Main Post 12.7 Question 7

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

I feel that I have made massive progress since my preliminary task. I have developed a strong confidence and under stance in the media world. I have always learnt new skills and developed my prior skills. When comparing the two together our prelim was very boring with not many shots used and a dull story. However in our main task we used lots of different shots. As a group we learnt from the preliminary task that we can show a lot of emotion through close up shots. So we added in lots of them into our Carlson section.

One thing I am very happy is with our editing and our spilt screen effect as it was one of the ideas I threw out in our group meeting. This was influenced from the hit show 24. It’s fitted in very well with the conventions of a thriller as it kept a fast paced story line going throughout. We experimented with a lot of different ideas to keep up the pace and stick to the thriller genre. Secondly I feel that in our preliminary task did not target an audience nor did it stick out in a crowd, in hind sight we used that knowledge and used it for inspiration into our main task, and we highlighted our audience early on in the process and made our opening stick out very effectivly.

Secondly I developed more confidence into my main production as I knew more about different shots, I also was not worried about continuity as I was in my preliminary task. I was not worried because it became like a second nature and I just knew subconsciously when and when not to remove things out of shot.
Overall I am happy with my main task however I was not happy with my preliminary task which shows I have developed through out the year and developed my knowledge in media

Main post 12.6 Question 6

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

 Camcorder/Flip Cam - We used  UltraHD  flip video camcorder to record all of our opening sequence, I use this camcorder at home to upload videos onto you tube as a hobby, however it was experience in filming on a different type of media to as what I do at home.

 Google –  I used Google to find all my images. Google is an everyday part of my life therefore again I did not learn anything new about it however it was very helpful, when looking for my research.

You Tube – I used you tube to undergo research into other thriller films and there opening sequences, further more our final edit has been uploaded onto you tube. As link in a previous post.

Computer – the computer was the most vital piece to this course. As everything we have done is threw the computer. Whether it was editing or Blogger, or just research. The computer is the same as Google in that it is a part of everyday life so I was very comfortable in using it.

Scanner – I have never used a scanner before so again I learnt a lot, but with most things the technology is very easy to use and I picked up how to upload my hand written drawing onto a computer very easily.

Adobe Premier – this was the software we used to edit. I have prior knowledge of Sony Vegas so using adobe was a new experience. However it came to me fairly easy and it was not to much different. So the editing phase went very smoothly

Blogger -   I have never used Blogger before so it took some time to get used to. When I final got used to it the whole interface changed again. Which was annoying however I am up to date with it now and now how to create and post Blogger very easily.

Main Post 12.5 Question 5

Post title - How did you attract/address your audience?
Our unique selling points was a character  such as Carlson that an audience can feel closer to. every boy in there life have wanted a life style of money,cars and gadgets such as a MI6 agent, we tried to tone this down with Carlson as we want to let the audience relate with Carlson.  
we also set up our opening with a lot of mystery  around the story, which will hopefully led the audience wanted more, furthermore the load burst of non-Dietetic music which sets the pace perfectly. we tried to build up mise-en-scene as a clever selling point for the film as well, as we have Carlson very well dressed compared to the thugs/ terrorist, Carlson will be able to relate with the audience in his appearance as his clothes are  very modern, also having the actor who played Carlson being young will attract a much younger audience to the film as well/

Main post 12.4 Question 4

Post title - Who would be the audience for your media product

Ideally we want our audience to be fragmented so we can reach the maximum audience, while still staying within the conventions of a thriller. The harder audience we found was the women side. We reached out to them by using the love story between Carlson and the struggle to find his daughter. However the dominance of the audience will be males, as it throws our audience threw an adrenalin fuelled rollercoaster. With the male dominance we expect our film to do well in the box office however the film may be damaged by the lack of women dominance. However out film can be successful threw a dating subculture. As our film is targeted at teenagers. Which statistic we can see that mostly only people between 16 and 24 go to the cinema, and threw that age teenage go to dates and socialize a lot more.

Young male teenagers tend to be into gaming as well, which well feeds into our high adrenaline thriller. Modern day gamers just as Call of Duty and Battlefield send the gamer on a massive thrill ride. Which we emulate in our film so we will appeal to the gamer audience. If our film went into production we would also market it our film threw social networking such as twitter and Face Book. As we develop in technology our generation follows social networking like a second child and it is a great why to connect to the younger audience

To conclude our film is target at the male audience however we want to use the males to pull in the women audience. However we want to dominate threw the male side

Main post 12.3 Question 3

Post Title - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why

if this film would be distributed  I would present this film  to Sony Pictures Entertainment as it incorporates itself with Columbia Pictures and tri star pictures.  Each being massive movie companies. Secondly Sony is a self distributor meaning it would fund the company to make sure the film gets global coverage.  Furthermore Sony has not made many thriller moves, however they have made massive global hits such as Spider man and the karate kid. As a result I would want our film to be a leading thriller under the Sony label.

Sony would only take this film innless it was a massive hit so I would have to approach Destination films with deals with the smaller “B” movies or movies that are followed to a specific niche audience. As a British film the funding to the movie would not be massive making it hard to make a big blockbuster. So we will have to go after big conglomerate such as Sony.

Furthermore Sony could go and market to the gamer audience threw Sony play station. Which would be one of our original target audience, the high adrenaline fuelled ride, which would harness more money for Sony threw cross conversion. However realistically I would have to go to open movie nights and hope my film gets picked up my distributor, as I have no credentials in the media world.

The only way our film will get distributed by Sony entertainment is if, we had a lot of funding or if our film was expertly good. With a main goal of being distributed by Sony entertainment, Destination films or even FEARnet, which specialises in horror and thriller films.

FEARnet are co-owners of the giant company Lions gate which have made films such as SAW, which shocked the world with its story line and ended up making 6 more films in its franchise, which we aim to be like for sony entertainment

Main Post 12.2 Question 2

Post Title - How does your media product represent particular social groups

When we came around to dressing our characters we wanted to take a risk and make Carlson look fairly normal and break away from the conventions of thriller of the spy dressed in a tuxedo and tie such as James bond, however we still wanted them to stay fairly well dressed but more everyday, We done this by making sure Carlson was wearing a tie and a smart shirt, in one shot we even see him doing up his tie.

Our spy agent looked similar to already existing spy/agents but we put our own twist on it so it still would appeal same target audience being mostly teenage males. 

As for the terrorist, in our opening who we see is not actually one of the main terrorists use thugs who are used to do other peoples business. However dressing those up was a lot easier then Carlson. Our thugs where dressed in black clothing with hoodies and one man wears a balaclava. Around the set we had guns and magazines to suit the thugs which added to there costume. The thugs we wanted to keep fairly more stereotypical. To make Carlson stand out more as a different character

Main Post 12.1- Question 1

Post Title- in what way does your media product use , develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products

In this video we made a commterary of what we think went well in our production.

We talked about what went well and what did not go so well, also what we learnt and how we could generate a better film 

http://youtu.be/UuzDH7aYoEs

Post 11 Final Opening Sequence

http://youtu.be/yUhyqbyCt1M

Post 10 : Post-Production

Once the process of filming had been done all we had to do was edit. The software we used was adobe premier, which I have never used before as I have Sony Vegas on my computer. However the process was fairly similar. Our first stage was to capture the footage off the camera and put it onto one of the editing computers. This was very problematic and the wires in our school where very old and where breaking very easily, secondly the computers we were using where very old therefore slow which made the whole process very long and stressful.  As a result as a group we chose to go against using a logging rush to capture our footage off the camera. Instead we just filmed all the footage on camera, therefore giving us a lot to play around with when it came to editing, as we wanted out opening titles to stick out we had to be very clever in how we edited.

Secondly we had to spilt our footage into individual shots so we could have a linear approach, also so we made sure we got the pacing right. This is where it the software differs from mine at home, to do this I had to use the razor tool and spilt them into two different channels. As a result this means if I placed a shot over other shot it would not cut one another down.

The next challenge we faced was creating the 24 styled split effect. To get this effect Hugo layered the footage of the selected the right footage. From there we needed to set the right speed for both the shots. So we slowed the motion down 50% and we repeated this step in the other corner. The other two corners we fitted in text boxes which fitted in very well as they where very easy to put in yet very effective.

The only major problem we encounter as a group as the lighting in the garage, however not a problem in editing but filming. And editing covered up the bad location. The lighting in the garage was very dark and could hardly see the actors in certain shots, which pulled down the quality of the whole video. To change the brightness was very straight forward, we just went into effects and change a few numbers and before we knew it the video was looking crisp once again. If we where to do this task again we would have taken artificial lighting or  a reflector to get more natural light in the garage which would make the editing process a much easier process.
 After that all that was left was to process and render the file so we could make an AVI file so we could put in on You Tube, so overall the process was very problem free.

Post 9 Production

Our filming as whole went very well as the people we picked to act our scenes realised what this was for. Consequently meaning we did not need to retake hardly at all. Apart from a few scenes a gun was dropped but nothing to problematic

To start our production we decided to film the fairly easier scenes of Carlson leaving for work. The first problem we encountered was that whilst filming Carlson in the mirror the camera and tripod kept on sneaking into shot. So we had to be clever about how the camera man positioned himself around the room. Secondly the Suitcase we where meant to use went missing on the day of shooting. As a group we decided that we would just use a fairly bulky laptop case instead, which unfortunately not produces the desired affected as a regular metal briefcase. In hind sight we should have made sure all props where accounted for rather then just presuming someone just had a briefcase.

We then went onto filming the terrorist scenes with the biggest problem were that was no source of power; therefore we could use lighting other then natural resource. Most of the shots where okay as we filmed towards the mouth of the garage however a few shots had to be at the back of the garage and it was very dark towards the back, however we lighted up our shots threw editing, therefore giving our video a more user friendly feel with a good video quality.

Secondly as we approached our scripted part it turns out that we had lost our script.
 This meant that we weren't able to shoot the dialogue scenes that day and we had to wrap filming for the day with was a pain as we wanted to get filming done quick as possible so we could start we the editing process.  A week had passed and we organised the same location and actors with the new script, However this time the van we had before had broken down earlier in the week and we had no other way of getting a van. We again we had to modify our script and leave out the last few scenes of our story board, however the shots still connected very well with out damaging our mise-en-scene.
 To conclude I feel our filming good have gone better, we should have been more organised and prepared to film. When we started filming we flew threw it all. A lot of the problems we had where not to major and we dealt with them very well to leave us with a good quality opening to a thriller film