Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product will be a mixture of girls and boys, from the age range of 15-21+ purely because the content of the film such as voilence and the language is suitable for a 15+ film. i ahave already wrote about this previously in the blog and went into quite abit of detail. just like the target audience post i wrote about at beginning of the blog, tell you what our audience are and i have mentioned in in the other posts on my blog. but we have aimed our target audience and teens and in young adulthood. One of the main reasons is because i and the other people in my group and the people in my media said that they like films like our idea's. we told them about the film we was going to do, they said that they either liked that or comedy, we thought that the psychological thriller would be more fun with transitions and conventions of a thriller would be much more interesting to do, and with a comedy, we would have found it harder to do as, we have to try to make it funny and because were not real actors or anything it would have failed in my eyes because i don't think we would have succeeded the humour part. the language and contents of the film fits the age range too as they understand the language of modern day life.

Story board

our story board we had trouble uploading our story board, but we finally was able to upload it after alot of technical difficulties, kayley drew up the story board and me and jess filmed it, the first time of filming the story board was hard because i couldnt' keep my steady, but the second time, it looked much more professional. the drawing of the story board took some time because we wanted to look as animated as we could and kayley did a really good job at doing that, for instanance the face of the young girl getting stalked was very professional and looked animated in itself without any effect put into it. the music runs over the filming as we didnt cut the music as it was far too long, we made the music on garage band.

     

what have you learnt about technoglogies from the process of constructing the product?

We used the technologies given to us, such as the macs and final cut express, using the macs to do our film, were suitable for us, as they had all the technology we needed, on the mac but also we had two different editing stations on it, there was either final cut express, which is what we used, or there was imovie. we tried using imovie before we decided on which editing thing to use. i found imovie much harder and more difficult to use rather then final cut. Final cut express allowed me to view the editing options as well as the work I had done clearly, which was important to me because it helped me understand more when experimenting with different editing techniques.

When i tried editing the preliminary task, i was inexperienced at it, and i couldn't do it very well, and i only got a little time to do it as it was a very small task to do. Because I had never used final cut express before, everything I did was an experiment and it took me a long time to achieve the effects I wanted.

When it came to doing the final piece, the real opening sequence i found it hard still, but because of my involvement in the preliminary task I felt more confident with what cuts and effects to use. i understood how to edit, so i ended up editing some of the film and putting some of the titles into the film, as Jess showed me how to do it and i put 3 titles in, such as 'A RANGER FILM' and i also put the title 'can you see me now?' in so that it came in with the music and faded out with the music. with final cut express we found out that the most professional title effect is simple and sophisticated affects such ac Cross stretch as it symbolised that it is all going to explode, in the film and  makes it at suspense. this helped me progress my skills of the titles and final cut express.

The transitions we used in the film, we experimented on as well, we tried a lot of different transitions to see what looked good, we had about 3 in, but we realised it looked really unprofessional, so we changed it to just using one that was called 'addictive dislove' i thought this looked much more professional, so we kept it. also we had to see what font to use, she we tried a few of them, which i posted on my blog a few weeks ago, in the end we went with Charlemagne std because it was the one that was the easiest to read and had an edgy vibe to it.

Using the camera, was much easier then editing the film, we used two different camera's for the preliminary task we used a flip camera which wasn't very good and the quality of the film was rubbish and there wasn't many options on the camera that suited to make a film look professional.

We then got given another camera which was an actual video camera and made everything much easier to use and which made everything look more realistic, such as when we did tried doing different shots, for instance the zoom into a close up, the video camera was much smoother to zoom with. we also had a tripod to use to keep the camera still when we were doing some of the shots, such as the shot in the snow when Lydia and i were walking up the hill before i go to chase her.

opening sequence feedback

i put my film onto facebook to see what everyone thought, as most friends i have on facebook are from 15-21 mostly so i thought it would be a good idea.

the response i got were all positive except the ending how it just cuts off but we thought we would end it on the establishing shot, to show everyone where the first scene would be.

I asked them to rate the film out of 10, the feedback i got, was 3 people said 10, 3 people said 9, and 1 person said 8. so the feedback we got was very good and made us proud of it and helped us evaluate the blog.

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

Well from my preliminary task , i didnt really know what to do, or how to do it. for instance, i didnt know how to even work the mac's, or final cut xpress. i didnt even know how to work the camera's. but from doing the preliminary task i got to grasp the mac's and final cut xpress. i didnt get to film much with the prelim, i only done 5 seconds of filming, which wasnt much for experience. so when it got to doing the real thing, i got a bit nervous as i didnt really know how to do anything, only work the blog. so at first we practised with the cameras and then cutting some filming that wasnt need for anything just to see how final cut xpress and the camera's worked. after we started doing the real thing, i done quite a bit of filming and tried different camera shots, such as the establishing shot, the wide shot, extreme close up, close up. then i done some of the filming for the actual film, of lydia and i also took alot of pictures of her for the film and got a few props for our film. i also learnt how to edit the films, and i ended up editing some of the film.

from the prelim, i think i progressed alot, seeing as i didnt know how to use the computer or final cut xpress to actually editing some of the final peice, along side jess and kayley. i put some titles in too. i was really proud of how much i done and how far ive got along side my blog, and our final piece came out perfect, except from a few technical problems.

I done well, editing, filming and being in the film myself.

how did you attract your audience?

I attracted our audience by having people of their age staring in the opening  sequence, we though this would attract them because they feel similar to them in some ways, such as they could put themselves into the film and think of it is was them it was happening to.

Also we asked a few people around the age of 16-18 and 20-21 about what genre of films they liked, most of the 16-18 year old, said horror and thriller and the 20-21 year old mostly said drama and thriller, so we went with the thriller because more people liked it.

After we had finished our film opening sequence, we put it on youtube and we put it on our social networking sites such as, twitter and facebook. we did this so that we could get feedback from our target audience, family and friends of that age range. our feedback comments were very positive, most of them said about the filming being up to scratch and that they liked the non-digectic and the digectic sounds, such as when Jack (the stalker) was drawing a line, you heard the cracking of the charcoal when it had broken.

we told our friends and family about what we were doing and the idea of the film we had in mind and we asked who would watch it, my mum said it wouldn't as interest her as much, but she would still watch it. my grandad wasn't to keen on watching it but my 20 year old brother, my 15 year old brother and a few friends at school who are 17 said that they are keen to watch it and it would catch their attention.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

The media institutions that possibly could distrube our media film, could be paramount pictures, because they do a range of genre of films, such as comedy's, drama's and thrillers. for our film we had put paramount pictures as the institution to our film, because i knew what other sort of films they released, such as the devil inside, which is a triller.

Also i think columbia pictures would distribute our film, as they are basically the same as paramount just a totally different complay, but they distribute the same genres of film that paramoun does, except columbia does alot more comedy films then paramount, such as 'are we done yet?' which is a film that columbia produced. a thriller that they have produced for example would be 'the grudge' this is a thriller, it keeps you in suspense.

so either paramount or columbia could distribute my film,  whereas as distributer such as 20th century fox would distribute more of comedy and drama's and more childish films,.

dimension films could maybe distribute our film as they do a mixture of all genre's really, except romance, the research i did, showed me that they don't do any if many romance films.

From my earlier post about my research on paramount, i stated some films that paramount have distributed, from the early 1900's untill now. on the lines of them films, i think paramount would be the main company that would distribute my film.

how does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media film is targeted at around 15-21year old people. this is mainly because, we are all around the middle of them ages, and it is a suitable film from 15+ people to watch, the language and filming in it, fits to the 15+.  we have represented the social group we have chosen, by making the girl getting stalked young at an age of about 16, this is partly because then the audience can get involved with the plot of the film.

We also made this a 15+ because 15-21 year old, would be able to acknowledge whats going on and understand everything that is happening, whereas someone younger then that would struggle, they would also not grasp the story of the film and wouldn't benefit it as much as a person of 19 for instance.

By looking at these parts of the film, you can see Lydia is a young girl, and it gives the message out that she is vulnerable because this man is after her, young girls of this age can easily relate to Lydia's position and will fear of it happening to them, this will give them fear and suspense for them to watch the rest of the film. the stalker, not that you see in the first 2 minutes of the opening sequence is also a boy ideally in his 20's stalking the girl, so the boys can relate, they get sucked in by the film by relating it to them selves, and throughout the opening sequence they are put in suspense.

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

Our film is on the lines of a conventional thriller film, such as how it starts and the transitions of a real film, are similar for example the paramount pictures at the begining of the film, just like the 'butterfly effect'. it has similar conventions to a real film done, such as the film titles we have the titles in the same chronicle order as normal thrillers, such as the girl with the dragon tattoo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY4f_83t_rw - this is the opening sequence to 'the girl with the dragon tattoo'.

i watched this before i started making the film, and gave some feedback to the group and we all looked at different opening sequence's of films and gave feedback, and most of our feedback said the same, about how the titles came through, how long they stay on the screen for and how big the font size is roughly. i researched how long the credit titles were on the screen for, and they were around about 3 seconds long.

Here are some screen shots of our titles. i reasearched some triller films and the titles at the beginning of the film are behind a black or dull/white  screen which is why we have.

Normal thriller films get you on an edge of your seat feel, so on our film, we tried to do that as much as we can we used all the technology and props we were given for our film. we made Jack (the stalker) wear gloves so that everything looked real, because in my mind if the person didnt wear gloves in a real thriller film, the mis-en scene wouldnt really fit into together, so we have him gloves to cover up his DNA, his finger prints, the gloves also show that he is about to do something bad and wanted to cover his steps up so he didnt get caught. the mis-en scene in the garage, fitted in with the coventions of a real film because alot of real things start off with them in a confined space, doing something, that shows you what the films is going to be, shows it will be a thrilling film.

 in this picture, it gives the audience a sense of fear and suspense, they will think 'what is he doing with the sledge hammer?' thats the feel we want the audience to have.

It is the same with this part of the video. they will think to themselves, 'why is he writting this?' or whats going to happen to the girl.

preliminary chat

This is our prelinnary chat, saying about our first prelim video, just about the camera shots we tried out.

The Final Piece - Can you see me now?

this is our finished opening sequence.
i am very proud of this, our group had worked hard, we had a lot of trouble with the paramount and touchstone, which is why we still havent got touchstone because it wouldnt upload to final cut xpress, so it couldnt be added in. as a group we worked well together and managed to reach the target we wanted. the transitions of the film were good, we used simply but noticable ones, so that it wasnt over the top but wanted to see that they were there. the titles we used, were simple but they stood out because of the font of them, i think. we used the font Charlmagne std. i think kayley done a really good job with creating the music for the film, because it all fits in together, such as when the title of the film 'can you see me now?' comes on the music comes up with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9Xufqzx5I

Editing the footage

Jess was the main editor of the film, the rest of us knew how to edit the film but we all had designated roles, we all took part in everything, we all had a go at editing and we also all had ago at filming too. i was also in the film along side Lydia. we used final cut xpress to edit our film as i have mentioned before,  we found this easier to use then we did with imovie as it was less complicated for us to figure out how to edit. Jess and Kayley done the first part of the film and me and Lydia contributed through out the middle and end, as me and Lydia where the ones in the film and doing some of the filming. i added a few titles in and contributed, what fonts and what size the fonts should be. i also did the duration of how long the titles would stay up for, and the duration of some of the pieces of film we had, so we sped some up and slowed some down, so that it would all fit together nicely.



i also helped with choosing what transitions to use and when to use them, we had the quite basic transitions so that we didn't go over the top with them, we had some quick cutting scenes that were split up to add more the affect.


we took out nearly all of the sound in the filming we did, and replaced it with the music we had made, so it sounded more professional, and not have noise that wasn't needed in the opening sequence.

Opening Sequence #4

we came to end of our opening sequence, and we didn't have enough time to add anymore in. but as a group we are proud of the end product. we ideally wanted to add more camera shots into the sequence but again we didn't have time, one reason for this is because when we went to save our film in final cut x-press it wouldn't save and it said unknown error, so when we did manage to save it into another folder on the apple mac's, when we re-opened it again only half of it had saved, again. so we had to re-do it all again, which again took us back steps because of the progress we had made, was vital, we had the titles in it and added more transitions and sounds.
Kayley made some more music for the establishing shot at the end, the shot showing the school, to show where everything takes place during the rest of the film. because the sound we had was just pure silence, so she made a sound of birds tweeting and sort of the jungle noise.
We had a technical difficulty with the touchstone pictures. it wouldn't convert onto final cut x-press which put us a little behind but in the end, there was no way that we could put touchstone into the opening sequence because the computers would not let us upload it.

Opening Sequence #3

We are near the end to finishing our opening sequence, but we need some more varieties of filming shots, as we have a few that are just zooming, we want to add some shots in that are fast moving, so we have a variety of fast moving and slow ones.

Title idea's

We had a few title ideas but we went with the title 'can you see me now?'. Purely because it is catchy and it is quite a thrilling title in itself. we looked at others such as 'catch me if you can' but i found out that it had already been used for another film.  The title can you see me now, helps the audience get more into the film before they have even watched it. and the title is mostly a typical psychological thriller, its edgy.

i researched some more thrillers and the names of them, were:

• Buried
• i saw the devil
• the ghost writter
• unthinkable
• the girl with the dragon tattoo
• sleepness night

they are the few i researched, so with this research i thought about the sound of the names, they are quite creepy and edgy so, we all decided some names, but in the end we came out with the film 'can you see me now?'

Story board #refilming

we had the story board drawn up, which Kayley drew. which i then filmed, in order of how the film we pictured in our heads would be. but the first time i filmed i was a little shaky and i couldn't quite get the hang of it, i tried 3 times.on my third time, i managed to get the zoom and the extreme close-up, without shaking. which turned out fine, so we kept that piece of film. the extreme close-up was much easier to film, rather than the wide shot, because on the piece of paper, i kept getting the table that the piece of paper was on in the background because i was concentrating too much on the camera, then looking when to stop the wide shot.

We had a lot of difficulty uploading the story board film to our blogs, so haven't quite done that yet, due to a technical difficulty.

Touchstone Research

Touchstone is another institution that is used often. we have used it in our filming.
they were established in 1984.
it is an american movie production label.
it typically releases films that feature more mature themes and darker tones than those that are released under the walt disney pictures.

Some of the films that they have produced are:

• when in rome
• the last song
• you again
• the tempest
• gnomeo and juliet
• i am number four
• the help
• fright night
• war horse
• people like us
• lincoln 

these are films from 2010 - 2012 that touchstone have produced.

Some films by paramount

Researching Paramount

I have been researching our film institution 'paramount' to see what films paramount have made.
the first film paramount ever made was in July 12 1912 and it was called Les Amours de la reine elisabeth.

Les Amours De La Reine Elisabeth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz8tw0kXjUA

From watching the first part of the first film paramount made, you can see how much everything has changed, from the picture quality, to the sounds and costumes.

i think reseached some newer films that were made by paramount i found one called wings which was made in 1927.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9P3XXvleo4

From watching the 1912 film to watching this film in 1927 you can see that the quality of film has changed and became more professional. i wasnt able to get film openings of the films i researched i could only get trailers so im not sure how the credits were laid out.

Paramount are still making films to this day, they have been in business for over 100 years and are still making films.
in 2010 they made

• shutter island 
• shes out of my league
• how to train your dragon
• iron man 2
• shrek forever after
• the last airbender
• dinner for schmucks
• jack ass 3D
• pararnormal activity 2
• megamind
• morning glory
• the fighter
• little fockers
• true grit

In 2011 they made:

• no strings attached
• justin bieber never say never
• rango
• thor
• kung fu panda 2
• super 8
• transformers - dark of the moon
• captain america - the first avenger
• cowboys and aliens
• footloose
• paranormal activity 3
• puss in boots
• hugo
• young adult
• mission impossible - ghost protocol

and in 2012 they made:

• the devil inside
• a thousand words
• titanic 3D
• the dictator
• madagascar 3
• katy perry part of me
• indiana jones and the raiders of the lost ark
• paranormal activity 4
• fun size
• flight
• rise of the guardians
• the guilt trip
• cirque du soleil - worlds away
• jack reacher

and they are in the middle of making more films for many years to come. 

They support a lot of genres of film, comedy such as the dictator and thrillers such as paranormal activity 4.

they also do films such as an autobiography of themslves such as never say never or katy perry part of me.

Paramount is one of the most successful institution.