Media Studies Evaluation Q7

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

During the course of the preliminary task,  our task was to film someone walking down a corridor, opening a door, sitting down in a room and swapping dialogue with another person. This, naturally, was done in separate stages. First off, we had to create a story board of what was to happen in the video and in what order, by drawing a picture, writing a small description of the shot, and what camera shot was to be used (establishing shot, close up etc). Then we learned the basic tools of using the camera, boom microphone and the camera tripod which enabled us to widen our available list of shots that we could use for the task. Some of the shots we did use in our preliminary task were:

 - Long shots/ Establishing shot of the corridor

 - Close up of hand when it's turning the door handle

 - shot reverse shot during the dialogue (180° rule was used between this (when you film behind one persons left shoulder, you must film behind the other person's right shoulder.)

There was a list of different dialogue that was available to use, for our group we chose this script:

Person A: Hey, I was wondering if you've seen a USB, I think I left it here

Person B: Uh, what colour is it?

Person A: Silver.

Person B: hmm, No I haven't seen it... Sorry.

Although this was mostly my first time using a camera to actually make a short film,  completing the task was actually relatively easy. There was three of us in a group so we all took turn to record the task so that everyone could learn to use the camera properly. Doing this small task did have a massive impact on how we developed our skills before we planned for our actual film opening as it gave us the room for adaption when it came to planning for our actual film opening when it came to elements such as drawing up our story boards, learning how to use and experiment with different camera angles and shots, and how we can do research and planning in more depth and detail.

Below is our final Preliminary Task which was uploaded onto youtube

Media Studies Evaluation Q6

Question: What have you learnt about Technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Planning and Research

 Blogger:

So that we could keep track of our progress and add updates about our media product. For this, we had to make a Google account for this so that we could sign up to blogger considering it is a website which is connected with Google.

Prezi:

Prezi was one of the few main methods we had at our disposal to use for creating posts to put on our blog for updating our media product and to make the presentation of our overall blogs look more nice. This form of powerpoint was quite difficult to get to grips with at first but after making a few presentations with it, it became easier to understand the controls to work it and progressed on to make more detailed presentations for our blogs.

Microsoft Word:

Most people already are aware of how to use microsoft word and it is probably one of the most commonly used ways to make posts for our blogs along with microsoft powerpoint.

 Google:

This was the search engine that we used to do all of our research which included searching for film distributors and information about our target audience, their demographics etc.

 Youtube:

We used youtube throughout our first upload of our prelim task, target audience interviews and idea pitches to the class. Youtube also filled in as another form of our research into our media products chosen genre such as analysing various student video analysis videos. So that we could upload our videos though, we had to become familiar with creating a channel, learning how to upload videos and embed them into our blog posts.

Construction:

 For recording our media product, we used a Panasonic NV-GS500 to capture each of our shots and scenes for our film opening. The camera itself is easy to use as it has quite basic controls and we were taught how to use them throughout the production of our prelim tasks so we had already come to good grips with using the camera before our film opening project began. After learning the basic tools for the camera, it gave us the freedom to experiment with different shots and movements so that we can get different and more interesting angles that will accommodate our film opening such as establishing shots, close ups and extreme close ups etc.

  Boom microphone:

This helped us to get a higher quality sound whilst recording rather than just relying on the microphone built into the camera, the boom microphone also had a fur cover so that it could still pick up sound, but also cancelled out any unnecessary sounds such as wind etc. this was an easy tool to use considering it only had to be plugged into one of the ports on the camera and held in the right position to record the best sound.

  Computer:

A Hanns. G computer was used throughout the entire process of working on our media projects, obviously, this helped us do almost everything that didn't require recording; Editing, Research, blog updating etc. some of the software used for editing the film clips and sound were a bit difficult at first but once we had learned how to use the basic tools, we slowly developed our skills at using the software.

Evaluation

After the evaluation, we will use Youtube to upload our finished media products and to receive feedback on them, also, as well as youtube, the media product will also be uploaded onto our blogs on blogger as part of our final posts.

Media Studies Evaluation Q5

Question: How did you attract/address your audience?

Our target audience for our media product are Males over 35, during our research and planning we interviewed one of our school's ICT teachers; Mr. Healy, who not only fits the categories for our demographics but he also fits our prime target social class (A/B). We did the interview so that we could find out about general interests of someone in our demographics so that we could adapt our film so that it would appeal to more people and attract a larger audience. From the results of our interview we managed to grab a general guess at what our target audience's views on what certain aspects of media are such as TV, Music and other Films.

We asked Mr. Healy about what his favourite type of music, TV and films were and what he liked about each category and what they didn't like on each subject. From our interview with Mr. Healy, we found out from his answers that his interest in music is very widely ranged, he'll listen to almost all genres of music and he does prefer the more old-style jazz music, more specifically when it's included in older films which, we found, actually relate to our genre but mentioned about how he also had a interest in Jazz music that has a sort of Modern-techno twist, which sounds like something that would tie into an similar genre of music, Electro-swing.

Mr. Healy also told us about his interest in Detective/deduction type shows such as CSI or Elementary (the American version of the BBC series 'Sherlock') although he detests programs that include unwanted or unnecessary information and events in them such as relationships included in a TV show which has no need for it, a good example for this would be shows such as Bones or Greys Anatomy.

As well as Film Noir, Mr. Healy also enjoys action films such as Bladerunner, Indiana Jones and to be more specific, films that have been directed by Ridley Scott such as Alien etc. Unrealistic Horror films with a supernatural style (such as the Paranormal Activity series or the Scream series films) have a very low interest with Mr. Healy, or more-so a dislike for them.

The impact these results had on how we attracted and addressed our target audience meant that we could take use these results as an extremely rough guideline as to what people who like film noir are interested in, in terms of different forms of media which meant that we could adapt our film so that it will include the right elements to properly attract a possibly larger audience towards our film.

So that we could secure a good audience for our film, we needed to add some elements into the film opening that would intrigue our target audience to capture our audiences attention, edging them to want to carry on watching the film. To do this we added some elements of Enigma into the film, such as: Keeping the murderer as only a silhouette so that the audience get curious about who he is, what he looks like etc.

For the Promotion of our film, we would try to promote it around places such as newspapers (Readers such as the Telegraph, the Guardian etc), Film Magazines, possibly music magazines (if we were to try and promote the music used in the film). Because our target audience is more of a niche audience, it would normally only attract high standard audiences who have a distinct like for certain genres of film.

Media Studies Evaluation Q4

Question: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film is mainly aimed at the older audience members as there is a better chance that they'd be more familiar with the film genre, our target audience being males 35+ with a social class of around A/B (with occupations such as Teachers, Doctors, Bankers etc.)

We chose the more older target audience considering that film noir is one of the oldest genres which has slowly, over time, become less popular. After looking at data from the UK film council (http:// media2012-ltilbury-h140.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/target-audience-stats-for-our-genre.html) we found that these demographics (Males, 35+, A/B) were the most popular for our genre, most likely because they find the conventions of the genre more interesting than others.

Using the pictures above, it shows that only 10% of people who attend the cinema would prefer to watch the genre and only a mere 1% would say that film noir is their favourite genre. Out of the original 10% of the audience, the gender by age that watched/enjoyed it more was only 13% of men age 35+, also, of the 1% that said film noir was their favourite, 2% of them were also men aged 35+, But this didn't narrow our audience down to one category completely as there are still some elements in film noir that might still appeal to a very small minority of younger audiences.

Upon deciding our film audiences, we had to consider the BBFC classification. From our deduction, we ruled our film opening as a 15 as we thought this would be the best age rating considering there are scenes which show blood and talk of violence which isn't suitable for young ages. This did help narrow down possible options for a target audience however we could have followed the average film noir classifications.

After the popularity for Film Noir became less popular, most major cinemas had to stop showing them in fear of gradually adapting a loss in profit once people had stopped coming to see film noir's as often as they used to so the genre was left only to be played in independent cinemas, Because of this lack of film noir's showing in cinemas and the decrease in the audience, this introduced film noir into targeting more niche audiences as time went on, this is widely confirmed in the UK film council information and as well as looking into different film distributors, as there was quite a low percentage of all audiences that actually liked film noir and not many film distributors specialize in film noir anymore. This does have an effect on how we could establish our target audience as this narrowed down the number of people who would be generally interested in the film.

We interviewed a possible member of our target audience, Mr. Healy who is age 35+ and considering his occupation of a teacher, falls directly into our preferred demographics for our target audience.

We asked Mr. Healy about what his favourite type of music, TV and films were and what he liked about each category and what they didn't like on each subject, he'll listen to almost all genres of music and he does prefer the more old-style jazz music specifically when it's included in older films. He also had a interest in Jazz music that has a sort of Modern-techno twist.

He also told us about his interest in Detective/deduction type shows such as CSI or Elementary and how he detests programs that include unwanted or unnecessary information and events in them such as relationships included in a TV show which has no need for it.

Mr. Healy also enjoys action films such as Bladerunner, Indiana Jones and to be more specific, films that have been directed by Ridley Scott such as Alien etc. Unrealistic Horror films with a supernatural style.

Media Studies Evaluation Q3

Media Studies Evaluation Q3

Question: what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our media product for starters would need a more independent film distributor (a company that organises the release of a film (cinema dates, DVD releases, Country release dates etc)). The reason for this is because Noir films were far more popular back when they were first being made compared to the modern day so back then, they were distributed by more larger companies whereas now there isn't much of a demand for them so the size of companies that are willing to distribute them has decreased over the years as the overall audience has dwindled.

If we were to actually have a real distributor to release our media product if it were to be made properly and finished, after searching through different distributors both major and independent studios which have released films of either different or the same genre, we settled on RKO pictures which is a company founded in 1928 that became known for their distribution of Noir films such as King Kong. Despite not being well known nor releasing many films since it was sold to new owners, it is still fully functional and operating as an independent film company.

Although people like to assume that most to all budget films can become a total flop, there are those lucky films which actually do become a shocking success such as 'The Following' (1998). The budget was this film was surprisingly low at $6,000 ($7,600 today) made by Christopher Nolan along with his friends which was filmed over the course of a year in the streets of London and the homes of friends and family, it was meant to cost as little as possible and made sure that each shot was done right within one or two takes. The film ended up winning an award-winning low budget masterpiece that would usher in one of today's biggest Hollywood directors.

Some Modern large companies that are well known today also used to distribute film noir's such as Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures. Most off the independent distributors tended to stay specialised in the same genre rather than branching off to distribute other genre films such as horrors or comedies etc. but, as Noir became less popular and the demand for it decreased, the major companies moved onto the new, more popular genres until the only companies that would distribute Noir films are now only independent studios. 

Media Studies Evaluation Q2

Media Studies Evaluation Question 2       

Question: How does your media project represent particular social groups?

All of the characters that are shown in the film opening all fall into specific characteristic groups and social classes; Their ages are young (18-30 years (the only exception in this case being Dawson who is 36)) Their social class can be deduced to be around the B-C classes (considering the fact that none of the jobs of the victims are actually mentioned, it is easy to guess that their social class is around B-C considering the clothes that they're wearing would suggest for them to be around that area (smart casual)). The sexuality of each character isn't directly shown or said in the film opening but it was aimed for them to all be heterosexual considering the fact that this was the most common and most accepted sexuality during that 1930-40's time period.

Reviewing our film opening, it's noticeable that some of our characters can be labelled as stereotypical, for instance, the  females in the film opening are shown to be quite close to the stereotypical woman during the set time period, for example, they could have been seen as weak considering there was no actual indication that they weren't but the fact that there are 2 female victims and only one male victim. Although, when we see Samantha's body, Dawson mentions that she was a fighter and had guts, that there was signs of her struggling during  her murder, which goes against all of the stereotypes mentioned for 1930's females which could have lead on to thinking that the 2 female victims compared to the one male victim could show that the females were just more of an easy target because they were weaker, therefore easier to kill.

Ethnicity is also another category that is hinted towards throughout the film opening and can be thought of as quite stereotypical, considering that all of the characters shown are white British, and given the costumes and occupations, it's also another hint towards the characters all being around middle class which could lead to thoughts such as all white people are of a middle to higher class lifestyle (which is what seemed to be the tale as of the time period) and that because no other ethnical races are shown, shows that white people are the more dominant race over others.

The location of the opening is also likely to have an effect on some of the stereotypes during the opening, for example; the entire film opening takes place in a city, a large one, which would mean that the crime rate would be considerably higher than if it was in a small town or village which leads to the fact that the murders taken place in the film opening wouldn't actually be that uncommon among the city, and considering that it's a large city, it could suggest that it would have parts of it which were more rough than others which could explain when Dawson mentioned that Samantha was a fighter who tried to defend herself before her murder. Dawson, being the main character in himself, tells us about his social class as we can tell by the way he dresses, walks and his general attitude which would pin him as being yet again, more middle class yet comparing to his occupation and his style of talking, this could lead us to believe that his class is slightly lower than thought.

Music also plays a part in showing a difference in some of the characters, for example; Comparing Samantha's death with the other two victims there are a few differences:

- Samantha's murder took place at night whereas the other's were during the day

- The two victims had the same soundtrack playing in the background whereas Samantha's was different

- Samantha was the only one that Dawson said she had fought for her life

The fact that Samantha has these elements that are different from the other victims tells the audience that she is different from the other two victims and holds some plot to the story.

Media Studies Evaluation Question 1

Media studies Evaluation: Question 1

Question: in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Typical types of conventions for film openings:

- Music

- Micro-elements

- Enigma

- Setting of a film

- Film Genre (i.e. our film opening is a Film Noir)

- film titles

- Key characters

Conventions for a Film Noir:

- Key Characters following set generics (I.e. Hero, Villain, anti-hero etc)

- Mise-en-scene (which is explained with CLAMPS)

- Iconography

- Narrative

- Themes

- Sound

            So what are the film conventions that we followed in our film opening? (referring to both general and film noir film opening conventions)

- Establishment of film genre:

We made sure that the genre was being portrayed in our film so that it was clear what genre our film opening was. For this, we made sure that when we were editing the film, that it was put into black and white, like most film noir's use for their openings so that it was clear that film noir was the genre for our film, this would be the Iconography for the film convention used, another to add on to this would be music, as we used a jazz-style music which was extremely popular to be used in a lot of film noir films.

- Establishment of Key Characters

After the main character is introduced in the beginning of the film opening (Dawson Dunn) the narration then goes on to give out an explanation about the character (i.e. retired police officer, started his own detective business because he couldn't stay away from the job). It then moves on to introduce the victims who are a main focus in the story,  but not main characters. The only character left that is shown is the murderer although only his silhouette is shown, this gives the audience some enigma which will encourage them to carry on watching the film.

- Music

For the music, we took 3 songs and merged them into  one to use for a soundtrack that didn't repeat itself and gave the opening a theme, mood, and atmosphere to each scene of the opening and as most typically used in Film Noir, the style of music we used for this was Jazz music.

- Titles

For the titles, we drifted slightly off the usual style of presenting the titles and incorporated the titles into the actual scene and setting by putting them on a suspect board and showing it in the film opening as if Dawson was looking at the suspect board which then lead onto a close up of each title and actor etc. which gives it a more exciting look rather than just editing the titles over the top of the video as it plays.

- Setting

Although the location of where the film is set is not mentioned during the opening (which generically is set in a large city in America (e.g. New York, New York was a very popular city for a lot of film noir's)), it is still set in the same time period that film noir's are generally set in: 1930's-40's. Because the location isn't mentioned it could be a development to the setting convention as we have followed half of the criteria (the time period set) but we have changed the location which also entails some form of enigma into the film as the audience won't know whether the location has any relevance or importance in the plot of the film.

- Enigma

For the most part of the film opening, the majority of the enigma created in the opening is caused by the murderer for the reasons that we don't actually see his face, know who he is, Dawson mentions that he's possibly trying to play games with him which could lead the audience to wonder why he was trying to end up getting caught and why he had killed so many victims, what the link to all the murders was etc.

Mise-En-scene

Characters

For our film opening, we tried to match the clothing for each character as close to the time period as we could (i.e. It was in the 1930's-40's time so there wouldn't be people in skinny jeans and shirts with punk bands on them, or many revealing clothes etc.) This is so that the characters look the part:

Dawson: He wears a smart suit, blazer, white shirt, red tie, grey trousers, smart shoes and suspenders (these were very popular in the 1940's)

Samantha Scarlett: Samantha wore a black, knee length dress with white polka dots

The Murderer: Although the murderers outfit isn't shown in the film opening, he still follows the criteria of clothing for that of a male in the 1930's-40's (smart-casual suit etc.)

The Victims: The victims also follow the criteria of basic time period clothing (I.e. the male wearing a smart shirt and trousers and the female, a knee-length plain dress and flat shoes)

lighting

In the film opening, most of the lighting is either low-key lighting or just natural lighting considering the fact that most of the film opening was filmed in area's outside of buildings but when there were any shots that were done inside a building (such as the scene where Dawson is in his office) the lighting isn't so much edited to be either high-key or low-key lighting but it's more just a natural lighting in the room, the most part, the lighting coming in from the window which spread across almost half of one wall. The only exception of a drastic change in the lighting for and interior shot is the scene with the interrogation as the lighting had to be done so that we can see Dawson's face and him walking into the room etc. but only see the silhouette of the murderer which proved to be quite a challenge but was eventually doable.

(above and below) the lighting is natural in most of the outside areas

Actors

The criteria for the Actors in a general film noir is pretty much followed in our film opening, only having one non-static character with dialog (That being Dawson with the narration on top of the video) whereas any of the other characters that were shown in the film opening didn't say anything at all (mostly because half of the opening cast were victims) And the way Dawson's speech portrays his character has been tailor-fitted to that of a typical 1930-40's detective. The only problem that was brought up during the filming was the fact that it was easily shown that the victims and other characters were quite young, therefore making it quite difficult to portray Dawson as being around 34 years old.

Make-up

The mass of the make-up used during the film opening was to make the corpses of the victims look realistically dead (fake blood, bruises etc.) The other items that make-up was used for was to show hits of age on Dawson (considering we were trying to pass Lewis off to be in his mid-30's)

Props

Any of the props that were used in the film opening were to fit the conventions of a murder-mystery story such as case files and murder weapons etc. Although, due to the allotted time we were given for our film opening, we couldn't film the scene which showed the murder weapon left by Samantha's body, which did rule out a prop in the opening, although it was still mentioned in the narration as a vital piece of evidence.

In conclusion, I think that we have hit most of the criteria for following the conventions of film noir film openings albeit skipping or altering a few structures so that it could accommodate our film opening more appropriately but even with the minor changes in some of the conventions or some parts of them which were missed out or couldn't be fit in, I still think it is obvious to tell that for the most part, we have stuck to the rules of creating a believable film noir opening.

Editing - Final Day

For the Final day of editing, the new production logo was placed in the beginning of the film opening, foley sounds added to the film and extra shortening to any clips to fit the set time limit for the film

Above and Below: Jamie finishing the final touches to the film opening as he edits the final clips adding in foley sounds and editing the production logo

Editing - Production Logo revamp

After looking over the film opening, we decided that we should edit the logo to make it look slightly more improved, so we took the original logo and mounted on top of a simple, plain grain textured background and added the black and white effect to it so that it would fit in with the rest of the film opening

Editing - Day 3

Next, we needed to record foley sounds for our opening, as all audio that came with the film that was deleted. This is because due to the narration and music being placed over the top, the audio was not needed with the exception of a couple of sounds. This also included recording the sound of an antique camera flash that was not included in the filming, but was required for the opening. The camera flash was used to match the flash transitions between the crime scenes, and provide a more realistic feeling of a crime scene.

Editing - Day 2

Once all the shots were in order, we moved our focus onto music to set each mood for the different scenes of the film opening and getting the Narration that was to go over the video recorded. For the music, we found all of the tracks used from http://freeplaymusic.com/ where we went through many song clips searching for the ones that would best fit the scenes (we went with jazz music). We ended up deciding on three seperate songs which we edited and merged so that it transitioned as if it was one song to avoid repetition of audio throughout the film opening.

Once we had got the audio, we matched all the music to the correct scenes

 Left and below: Looking through the narration clip before starting to edit it and place it on the right part of the film opening

 Listening to one of the audio clips for the third murder victim scene with Samantha Scarlett

Editing - Day 1

For our First few editing sessions, We uploaded all of the footage from the camera onto the computer, looked through all of the clips and decided which shots were the best out of each shot we'd taken of a scene to use in the film opening, Not much actual editing and shortening the clips was done on this day considering we were only pulling together the first rough edit, just placing all the un-edited clips in the right order and making sure it followed our story board before we started editing anything.

 Above: Shots of the clips after being uploaded and placed into the right order

Production Logo

Here is the design I came up with for the production logo for our film opening

 

For each production, a logo is required to show who the producers of the film are, and to show that we understand and have the skills to create a logo and adapt it into our film opening. For our logo, we tried to keep it to the more old fashion look, using an old 1940's style type font I downloaded and textured background. The company name is simply our group members initials (Lewis, Jamie, Lara) as it clearly distinguishes that it was our film

Filming - Final Day

Lastly, we filmed the scene that took place in Dawson's office and the title sequence for the film opening. We used one of the staffs offices for this so that we could have the setting look as realistic as we could make it out to be, so that it would somewhat resemble a detectives office, We finally decided upon using Mrs. Curtis' office which led to Dawson sat at the round table in the center of the office.

 The final, finished suspect board that was used to film the title sequence for the film opening which included the actors that were played in the film, a few volunteer suspects from our class to pose as other possible murderers, and a list of the filming crew, and who did what role etc. The whole idea of the suspect board using the string to link up the pictures is to give the board the feeling that Dawson has been trying to link up all of the cases to try and figure out who out of the shown suspects could be the murderer.

We were also planning to film a scene with the murder weapon found next to Samantha's body at the crime scene. This would show the weapon (Planned to be Lead Piping) clearly to the audience and would lead to Dawson indefinitely finding the muderer. Due to restrictions of the full film opening time (2 Minutes) we had to cut the idea altogether so that we wouldn't run over our set time. Prop production was also a problem, as making the prop proved to be a more difficult task than imagined, and didn't get done in time for the filming.

Filming - Day 4

For day 4 of our filming, we went into Willingham Woods where we filmed Dawson looking for any clues/leads on the murder case regarding the murder weapon that was left behind at the last scene

 Jamie and myself as we set up the scene for Dawson to walk across the field towards the nearby building, this took a few takes to get right as it was hard to keep Lewis in shot of the camera because it was taken as a still shot, not a tracking/panning shot

 A shot of the building that Dawson describes in his narration. During this, Dawson is shown walking around the building looking for clues or leads

 A small, brick space we found attached to the building, we used this to film Dawson walking from the side into the middle of the archway for the final of this scene.

Filming - Day 3

Our third day of filming was set at the Train Station in Market Rasen so we could film our third murder victim (Ella) who played Samantha Scarlett, the main murder victim out of the three victims

 This was where we had planned to have the body of the victim at first, but we switched to the location of the picture below because of lighting issues

 The establishing shot that was used to film Dawson and the victims body

 A still shot of Ella playing the dead victim Samantha Scarlett, fake blood to indicate where the wound was made, killing her.

Filming - Day 2

For our Second day of filming, We went into Lincoln to film two of the three murder victims (Jamie and myself)

 Myself and Jamie as I put fake blood on his shirt to make it look like he has a stab wound

 Myself angling the Camera to get a Close up/side shot of the first victim

 The Position of the Camera for the first establishing shot of the first victim

 The scene for the second murder victim and the position the Camera was in.