Evaluation Question 7

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





Looking at your preliminary task,what do you feeel you have learnt from the progression from it to the full product? - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Evaluation Question 6

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

Camera 

Even though I was in charge of sound in our group I still gained some knowledge on how to operate a cannon camera when we were filming, as when we were filming, I picked up techniques when Macy would start to film and we used a camera which I had used before because it is my dads but I had only used it to take pictures. The camera was easy to use and made it easy for us to frame our shots and to try and get level 4 shots. 

Tripod 

Going along with the camera although I wasn't strictly in charge of the tripod but after helping set it up a few times I started to get more familiar with using it having never really used one before this year. We were fortunate the Macy could provide the tripod to use which fitted the camera correctly. Using the tripod made it easier for us to film steady shots when Eleanor was cycling through the village. 

Editing 

Jasmine was in charge of editing but once again like with the camera you all pick up the same skill after watching and helping each other and editing skills came in handy when I had to edit sound for our piece. When editing both the film and the sound that goes into the film we used the software premier pro. This was a new technique I learnt. 

I feel that my skills have improved vastly since the start of the year when I couldn't edit and hardy work the camera. I think this shows in the improvement from our preliminary too our final piece. 

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience ?

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think that for our film the majority of our target audience would be families based in the United Kingdom. This would be because the film is based in Devon in the South West of England so for some countries abroad it would be of no appeal because they may not understand the regional identity. I think our film is appealing too both me and women. Our film you could compare with the British television programme Broadchurch because they both involve a select part of the country and are both crime dramas. Because of this I feel that our film opening and Broadchurch would have very similar audiences.

We feel that the genre of crime appeals more to older 
teenagers and adults but that having the main character being a young girl will draw a more younger generation. Obviously though the story is sad and may not make huge amounts of sense to an audience that is very young which is why we are catering more towards families with older children. I thought this was a nice broad audience so that we didn't limit ourselves with what we could film. I feel that our film can be appealing too teenagers because of the audience research I did when I asked what people our age thought of drama films. 

I feel that we have suited to our target audience of teenagers and families because we have made our film a modern interpretation of the events that happened, so we feel that this will appeal to a younger audience. However because it is based on a true story set in the 70s it may attract an older generation of audiences who will either of heard about it or are just interested because they were alive when it happened. 

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 ?

Our opening presents two different social groups 
1.Teenagers
2. Middle aged men 

The first social group we are presenting are teenagers. Stereotypically teenagers are seen as lazy and disorganised we have averted that stereotype and have represented the teenagers in our piece as active (as all three are outside) and orgainsed as Genette has a job. Teenagers are given a negative stereotype due to media coverage over small minorities of teenagers and then society thinks this is how all teenagers behave. 




I asked some people what they thought the stereotype of a teenager was these are what they said

Grumpy towards everyone 
Ignores people 
They don't care for others 
Lazy 
They are up to no good 
Sulky 

The second social group is middle aged men. Their stereotype is that they are seen as 

Boring
Grumpy 
Mid life crisis 
Spends all his money 

In films the middle aged man normally plays the dad and he stereotypically will be grumpy but in a crime drama he may play the killer for instance Moriarty in Sherlock and Joe Miller in Broadchurch. We did follow this stereotype with our character because of Robert Black the supposed kidnapper fitting into that category. 

Evaluation Question 1

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

Final Film Opening

This is our final media opening. 

Our Actors

We used four actors for our film opening.

Eleanor Tar ( Genette Tate)















Millie Swales (teenage girl)
















Lissy Moore  (teenage girl)

















Matt Ross ( kidnapper)













We used Millie Lissy and Eleanor because they are about the same age as Genette and the teenage girls and are natural looking and we used Matt because although the kidnapper was a middle-aged man you don't see his face and so we thought that it would be ok to use a 16 year old. I feel like this may be a downfall in our filming but we had no other actors and using Matt helped us when it came to filming because when we needed him to film he was always available and we could all go after school to film.

How Our Film Is Different To Our Animatic

We made a few changes to our film from our original concept one of these being instead of doing a shot of Genette going past the White Horse directly we included it in the background of the shot where Genette picks up the newspapers at the bus stop. We changed this because of where the bus stop was and we didn't want our actress to cycle on the busy main road.

We also changed the last shot at the end which originally was supposed to be of a newspaper with an article of her on it to just a shot of the bike and newspapers with Genette nowhere insight. 

Audience Viewing Habits

I asked students at school what their favourite type of genre was out of the following.

Comedy
Thriller
Chick Flick
Horror
Action
Drama


Male
Comedy           3 people
Thriller             1 person
Rom Com        1 person
Horror              1 person
Action              1 person
Drama             
Sci Fi               1 person

Female
Comedy           2 people 
Thriller             1 person
Rom Com        2 people 
Horror              1 person
Action
Drama
Sci Fi

I also asked what they thought of films with the genre of Drama because are film is a Drama. This is what people said.

"I like them although the genre isn't my favourite I'd still go and watch it."

"They make me very emotional cause of the story lines"

"There are not many films in the category that have grabbed my attention"

"Pretty interesting"

"They are great"

"I enjoy watching it"

"Love it"

"Its good and intriguing"

"I enjoy watching drams if there are good characters you can connect with and lots of twists to the plot."

" I like the genre because its intense but also has good storytelling."

"I haven't seen that many but its looks good"

Our Distributor

We chose for our distributor to use Film4 because they are British digital television channel and we wanted a distributor from the United Kingdom. They have distributed films such as Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire and Four Weddings And A Funeral. All of these films have various genres to them but they all include the genre of drama and this is the genre of our film opening. 

Lighting Workshop

We had a lightning workshop at school that taught us how important lighting is in a film to convey a certain atmosphere or mood. Below is a some lighting techniques.

Low key lighting 
This type of lighting gives a shadowy effect to a scene in a film they are mostly used in horror and drama films. 

High key lighting 
This type of lighting is most commonly used in musicals and comedies emphasises happiness.

Back lighting 
This is the process of illuminating an object or character from behind, this creates a glowing effect. The lighting shown below gives a sense of intensity to the piece.

How To Edit Sound

I watched youtube videos about editing sound to help me when I tried to put sound in on our opening. I found it helpful as it showed me tips on how to edit sound on premier pro, before watching this video there was criticism over the sound in our piece so when I watched this I hoped it would help me when I came to try and fix those problems.

Below is an image of me finding sound for our piece.

Oscar Nomination

The Oscars took place on the 26th February 2017 it was the 89th Academy Awards.

I chose to do for my Oscar nomination the film La La Land. This film won

Best Actress (Emma Stone), 
Best director (Damien Chazelle)
Best original music score (Justin Hurwitz)
Best cinematography ( Linus Sandgren)
Best production design ( David Wasco) 

They were also nominated for many other awards 

Distributed 

Summit Entertainment which is owned by Lionsgate 

Production Companies 

Summit Entertainment 

Black label Media

TIK Films

Impostor Pictures 

Gilbert Films

Marc Platt Productions 

Critical response 

Critics praised its screenplay, direction, performances, musical score and musical score and musical numbers. The film when it was released attracted a lot of media coverage and attention because it was released after the film had won awards at the Golden Globes. 

Audience Research

We asked two of our friends to watch our film opening and to give back their opinions on what they thought of it.


Ella

The use of sound for the kidnapper parts fits well with what is happening.
Need to cut sections of footage out that doesn't flow with the rest.
Add some more transactions between shots 



Eddie

The camera work is good as it is not too shaky
Titles should be on there for longer
Music needs to be more fluid from scene to scene

2nd Rough Cut

This is our 2nd rough cut in this one we have added some titles added the scenes of the kidnapper and have changed the sound for the scenes with Genette in. We did this because of the feedback we got given.

Our Film Title

We wanted our film title to be short and give an element of mystery to what is happening in our film but for it to also clearly link to our film. Before deciding on the idea of Genette we came up with other ideas, these included

Missing
Gone
Vanished
Within Lane
Without a trace

We decided on Genette though after having asked some of our friends for help as to what they thought worked best and we also thought it perfectly suited our film. This is because it was short like we wanted it to be but also provided a bit of an insight into our film because are film is based on Genete Tate's disappearance. It also adds a bit of mystery though cause if you do not know the story of her disappearance you may be intrigued as to what the story is about.

Sound For Our Opening

I am in charge of sound for our opening and I had to download off free websites non diegetic sound for us to use.

We looked at various websites such as 

Freesound.org

www.bensound.com

www.purple-planet.com

We wanted for our film opening to use happier music for when Genette leaves the house this gives the impression that nothing bad will happen but we would then contradict this by putting a low horror sound for the clips of the kidnapper. 

We also needed to get the sound effect of a phone for the scene when it starts to ring. We decided to download it from a website called www.zedge.net

Rough Cut

This is our rough cut. At the moment we have edited all the footage we have filmed, the parts that our black are for clips of the kidnapper but we haven't filmed those scenes yet.

Audience Feedback

In our lesson we asked a few people to watch our opening and to give us feedback on what they thought. 

The strong points of our opening according to feedback was that the sound we added went really well with the scene taking place and that our ident looked really cool. However they did say that we should re film a part of it as our lighting was off compared to the rest and we knew this from having to use a phone when our camera lost charge. 

So after hearing this we know that we need to quicken up the pace of our filming as not everything is filmed yet and re do some filming again to get the lighting perfect. 

Risk Assessment

Before we start filming we have to consider the potential risks that can occur when filming so that none of the actors or crew get hurt. We have decided what potential risks there can be and have listed them below.

Risk - getting hurt by an incoming vehicle 
We must make sure that there is someone on lookout when we film by the main roads and down the narrow lanes for incoming traffic so there is no danger. This could be quite a high risk as if we are not careful and if the cars are coming at speed we my be in trouble, however as long as we keep lookout and are careful on the roads everything should be fine.

Breaking of props - bike
We need to make sure the bike is safe for our actress Eleanor (Genette) to ride so that she doesn't fall off or injure herself. We will just check before we film each scene that everything is ok with the bike and that there is no punctures or anything.

Keep actors safe when they are filming their scenes
For one of our scenes we have two of our actors sat on part of a mini bridge and there is a small risk that they could fall backwards and off it in the water. This is an unlikely risk and the drop isn't high at all but we need to make sure that the actors are not messing around so that there is no injuries.

Breaking of equipment
We need to make sure that we handle our cameras carefully when filming as the consequences of dropping them will delay our schedule and would be very expensive. From preventing this from happening we will make sure the camera is on a tripod when we are taking our shots so it is secure and that when we are walking from scene to scene with the camera we wear the strap around our necks.



    
                                     

Rob Jones Visit

On the 7th February Rob Jones who is a director and photographer and short film maker came in to give a workshop to the class and he watched our film openings and gave feedback. He owns flock 92 productions. 

This is the feedback he gave us

• Good shots of her walking she looks like she is walking towards danger and this adds tension
• Good enigmas
• Good timing of shots
• The transactions needed to be smoother 
• He liked the idea of crosscutting between Genette and the killer.

Our Ident

This was our ident that we used in our rough cuts we took the idea of the millennium and tried to go along the star theme with the background looking a bit like a night sky. 

Costumes For Our Opening

For the character of Genette we want our actor to wear clothes current to this time period as we are setting our film in the present day. We want our actor to wear a hoodie jeans and trainers, these are pretty basic clothes but they give the connotations of a typical teenager and she is doing a paper round so she will not be wearing anything particularly fancy. 







Similarly to Genette for the two other teenage girls we want them to dress in clothes current to the time period but also to be suitable to what they were doing at that present time so for example we are not going to be putting them in high heels cause that would not be suitable. Supposedly at the time of the disappearance the girls were looking for boyfriends. 






For the kidnapper we want him to dress in plain dark clothing giving connotations of mystery because his clothes do not say a lot about him. We just want yet again a simple hoodie and jeans because you would only see the back of him we didn't need anything too fancy.

Ident Ideas

In our group we tried to come up with ideas to use for our company ident. We came up with a few ideas for example

Jem productions (Jasmine, Eleanor and Macy)
Future productions
Visual productions
Zodiac productions
and Millennium productions because we are all born in the year 2000

If we used the idea of Jem productions we came up with the idea of maybe using a diamond as it is a gem and that is a sort of play on words as they sound the same but are spelt differently.

We thought about using stars and constellations when coming up with the zodiac idea and they could maybe spell something out or just be a plain background.

For our idea of Millennium we looked up 2000 in roman numerals and found out that it was MM this is quite a simple design and I think it could become easily recognisable. This picture shows more than just the number 2000 so just look at the middle two letters.

We have decided to go with millennium as our ident. 

Synchronising Sound

We were taught on Tuesday the 10th of January about synchronising sound and how to edit it and use it in a film opening. Synchronising sound is when you record sound so you can play it over what you are filming and it is clear.

We got taught how to use the microphone to record a conversation between two people. Alongside this we got shown how to record the conversation at the same time so then it can be synced  This is useful because we will use this for our film opening.

Sound Workshop

Tom Joyce and A2 media studies student at our school came in to teach us about sound and how we use it when filming. He demonstrated how to use a handheld digital recorder and a long microphone and how combining them with the editing software audacity we can create the sound we desire. 

Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder and it can be used to 
Add sound effects
Record live audio 
Mix sounds together 
As well as other things  


Here are the two pieces of equipment Tom showed us.

location Shots

We went to Within Lane in Aylesbeare to do some filming and take some photos. This is the exact place where Genette Tate went missing.


Using the place where Genette went missing helps with the realism of our opening scene because we can accurately copy the route she took when she went missing.

Taking the photos and finding out the route enables us to decide how we are going to film our opening.







As you can see from the pictures, the environment sets an eerie setting.

This is a signpost for Within Lane. We are going to do a close up shot of this signpost to show where the disappearance taking place.


The road pictured below is the exact location where Genette left her bike. We know this because there is a picture taken from around the time which looks exactly like this photo.

For the scenes with the kidnapper we shot them in my dads office with that supposedly being the kidnappers office. We tried to use low key lightening in their to add to the mystery but we also made the lighting lower when editing.

Sound In Our Opening Scene

My job in our group is to be in charge of the sound so I thought I would research different types of sound used in drama films and also research what types of sound we want to include into our opening. I found a very interesting website that gave me an idea of what sounds we would like that link to what is happening in the scene. The website is called film.sound.org/cliche/  

We thought we would use diegetic sound to emphasise the sound of the door closing behind Genette as she leaves the house. We could do this by emphasising the click of the door as it closes this sound would contribute to the realism of the film as it is an everyday sound that you would hear most days. Linking in with the sound of the door clicking we could highlight some sound that the bike makes like the squeak of tyres and breaks and the bell on the front of the bike.   

Another form of dietetic sound we would use is the characters talking to each other. For example the girls talking to one another as they go past Genette. The conversation between the two girls will be pretty basic and just be everyday topics. 

Rough Cut

This a rough draft of our film opening by doing rough shots like this it enables us to know exactly where we are going to film each shot. This then makes us more prepared for when it comes to filming.