1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media Product represent particular social groups?
Our film character is presented as being negative, as he a stalker. Our character is a young white male and we see him using a modern mobile phone and laptop computer which shows that he comes from a wealthy and rich background and he is able and familiar with modern technology. There are no female characters shown. Since he is doing stalking alone, he is depicted as being very secretive and having a mysterious personality and a slightly twisted and sick mind. We also don't know if he has any normal friends, but the audience presumes so because we see him on Facebook looking at someone. Our character looks like an average person, he wears normal clothes, has a normal hair style and could easily blend in with others if they didn't know he was a stalker.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our film would be distributed by an art-house company, but would perhaps have some offers from a mainstreem company depending on how much money they think the film would make. Our film has a serious theme and would be aimed at adult viewers, mainly males. If our film was shown in an art-house, it would be shown regularly.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The ideal viewer for our film would be a man in his late 30's/early 40's. He lives in a flat with his girlfriend in a rough part of London and enjoys watching horror and thriller movies such as the Die Hard and Alien series of films. He also watches a wide range of comedy and regular TV shows such as CSI, Eastenders, Top Gear, Midsomer Murders and war documentries. He is a massive fan of modern technology and is always on Facebook and Twitter, and he has lots of friends on and off-line. He is un-employed and has been looking for a job for many months. He did some part-time jobs but never made much effort and quickly lost interest. He loves going to the cinema every weekend with his girlfriend and mates. He has a very large collection of DVDs but hardly ever watches them as he now downloads them off the internet for free onto his laptop.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During the course of our work I discovered many new useful technology and websites such as Prezi and Blogger which has made our film work a lot easier and convinient. At the begining of the media course, I had no idea how to use the macs and had never heard of Finalcut Express, but now I can use a mac and its facilities easily. We have been lucky to have been able to be supplied with Canon cameras and computers for our work. Not everything had to be used online, we used paper for storyboards and film ideas. In total we used lots of websites including IMDb, Prezzi, Youtube, Wikipedia, Dafont, and Blogger for the vast majority of our film work.
Here, I am using the Canon camera
which we used to do all our
filming. They were very easy to use
and easy to transport around
our filming areas.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to do the full product?
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
GROUP/INDIVIDUAL
Developed
In this shot we developed the scene, the idea of the telephone box was a good convention for our film, the hidden form of communication worked well, exerting the contast between modern and older technology. The telephone box we used was an "old red English" telephone box, an iconic part of communication for England. The change between the character standing outside and near the telephone box (in the real film) in contast to a hand using and dialing the phone without the face of the character evident in our film. The fact that the face of our character is not shown creats tension, we have developed the moods created from the real film convention and developed them. I believe that this development has worked successfully to
create additional moods upon the audience, and we have successfully developed an established convention of thrillers.
In our thriller we had a shot containing the contact inormation of a woman named Sarah, as she was impotant to our story line we thought it was important to have evidence of contact, and to show that the main character has tried hard to get into contact with her. Although the audience do not know what she looks like, this is a red herring implying that she will be important within the film. In the other shot which we found in an established thriller film, there is evidence of a notebook containing details and words. This shot has been used and developed as an idea which we established, we chose to have the writing clear, allowing the audience to read and understand the content. Also we had a gradual zoom onto the notebook, emphasisng the detailed words. We developed this shot well in my opinion, allowing the important content within the film to be shown creativley, but showing typical thriller film conventions.
Challenged
The production company logo presented at the beginning of the film is an important convention of any film, it immediatly builds the status for the company. There are a large variety of ways that the logo can be presented, and when I researched, I found that a comon feature of thriller convention logos are white text, which is in very clear font; easy to read. For our company we challenged this convention; we maintained the white text, but had a photo logo to represent it. As our company name is "Optical Productions" we thought it would be suitable to have an optical illusion to represent our company. Within the logo you can see two images, wither two young girls playing in a doorway, or a skull. Skulls and death repesent death, which is a main theme and convention within thriller films. I used my photoshop skills that I learnt through media to edit the image in white and black, the antique layered texture is also placed on the image to portray ageing and history. This logo represents our company well. For the font used to represent our name, we found this style within Dafont.com, the font is unique, it represents the tiles used within the game, scrabble. By using a font that could represent a game, it could imply that within our film there may be an ongoing game, causing problems and making the audience members think a lot. This convention has been challenged well, to portray and imply important information to the audience.
We have challenged this convention, often found within films there is an important idea represented and displayed within a shot unclearly. In the film shot you can see the chatacter holding up a piece of paper in what seems to be an office, detective style room. his is a really important element to the shot, the loaction and the ways that items are presented. In our shot we have used a legal letter placed in a rubbish bin and on fire. The shot slowly zooms out as the fire spreads over the paper. This is an important shot when challenginv conventions. I think that by setting the paper alight it may induce some unanswered questions to the audience, creating tension and uncertainty. It is effective within the shot to have the legal paper being set alight, not only is the content unreadable to the audience members, but it makes the audience question why there is a legal letter being set alight. This is a good challenging shot of the thriller convention in my opinion; althought I would have preferred that there was more of a build up so that the audience were more aware of what relevance the burning had upon the plot.
Used
In these two frames it is clear that the idea and main content of the shots have been used within our film, although the main convention has been used, we have still slightly changed the content of the shot, in the real thiller film the character face is clear to the audience, and he is standing ourside of the phonebox. In our film the character is facing towards the phone, not showing his face to the audience. As we places this shot at the beginning of the opening it is effective when trying to keep the main details of the character hidden. We also altered the content of the shot so that the character was standing inside the telephone box, leaving the chance that there was no form of communication being made, but the intended use of phoning someone. As one of the main themes within our film is communication/stalking technology such as laptops, phones and ipods are critical to make this work. So by slowly zooming in on the shot displaying the character in the phone box, the convention and theme of the thriller have been used successfully within this shot.
Here are two shots displaying the convention of a real thriller being used within our film; we have used the character being shown on a laptop. A laptop is a very modern form of communication, an advanced piece of technology which shows versitility. A laptop is a piece of equipment which can be used anywhere, it is different from a computer as the accesability and option to move is available; this implies to the audience that our character is a keen user of technology, and uses his laptop for communication everywhere.
2. How does your media Product represent particular social groups? INDIVIDUAL
Our product shows and explores the story of a stalker/ obsessive character, but from our first two minutes of the shot there is only evidence of one character, the male. He is represent a 26 year old male, middle class with a top end job requiring educational degrees; he is of a White British background and shows no disabilities. In our film there are a few evident social groups represented, through our main character there is the middle class citizen, the everyday man with middle class life, it is also clearly represented that our character is reasonably wealthy due to the fact that his use of technology within the film is up to date and technologically advanced; as the Mac laptop and the blackberry torch is seen in the film this may represent and appeal to audience members and social groups interested in technology.
There is a drastic contrast between the development of the technology shown within our film, in contrast to the new blackberry torch, there is quite a few shots of the old fashioned red telephone box, by using the contrast of new and vintage, this may appeal to social groups and individuals interested in old fashioned films with a vintage outlook on the storyline. By having this large contrast our film appeals to two different social groups.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? GROUP
For question 3, Wikispaces has been used to present our answer. I found wikispaces a convineint website to use, but not all of the group work has successfully been completed evenly. The website link to our answer is...WIKIspaces APOLLO QUESTION 3 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
GROUP/INDIVIDUAL
Our ideal audience member for our film would be a male, working class citizen on the verge of being classified as upper class. He had a reasonably wealthy family which provided him with a pleasant upbringing, allowing him to experience the wealthy treat from time to time. He was one of 3 children, 1 younger and 1 older brother; a small age gap was between them, creating a close relationship between the family members.
The family lived on the outskirts of London, and he went to schools close by; he was always interested in medical and legal themes throughout his life, his dream was to become a police officer. In university he studied forensic psychology and legal studies; which he graduated with an average grade, leaving him to work within the office of the police force. He is in his late 30’s presently, and lives in a flat in London with his partner; he has a decent income providing them with some privileges they may want.
He would be interested in watching horror movies such as the Alien series of films. He also watches some comedy and regular TV shows such as Family Guy, Eastenders, Top Gear and documentries. His favourite music is loud and aggressive heavy metal and listens to bands like Slayer, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. He has a unhealthy obsession with detective TV programs, like CSI, as he is fascinated with the mind of stalkers and understanding reasons why things such as this happen.
He enjoys spending his money on nights out with friends, or his girlfriend at fine food resteraunts, but his main pleasure is his Car, he owns a Volkswagen Golf GTI which he recently bought, and he enjoys flaunting his new car. But another asset and collection he owns is his collection of DVD's and Boxsets. He is a catholic, but rarely visits church as family life and personal life often enterfeir; although he has high values and beliefs in respecting one another. As a stong believer in this he believes that in life, "You get what you give" and often puts this to practise.He has a strong political view, and this often dictates the majority of his conversations.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
GROUP
When we were filming, we always made sure that we did not give to much away, this ensured that out audience would want to continue you watch and find out more about the people and the plot in our film. We made sure there was never much dialog, which created at atmosphere of suspense, which would make people want to watch on and keep them on the edge of there seats. The music we used was designed to create the atmosphere of suspense, due to the minor tones and the drowns used, also, we added in the ringing of a phone, which is a continuing theme throughout our film, this gives the idea that no one is picking it up, which therefore means that someone doesn't want to answer. The editing we used also added effect and would have attached people to ut, due to the fade in and fades out we used, this made it smooth to watch and easy on the eyes for people to watch, this also then moved into the credits, which were not static like normal credits, we made them vibrate and pulse a little which gives the people something new, and also creates the idea that this is no normal film. With the opening and credit order, we decided to leave the name of the film, so it is the last thing you see, this would keep people on the edge of the seats and would make them want to know what its called and it would suck them in, hopefully we have chosen a name which makes the effect we want.
Unfortunatly, depending on individual computer screens some of the notes on the video are unreadable as the video screen is smaller, but sometimes they are not shown. When the video is played properly all notes are clearly shown, when the mouse is hovering over the box on the screen.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? INDIVIDUAL
At the beginning of september 2010 I had no idea how to use Mac computers, I had never even switched a screen on before, but I was determined to be able to use and feel comfortable when using the Mac computers and the software as I knew that almost 100% of the course relied on me using and producing work on the Macs. I can safely say that after research, practise and a lot of teaching from friends and teachers I know my way around on a mac! I used lots of websites describing how to use Macs, and especially how to use final cut express. The video below was my initial guide book to final cut.
Final cut express was a very complicated piece of software to me, just simply starting by creating a new project progressed to all forms of editing once our film was complete, the steps of development progressed quickly. Our group all had to learn from each others mistakes as to how we should use final cut express properly... especially when we learnt that you have to SAVE the project regularly, as we were editing our final product when our computer froze and we panniced as we thought we lost everything! But thankfully, we had saved a few minutes early.
Me personally, I think that I have progressed greatly since the start of the year. Presently, I am comfortable using final cut express, live type and blogger, these are the 3 most vital programmes which media students will need to complete the course, at the beginning of the year I was hopeless! I had to rely on other group members to turn on the mac sceen... I had never used one before my first media lesson, and I think about me now to and I am pleased that i feel like I understand the programmes and macs properly, although I still have more to learn! The cameras were generally easy to understand, we were lucky that the cameras were the most modern and advanced, as they can record in high quality. I enjoyed learing how to film properly, using the correct camera shots, and using the dolly and other equipment to have a steady shot.
As shown in the photos, I can am comfortable when using the equipment; at first I struggled with connecting the camera and computer together, and then trying to log and transfer the files from the camera to the computer. After some effort and help from the teachers I can comforatbly do that alone now.
As time has developed, I feel that my skills with the technology has exceeded my expectations, I learnt tricks such as "command, shift and 4" to produce a tool which takes a photo on the screen and saves it to the desktop; this was extremely useful when producing screen shots for the progress developed on the blogs.
Prezzi is still a challenge to me, as I discovered when writing question 2; I struggle. But my determination and stubbornness allowed me to conquer the website, although I had gained a few hours practise! I feel that I could have tried a lot harder when trying to upload videos and photos onto my prezzi's, but I couldnt understand it properly.
Youtube has become a very useful source to me, a way to gain audience research, produce and distrubite our films, research for other films and watch to gain conventions and research ideas. When we created our media account I found myself searching regularly and adapting our films to try and produce the best outcomes possible. Through the course I have learnt that you can annotate and add captions onto films, which has become very useful when writing about conventions and our own planning.
Survey monkey was a website frequently visited by me when trying to gain as mch audience research as I could get, I would create surveys and ask friends on facebook to complete them, so that I could understand how the audience thought!
Blogger has become such a useful tool to me, I can communicate with my group members to get work done on time, I can look at how other groups are progressig and generally keep the media blog updated. At first, I had had some previous experience with blogger in an attempt to start my own blog, but like other things, I didnt persue and forgot all about it! So when we discovered that blogger would become our main tool I felt at advantage to others.
In general, I am very impressed with how much i have advanced in my knowledge and understanding of the technologies since the beginning of the couse. I feel like I am capable to produce and create a film, whilst using the editing and photoshop skills I gained to produce a professional looking media Product. I am very hapy with this progression, and intend to improve further.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to do the full product
GROUP
We have learned many more camera techniques and since we did a lot of planning and research we were able to film more sufficiently and we used a lot more camera angles than in our preliminary task. For example, we used an over-the-shoulder shot in our film to make it look more professional. We also used the Internet to help us, for example we used 'Dafont' to help us choose the font for our credits. We used IMDb so we could research genre and audience. At the beginning of our filming we had some problems with the camera, but we continued to film and we got used to working with the cameras very quickly. In our preliminary the video transitions didnt flow smoothly, and the content of the shot didnt match well, as you can see in our preliminary at 00:23 the shot where the man walks through the doorway, the next shot contains the door opening and him walking through. By having these two shots next to each other the film didnt make sense and it contradicted itself. In the filming we have done for our coursework we made sure that none of the shots contradicted each other, this is useful as it makes the film flow smoother and makes sense to the audience. Also for our preliminary we didnt use any music, this made the film look less professional and didnt create any tension, by involving music for our film the correct mood is created for the audience, and the plot of film can be further explained throughout the music. For our music we have the dial tones for a phone ringing, this implies that the character is calling someone without an answer, linking to a main theme of communications in the film.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Developed
Challenged
Used
In these two frames it is clear that the idea and main content of the shots have been used within our film, which we found from "Phonebooth" the film made in 2002. The main content seen within the scene
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The main area that is represented within our opening scene is gender. This is because there are no female characters visible within our opening scene and the main dominant character is male. We have tried to present the main character negatively because he is the villain within our film. The viewer may not understand this representation of him being portrayed negatively just within our opening scene because you don't know for definite that he is the villain. There is no contact between our main character and another person in our opening scene so you can't tell whether he is the stereotypical dominant male. But our idea was to be that he should be portrayed as a dominant male and you would find this out as the film progresses.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your product?
The ideal audience member for our media product, considering it being a thriller, would be a male in their later 30's early 40's. He would be quite well off or in a high paying job for example an accountant, and within ABC-1. This is because our media piece is a film that requires a lot of thinking to understand and follow it. he would live in a fairly rich area in a fairly big house with a wife and kids. He sees going to the cinema to watch thrillers as a way of getting away from work and the family and time to relax. One of the main things he spends his money on is increasing his blue ray thriller DVD collection. His main value would be you get rewarded for the amount of effort you put into things.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
When we were filming, we always made sure that we did not give to much away, this ensured that out audience would want to continue you watch and find out more about the people and the plot in our film. We made sure there was never much dialog, which created at atmosphere of suspense, which would make people want to watch on and keep them on the edge of there seats. The music we used was designed to create the atmosphere of suspense, due to the minor tones and the drowns used, also, we added in the ringing of a phone, which is a continuing theme throughout our film, this gives the idea that no one is picking it up, which therefore means that someone doesn't want to answer.
The editing we used also added effect and would have attached people to ut, due to the fade in and fades out we used, this made it smooth to watch and easy on the eyes for people to watch, this also then moved into the credits, which were not static like normal credits, we made them vibrate and pulse a little which gives the people something new, and also creates the idea that this is no normal film.
With the opening and credit order, we decided to leave the name of the film, so it is the last thing you see, this would keep people on the edge of the seats and would make them want to know what its called and it would suck them in, hopefully we have chosen a name which makes the effect we want.
6. what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During making our media piece i use many different types of technology; including a video camera and an Apple Mac. Also learnt how to create a blog on blogger. And also how to embed links when you upload youtube videos so you gain more views and hits.
The first thing i learnt to use was the the camera we used which was a Canon "LEGRIA HFR106". I had never used a video camera before using this camera to help film our media piece, so this was good experience.
Whilst creating our product i learnt how to use Final Cut Express because we all had to do our fair bit of editing, and since i had never used any editing software before i had to learn.
I also learnt about editing and creating a piece of music on Logik specifically for a video, and then having to convert into a different format to then transfer on to the video.
Here, I am using the Canon camera
