Impossible' Main Character...

Our film represents particular media social groups through character. I'm going to be comparing our main character with the same character role from another mainstream film. 

Because of the lack of opportunity to search for, and hold auditions for our main character, we decided to use a student from our sixth form, however because most students have different timetables, and other commitments, we went with Graham, as he was the best choice to go with. He looked the part, and looked exactly how we wanted our main character to look. Our target audience are males aged between 14-35, so Graham was the perfect choice being young and average looking.


Most action films tend to typecast their main characters, so for example Daniel Craig being cast as James Bond as he dashing, strong, Liam Neeson being cast as Bryan Mills in 'Taken' as he is strong and has experience in action films, and Tom Cruise being cast as Ethan Hunt in 'Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol' as he has had experience in action films, looks dashing & is strong etc. 

So we decided to make Graham's character look average, and more realistic by allowing him to have a family, having financial problems, and wearing casual clothing. Compared to Liam Neeson's character (opposite), he doesn't look as if he would be the type to go against hardcore criminals. This was our goal. We wanted his character to be able to be related to by the audience, we wanted them to be able to sympathise with his character, and want to watch to see how he copes and whether or not he succeeds. This is what most people can relate to, seeing people who are exactly like them, being able to succeed in the unlikeliest situations because that's what they want to do.


Finally, because he is a average, fairly poor man, he doesn't have all the fancy gadgets like Tom Cruise's character in 'Mission Possible' does. This means that he has to this on his own, with just a gun and his bear skills. This makes it that little bit more realistic, and more relatable with the audience. 

Therefore, our main character represents the average man, aged between 20-30, so our target audience can relate to him, and that he can show that main characters in action movies don't have to be buff, good looking & experienced characters, and can show that just because you are not skilled, doesn't mean you can't do anything,  and that anything is possible when you put your mind to it.

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

In order to explain how my media product uses, develops or challenges forms and conventions of real media products, I have decided to compare 9 shots from a title sequence of a thriller/horror opening, with 9 stills from my own title sequence. 

Max Payne...

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/max-payne 

Loanshark...

 Both use similar font colours - metallic, on dark backgrounds, however, ours challenges the conventions, by using transitions not commonly used in film openings in this genre, they typically use either fades, or cuts, like the ones used in the film opening of Max Payne, shown above. Fonts are different, Max Payne film opening uses more of a bold, metal looking font, our's is more slick, less action based, more thriller. 

Most of the openings I have seen - James Bond, Max Payne, The Dark Knight Rises - all start off with a animation opening, instead of having credits in between action like ours does. We decided to challenge the convention of having credits after an action sequence, and not having an animation,as we liked the idea of have an action sequence with credits as it didn't take away from the action like the James Bond opening can do, as it's very long, colourful and abstract, and we didn't want our          

audience to become bored.      

Music wise we kept to the common convention of our genre and used instruments typically used in  music in Action films. The music in the opening of Max Payne uses drums and guitars, it's similar to what we used, we didn't want to challenge this too much, and we developed the convention to suit our film. We didn't want the full on drum & base, loud action music that we typically hear in a action film, we wanted a drum & base with guitar, something that is not too over the top, but fits in well with the film & genre.

Both openings show the gun, which is the main point of the film, what the genre is centred around. In Max Payne, there is an animated gun which spins round, with the titles swirling around, in our opening, we see our main character lifting the gun, about to fire it, with the credits coming after it. Most films use this in their openings, as guns and other weapons are a symbol of action/thriller films, for example, in the opening for the movie Skyfall, there is a shot where you see a shadow of a man,  holding a gun, and James Bond is centred around guns, cars and other weapons. It allows us to present the genre to the audience, and to see what could happen.

Unlike most action/thriller films, we decided to put our film title at the end. The title of Max Payne is in the middle of the sequence, before the actors names come up. We decided against that, however, most films within our genre tend to put the actors names first then the crew members names, the film Max Payne does this differently, they put the crew members names first, then the actors. We decided to do it following the convention of most films, having the actors names first, then the crew members - Director, Writer, Music Producers etc. We decided to use this convention rather than challenge it, as it made sense when we were editing it. 

                                                                                                             

Finally, we kept to the stereotypical storyline, our film is very similar to 'Max Payne' in the sense that he has a goal, to kill the enemy. Every action film has a goal that the main character sets him or her self,  our film is no different in this respect. However we have tried to portray this typical storyline in other ways, and not copy other action/thriller films with a similar story line.

Loanshark - Finished Video...

Here is the finished video. We have applied all the necessary improvements to our opening, taken on board what others have said. We added a colour fade in the beginning, re shot the gun scenes, made it look a lot less fake, and more believable, added the edited music in the end, and shortened some shots. Overall we are pleased with finished results, and now I'm going to start writing up the evaluation of the progression of the production of our product.

Completed Opening & Reviews...

We have now completely finished the video, and we are no starting the evaluation. This is our finished piece:

After watching the finished video, we got some reviews from the other group. We found that some shots needed to be re-shot and cropped to hide the prop, we found that the titles and the music were effective, however we thought that the ending music did not sound right, so decided to edit the music. The Mise-en-Scene was effective, but some of the camera handling was not perfect, but was slight effective. It was appropriate for the task and audience, and was evidence of proficiency in the creative use of many of the technical skills. We have applied all the edits to the film opening, the opening in this post was shown to the group before the edits were added. 

We have listened to the criteria given to us, and we have tried to apply the improvements to make the opening the best as we can get it. We are pleased with the results, and have worked so hard with great results.

Titles...

These are our titles for our opening. We decided to go for a black background, with a graduated silver colour, and a sci-fi style font (as shown in a previous post) We also used colour fades to transition into one shot to the next, to make it look smooth and professional. We used a fly animation for the text, again to give it that professional look. This is the order the titles with go in:

A Three Lions Ltd Production

A Marnie Senior Film

Actors:

Graham Trotter

Sarah Adams

Todd Rae

Ashley Wood

Executive Producers:

Armarnie Senior

Sarah Adams

Filmed By: 

Sarah Adams

Screenplay & Costume Designer:

Graham Trotter

Music Producers:

Kenny Nettlingham

Jamie Carter

Zak Riley

Ms. Stretton

Deadlines...

Rough edit with music - Tuesday 12th March

Blogs are up to date for assessment - Friday 8th March

Final edit of opening sequence - Friday 22nd March

Fonts & Colours for Our Opening Credits...

Now that we have finished filming, we are now starting the editing process. Firstly we started by decided on a font and colour for the titles. We looked at different fonts, and played around with different colours until we created a look which we thought fitted well with our film's genre and our actual film...

This font we looked at, shown above, wasn't right we felt. We thought it was too sci-fi, rather than action like. The colour was too light and airy, and needed to be darker. We looked at lots of different fonts, similar to this and played around with the colours until we found the font and colour we liked.

We then found this font, we liked the style of it as it looked like a font which would fit in an action movie. It wasn't too over the top, and you can still read what the text says. We then added colour, we decided to stick with the metallic grey colour scheme to match with our production company logo, and used a gradient style to create the metallic look. We also decided to stick with the black background as it went well with the metallic colour of the font and the logo. 

Music...

For our main music, we decided enlist the help of some A-Level music students. We told them what sort of music we wanted which was a fast, guitar, drum & bass piece for the beginning of the opening, and for the end, a sad but short piano piece. Once we heard the finished pieces, we knew they would definitely work with our shots. We faded the first piece of music out just before the three gunshots, it the goes silent, dialogue then starts, piano music fades in once dialogue ends, and fades out at the end, here are the two pieces of music: 

Guitar/Drum/Base Music...

This is the first piece we wanted. We liked the fact that it was fast, and that you could imagine it playing in a major action film. When we placed on top of the shots, we found that we had to make it slightly longer, but it did match with the shots on screen, and gave it that little boost. It really does create that mysterious impact, it causes the audience to ask themselves; Who is this person? Where is he going? & What's going to happen? It fits really well with our chosen genre which was Action/Thriller, and we are really pleased with the results.

Piano Music...

This is the second piece we wanted. When we first heard it, we thought it sounded okay, but after a few listens, we then thought maybe it didn't sound quite right. We thought that we should put it in the opening, and then see what it sounds and looks like. I think it sounds okay, it sort of matches the shots and what's going on, but it's a group decision and we will see whether or not we should keep it or change it. I have shown the first finished edit with the music to a family member, and they think it suits the scenes, they were happy with it, but we shall see. It's not happy, but it's not too depressing either.

Filming...

Now that our prep work is finished, and we now know how it's going to look, we have decided to start filming. For one of our scenes, we needed a kitchen setting, so what we did was we used our Common Room, but used to sink and cupboards, we kept them in shot, but not the rest of the room. We moved a table and two chairs in front of the cupboards, and thus creating a simple kitchen scene. The rest of the shots were easy to film, and did not require too much adjusting in the setting aspect. 

We have a few more shots to film, we need to work out how we are going to do it, seeing as we need a child to feature in the scene. We may have to ask the younger years, possibly a drama group. Apart from that shot, all the others have been quite easy to film. Now we need to think about the editing...

Final Evaluation Question - Preliminary Task

What areas will you need to improve when working on your main project?
I think one area I may need to improve is my analysis. I can edit quite well, I find filming pretty easy, and I work well within the group. So apart from these areas, the only thing that I can think of is my analysis and evaluation, and probably my research skills. These will be easy to improve on as I do both in the exam part of the course as well as within my blog. I will have to use the right terminology, be specific in  my research, and evaluate well.

Evaluation Questions - Preliminary Task...

How did your target audience react to your finished piece?
They were very happy with our finished piece. They liked our choice of shots for each scene, they thought that our sound effects, such as the bell chime were quite effective, they also liked our choice of transitions, the fades, and the cutting. Finally they all thought that our 180 degree rule was very effective, and done well within the final piece.

What ideas/skills will you take from this to your main project?
There are a few ideas and skills that we have decided to use in our final piece. We thought that making certain parts of our preliminary task black & white was very effective, and have decided to use that in our main film. We may stick to the same transitions used, such as the fades and the cutting, we don't want complicated transitions. We are also going to take the idea of showing the main character getting ready and incorporate it into our main project as we thought it went well with our chosen genre and idea for our opening.

Opening Titles Research...

For our final piece of research we had to look at opening titles, we looked at the font, colours used and whether or not they start before, after or during the opening. We each looked at films within our genre, these films are; 'The Batman Rises', 'Skyfall', 'Goodfellas' and 'The Expendables'.

The Dark Knight Rises:

Black & White

Dark

Metallic

Digital animation

Image manipulation

Red font

Sans Serif

Appear before action starts

Skyfall:

White font

Colourful background

Fades in, fades out

Medium size

Capital Letters

Appears after action has happened

Goodfellas:

Quick animation

Black & White

Sans Serif

Normal/medium size

Capital letters and lower case letters

Red title

Black background

Credits start after action

The Expendables:

War type font

White

Fades in, fades out

Small

In corner of screen 

credits are shown during action

Diegetic & Non-Diegetic Sound...

Diegetic sound is sound which is sound which comes from a source within the scene and can be heard by both audience and characters, for example T.V playing, dialogue between characters, phone ringing, footsteps etc. Non-Diegetic sound is sound which has no source within the scene, the audience can hear it, but the characters cannot. Diegetic & Non-Diegetic sound can be used in many ways, some of which are shown in these two clips;

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/283936/L-A-Confidential-Movie-Clip-Open-Hush-Hush.html#

This is the opening of LA Confidential. Diegetic sound is used in the end of the clip, as it starts off with non-diegetic sound, the voice over and the music. The effect of this is to introduce the film, the plot, the era etc. It then turns into Diegetic sound as we hear the type writer sounds, and we see who is talking. This is an effective technique as it allows the audience to be introduced to a key character straight off, and are introduced to other key characters within the film opening.

The second film opening is similar to that of LA Confidential in that it starts off as non - diegetic sound, for example the creepy music playing while the key character moves up the stairs towards the victim, and keeps playing until the victim wakes up. We then hear waves splashing just after the opening credits finish, we are then shown where the characters are, in this case the beach, we then see where the wave sounds came from and the sound becomes diegetic. The effect of this is to create not only tension, but suspense. We don't know where the characters are in the beginning, but the audience can tell, from the music that something bad is going to happen. We are also introduced to key characters, through not only dialogue but who we also saw on the screen.

Risk Assessment...

Three Lions Productions

Risk Assessment for the production of 'Loan Shark'

Measurement of Risk:

1. A scratch or a cut

2. An illness or injury that lasts up to three days

3. Broken bone

4. Amputation

5. Death

Risk Assessment:

Hazard	Those at Risk	Existing control measures	Evaluate the Risk	Improvement on control measures	Measurement of Risk
Low levels of light	The whole film           crew	Lampposts and classroom lights	The main risk here is the fact the someone might not see something and then trip over/bump into it	An improvement on the safety control measures would be for everyone to have a torch or that all filming is done during the day	The most that this risk could give someone is a level 3 injury as someone could trip over something.
The equipment being used	The whole film crew	All wires are out of the     way were no one can trip over them	The main risk here is that someone trips over the tripod	An improvement could be that everyone gets a briefing over the equipment being used and how to act around it	The measurement of risk would again be a level 3 as someone could fall over and fracture their arm on the equipment
The Cold	The whole film crew	Make sure everyone is kept warm	The main risk is that someone gets ill	Make sure everyone has their coats and is wearing something warm	The most extreme circumstance would be someone gets frost bite and has to have an amputation but, realistically the main risk is that someone gets a cold so a level 3.

Script...

This is the basic script for our film opening, we kept the dialogue short as we only have about 2 minutes.

Loan Shark

By

Three LionsProductions

Script

Characters:

Graham Trotter is Owen Grey

Sarah Adams is Sarah Grey

Owen: These figures don’t add up

Sarah: What do you mean, they don’t add up?

Owen: They say that we are £100 short and still owe quite abit of rent and that our bills aren’t getting paid.

(Sarah Panicking)

Sarah: Well then what we going to do about it?

Owen: We’regoing to have to take out another loan to pay the rent as the landlord saysthat he can’t wait anymore as he also has bills to pay.

(Sarah Shouts)

Sarah: No! Not another loan. The bank won’t allow it

(Owen desperatelysays)

Owen: But there’s no work in the country at the moment, soit looks like there’s no other choice

(Sarah says angrily)

Sarah: For Christ sake just sort it out or you're on your own.

(Sarah Storms outleaving Owen sitting there with his head in his hands)

Evaluation Questions - Preliminary Task...

3. How did your research into film openings and genres help you?
Research into film openings helped us realise how much goes into a 2 minute opening. It also helped us understand how different shots are used within different genres, for example within action films, there will generally be more camera movements such as panning & using a crane, in comparison to a romantic comedy, with has slightly more camera shots such as close ups to see the characters emotions. This helped us decide what genre we wanted focus on, and helped us picture what it would look like, and how we were going to plan and film it.

4. Who are your target audience and why?
We decided to do something within the genre of Action. Therefore we did research into the typical audience of action/thriller movies. We found that males where the typical gender which action/thriller movies appeal to, we also found that the age range was between 14 years to 24 years. We then decided to go with this as our basis for our target audience.

Evaluation Questions - Preliminary Task...

These are the first lot of questions for the evaluation of my preliminary task...


1. What did you find easy when working on your preliminary task?
I found editing to be the most easiest to do while working on my preliminary task, purely because you can edit most of the mistakes out, you can change things, undo what you removed or have added and it's just easier than filming the whole thing. Also, the whole can decide on what looks good so you know if you have done it right. Also, filming was pretty easy, however there were times where I may have accidentally forgotten to not laugh while filming and having my voice caught in certain clips!

2. What was the most difficult part when you were working on your preliminary task?
I don't know what was the most difficult part while working on my preliminary task. I guess storyboarding and planning was the most difficult as we didn't know what to base our practice task on. Filming was a little difficult as we had to find areas where there wasn't much 'traffic' like teachers or students walking past. But other than that, it seemed quite easy to make.

Filming Schedule...

This is the finalised shooting schedule for our film, we have managed to organise the filming within three weeks including half term.  We have also done the risk assessment, and are now getting ready to start filming.

Main Storyboard...

Once we got all of our main ideas sorted, we then went onto storyboarding our film opening. We did this using post it notes, this was so that if we didn't like where a certain shot was, or if we wanted to add or remove a shot we could easily. We then glued them down once we were happy with the final choice of shots...

Shot 1:

Wide shot of town.

Shot 2:

Wide shot & Pan.

Shot 3:

Pan & wide shot of main character's room.

Shot 4:

Close up & tilt of main character getting ready. (Starts with feet)

 Shot 5:
 Close up & tilt. (Moves up to belt)

Shot 6:
Close up & tilt. (Shows gun in belt)

Shot 7:
Close up & tilt. (Jacket being put on)

Shot 8:
Close up & tracking shot of feet walking down the stairs.

Shot 9:
Medium shot from behind. (Opens door, walks out)

Shot 10:
Master shot. (Main character meets loan sharks) Location also shown.

Shot 11:
Big close up of the gun as he is about to shoot, low angle.

Shot 12:
Sound of gun being shot, flash back.

Shot 13:
Arm is raised with gun in hand. Over the shoulder shot.

Shot 14:
Gun shot & flash back, happy memory, two shot. (Main Character & Wife laughing)

Shot 15:
Another flashback, big close up of hands held, couple walk away from camera, tilts upwards to show back of their heads.




shot 16:
Wide shot of house. ('6 months ago')

 Shot 17:
Dialogue, two shot, cut's between them.

Shot 18:
Over the shoulder shot of wife and kid(s) walking out the door.

Shot 19:
Main character looking out of window, high angle and over the shoulder shot.