How did you attract/address your audience?

There were many times during our production of our opening film when we had to question whether we were addressing what a typical audience for a thriller film would be engaged by. We had to make sure we garnered interest from an audience by presenting a suspenseful opening film - this was one of the main things that we found from our (unfortunately lost) questionnaires. Audiences wanted there to be things left for them to figure out later on in the film while being given enough information to feel tense. 

We addressed this with the character of the teenage killer. We left any background of the character a mystery to the audience - so that they might feel interested and intrigued, wanting to know more about the radical character. However, we gave the audience the information that the teenage killer was wanting to find the man in the photograph, which might be possible by tracking down his friend 'Brian Greene' - introducing the enigma of whether these characters were to survive the rest of the film, and also of course who exactly the character in the photograph actually was. There is also the obvious element of the gun prop that the teenager threatens the mother cashier with, which was also supposed to bring tension to our opening sequence. 

Another way that we tried to address our audience was through the design of the antagonist. I tried many different combinations of costume with the teenager, from hooded jumpers to simple t-shirts in a bid to produce the most fearful reaction. I did this by presenting each combination (with it's own combination of make-up) to family and friends, asking if they believed my character to be a realistic killer. We settled on the design of a teenager wearing a smart dark shirt and smart trousers, with make up drawn around his eyes to make them darker and using lighting to emphasize sinister facial features. 

There were also times when we received feedback from our teacher and other students in our year through our blogs on a presentation we made about our opening sequence idea. One of the key bits of constructive criticism was whether the teenager would be believable as an assassin, as most assassins would be middle aged and full of experience. We therefore left this detail out of our opening sequence and instead willed audiences towards making their own assumptions about the teenager's background. The correct assumption would have been that he was kidnapped by a cartel after his parents were killed and raised as a psychopathic killer trusted to fulfill the dirty work. 

Yet another way in which we addressed a tension-hungry audience was with the character of the cashier's daughter - whose minimal role allows audiences to relate to the shop assistant and thus when the teenager draws the gun on her, makes the scene more suspenseful, as the audience would be wanting this character to survive the scene. 

There was also a time when I asked our actress of the shop cashier character what she thought of the opening sequence when we had just about finalized our plans for the scene and script, she replied with:

This prompted us to leave the script be, and go ahead with our plans as they were. 

One last way in which I addressed audience concerns was with the removal of one part of our opening sequence. At one point in the editing process, another group commented on how they thought that the original ending of our sequence (a scene in which another customer comes into the shop, intruding on the gunman and is left standing - visibly shocked and probably doomed to a death - before the scene cuts to black) was unnecessary and only took away from the original shock of the shooting. We addressed this by completely cutting this part of our opening sequence out during editing. 

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

Our preliminary task took very long to complete - longer than it should have - due to poor organisational skills within our group. It was difficult organizing the location to be free for us to film and at one point we had our filming completed and editing complete before the final cut express program failed to save our project. We then decided to make a new script from scratch and chose a new location for filming, and we managed to complete it and edit it together within a day.

The poor organisational skills and the consequences of this drove us to construct a schedule for our opening sequence task, so that we all knew the dates and times for what we wanted to do. In this sense, I learnt that organisational skills are key from my preliminary task.

The preliminary task was good practice for script-writing, helping us in our later construction of what we believed to be realistically flowing conversations and actions. However, the script was weak in formatting as we had not yet learnt the formatting skills for making scripts from our course. In our opening sequence, I wrote many drafts for a script, until it was formatted like an actual script and until it represented the narrative we wanted to tell in our opening sequence. Despite this, our opening sequence did not necessarily follow each and every element of our script, and we completely removed the end, where another customer intrudes on the scene.

In our preliminary task, I was on the role of a cameraman and a director and played a key role at editing, although in earlier attempts at the preliminary task I was just an actor. These tasks helped me to develop my skills in all of these areas, which I used heavily (barring camera, which was very minimal) in our actual opening sequence, as an actor, heavily involved with directing, and a key editing role. It helped me to piece together dialogue from different takes to form one scene which kept the free flowing dialogue as if I hadn't edited it at all. On watching my preliminary task, it also helped with editing because I spotted some continuity issues such as lights being on or off, or the actors being positioned in slightly different ways in one shot after another. It also obviously helped immensely with directing actors and the camera woman (Phoebe) in many shots as I was able to work out what looked right and what didn't look right.

The sound issues in our preliminary task were obvious, with volume levels rising erratically from one shot to another in a way that sounded unrealistic and abrupt. For our opening sequence, we chose to edit on an overlapping sound clip of traffic, which was captured in the shop itself while we were there. This helped in keeping a natural flow to our sequence so that other cuts in sound were less noticeable to the audience. We also used other methods to disguise such obvious problems, such as using a loud eerie soundtrack and overlapping it onto our scene, drawing the audience's attention away from the sound of traffic.

In both tasks I have learnt directing, camera, editing, sound and even acting skills. I was involved heavily with each of these aspects in our opening film and skills like being able to direct actors effectively, make editing as subtle as possible and having good cinematography skills will help enormously with future filmed projects.

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

Evaluation: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

An analysis of representations in my opening sequence:


The opening sequence starts with very slow paced editing – which helps in focusing the audience’s attention on the dialogue between the cashier and her daughter, as nothing too exciting or colourful happens. During this dialogue, the mother cashier says to her daughter that “It doesn’t look as if it’s getting any brighter does it love”. The use of words such as ‘love’ and the overall colloquial language suggests a friendly and close relationship between the two – showing there are no barriers or conflicts between the young and older age groups as they both speak equally to one another. It also enforces the stereotype that women are more caring and loving than men, as the friendly nature of the conversation contrasts sharply with how the teenager speaks to the cashier.

The sudden eerie roar of the soundtrack that kicks in when the male teenager walks into the room suggests that there is a new, powerful and somewhat unusual presence. Since we already had a teenager in the room and this audio was not present – this may lean towards the representation of males as being dangerous and capable of disturbing the peace, as the room was peaceful and calm before. This is probably fairly conventional in film, as dangerous antagonists are usually portrayed as men.

The absence of dialogue when the cashier asks the teenager “Can I help you at all” – can be uncomfortable for the audience as they wait for a reply. The long pause could connote the stereotypical representation that teenagers can be rude and unsocial towards older generations – as if there is a communicational barrier between them.

There is use of a long take of a panning up shot from the teenager’s feet and legs up to his face – to form a low angle shot. This low angle shot frames the male teenager to look large on the screen, making him seem more powerful in relation to other objects and characters in the scene. Males therefore seem to be cast as more dominative and powerful than females, who aren’t shown to be nearly as large in later shots. It also shows a non-conventional perspective on representations of age, as the younger age group appears to have the advantage against the older one with the teenager overpowering the cashier.

The tracking close up shot on the gun as the teenager draws it onto the cashier has obvious denotations that the teenager is involved with the crime world. This can have follow up connotations that men can be prone to crime – which follows a film cliche that criminals and antagonists tend to be males, representing men as being more aggressive and risk-taking then women. It also could suggest that teenagers can fall into crime fairly easily too.

There is a long take where the camera is positioned so that the gun points directly at the shop cashier – this emphasises her struggle and lack of leverage – further developing the representation of men as being overpowering towards less aggressive females in this sequence.

The cashier – hoping that the male teenager’s empathetic side will be unravelled – tells him that “I have a daughter, she was here earlier!”, but the teenager swiftly cuts her off, insisting that he doesn’t “care about your daughter”. This represents the teenager from even being cut off from his own age group, as he feels nothing towards the cashier despite her having a girl who is around his age.

When the armed teenager presses the female cashier – she ends up giving him the information that he wanted. This is probably a fair reaction to being held at gun point, but it could still be interpreted to represent women as being weak willed, as she knows it could put other lives at risk.

After she gives him the information, the teenager character breaks the forth wall and looks directly at the camera for a split second. Throughout the entire opening sequence, the teenager lacks emotional expression and readable body language and therefore in a way this break of character seems even more eerie to the audience. It could be interpreted as the teenager actually ‘showing off to the camera’ before he pulls the trigger and shoots the woman. This makes him seem psychopathically dangerous and you could say that in a way he distances himself from any kind of group.

The male may belong to the male gender group and the teenager age group, but his actions are that of such psychopathic degree that audience members are likely to disassociate those actions from meaning anything in terms of representation. It is also a good point to make that it is so unconventional for someone of his age to dress the way he does – in dark smart attire – and be involved so heavily in crime. It’s so unconventional that it may not represent the teenager age group at all. 

We chose to represent our antagonist character in this way so to intrigue the audience. They might want to find out about his background after seeing how ruthless he is - to find out why he is like how he is. We represented the woman the way we did because we thought it depicted realistic reactions to the situation that she was in, and we chose to make her seem possibly weak at points to put emphasis on how dangerous the male teenager was. 

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

Throughout this course, I have had to learn a great deal about emerging and already popular technologies in order to produce my film. The appliance of many of these technologies to the construction of my product has been essential, and without my new gained knowledge it would have been impossible to create the opening sequence that we had made.

Cameras: In my opening scene, I was restricted to being in front of the camera rather than behind it, as I was one of the main roles in the film. Fortunately this did not stop me from learning about how cameras work and how to use them, as there were many times where I would step behind the camera to record a take of one of the others in my group filling in for my character - just to demonstrate how the shot should look once I step back into the character's shoes. This can be shown below:

This helped me with concepts of how to get a great shot, and even down to just how to hold the camera to keep it steady for a take. There were instances where we were stuck on how to stabilize our camera (such as on our slow paced start, where we filmed a long tracking take (which was then cut up by opening credits) that tracked backwards from the door and then moved sidewards). We found ideas on how we could achieve a steady camera and settled on using a trolly before overlapping audio WITHOUT the trolly to eliminate unwanted audio of clanging. I also tinkered with the white balance on the digital cameras as I attempted to perfect the cooler lighting of the scene that we wanted to establish. An advantage of this equipment is first of all that the cameras are capable of pulling off some good shots - vital for our film. And vitally, digital cameras are cheap for film makers like ourselves to use. Yet a disadvantage we found is with the often poor sound quality that would prove to be difficult to get round when it came to editing, with lots of fuzzy grainy background noise and often quiet recordings of dialogue.

Lighting: We also had to learn to get to grips with lighting in our opening scene. Despite our scene literally being set in a lighting shop, it proved very difficult at times to perfect lighting conditions in the set. We ended up having to try different combinations of top lighting through the actual ceiling lights of the shop before we were able to find a sinister looking top lighting effect - which emphasized the physical features of the teenager. We also used key lighting in places, shining a light at a certain angle directly onto our actors faces. Lighting is something I have learnt a lot about through the construction of my opening film. I have recognized how important it can be, and also how difficult it can be to get right.

Live Type: In the construction of our opening sequence, Live Type was something that I struggled to get along with. However, this wasn't through a lack of understanding. Most of our group's ethos was always to create as professional and non-intrusive an opening sequence as possible - we found that the possibilities that Live Type offered us in terms of opening credits or the film title (which other programs did not) felt out of place, unprofessional and unrealistic in the context of our film. While we could have persevered with the Live Type program to create our title or credits, we decided to invest our efforts elsewhere. However, I did find out why film makers might use LiveType, as it can be used for many different purposes including impressive animation - as shown here:


Pixelmator: While I was not fond of Live Type as a possible way to create our film title, I found Pixelmator matched our ideas of a more professional looking and less-the-top film title fairly well. Pixelmator allowed us to easily create a design for a our film title in ways that Live Type would find difficult to match. The process was a simple matter of steps and took no more than half an hour to perfect from scratch by Phoebe Davies. Phoebe had even found tools that would make the second boot imprint to look somewhat degraded - as if blood or dirt was covering the shoe and was coming off with each step. This is shown below. While we didn't use them, we found tools which might be helpful in the future which allowed us to freely crop images, create sci-fi-like effects and more.

Blogger: After having gone on an English lecture school trip this year, it somewhat emphasised how enjoyable the experience of using a blog for learning and working can be. The pressures of having your work easily found by others all around the world were a definite positive to me, as it encouraged me to create more polished work. I found that working with blogger was also a pleasure due to the many different ways that you can choose to work. Although your standard blog post could just feature text, there are also many ways to create more interesting content by embedding different formats such as a 'Prezi' presentation, or YouTube videos or even gifs. These all allow for excellent ways to get points across.

At the same time, the pressure of having a blog can weigh you down a little. I might feel a need to update my blog when it might be unnecessary at the time - and the vague nature of how to approach different tasks through a blog can be difficult to decipher at times.

From cameras to Pixelmator, this project has taught me excellent skills on a variety of different areas, which I hope will come again to help me in the long term future. While tasks like editing were at first difficult, it now comes fairly naturally as I feel as though I could edit scenes even just by myself, and while I might not be fond of the Livetype program for this task, all that I have learnt about it could help me in the future.

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

Final coursework

Evaluation: What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why

What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why

Preliminary task - film

)

For future reference, here is my preliminary task.

Editing update: 'Okay, we'll leave it now'

With the 'journey' starting back in November with the first ever script drafts (mine), (Jake's), we have gone through several stages of development, throwing ideas in and out and all over the place and with the merging with another group - Beth Overton and Phoebe Davies - we eventually came to an end product.

The editing process was long, exhaustive and sometimes tedious. The fiddly process of moving audio clips across to match video clips and having to work with transitional effects in very small spaces were just a couple of problems that we came across the solved through nothing but hours of methodical placement. From slowing down clips to match a slower flowing pace of the clip to then cutting and overlapping audio in order to speed up a piece of dialogue in a way that still sounds right. The cheeky yet somewhat creepy addition of the 'breaking the fourth wall' technique to raising and lowering the audio levels to a non-ear-ringingly-loud-volume.

And much more.

But on Monday 10th March, with one last drag of a clip to another ('AND DON'T FORGET THE SNAPPING TOOL!') our film was finally finished. While we waited for the film to load into a QuickTime format, we recalled earlier on in our course, when we had analysed other sixth form students' opening sequences. We decided that the tiringly long editing process was not only worth it, but that we had learnt a great deal from working with editing programs such as Final Cut. We may not be Hollywood editors but we had constructed a film in which the editing is about as seamless and unnoticeable (which is a pretty good sign) as it probably could be with the clips we had at our disposal to use. No doubt our film might be pulled apart by others, but to us we have done our best and learnt essential editing skills and techniques for our media course.

The opening sequence for Dealer's Atonement is finished, and will be available to watch on this blog very soon. Now, I will be starting my evaluation of our work.

Editing

After a long hiatus in the production of our film due to computer issues (that we were not at fault for), we have finally been able to begin the editing of our opening sequence.

With probably a dozen hours of editing under our belts, we have certainly realized how difficult the art really is. With all that said, we are mostly confident with the way that our opening is looking so far. We have completed the majority of our editing, with the structure of our clips edited together in a way that flows as seamlessly and logically as we feel is possible.

We have, barring any last improvements, completed our audio editing as far as diegetic sound goes. With the sound of dialogue, traffic and everything else in the scene having been adjusted to match the seamless editing of our clips. We did this by simply lowering and raising audio clips at different times, sometimes overlapping in such a way that you are unable to distinguish when one ends and another begins.What we have not yet done in terms of our sound, is add in the non-diegetic sounds which we plan to use. Luckily, this shouldn't be an especially long process and could possibly be done within an hour.

The other very last piece of editing we will need to complete before we should be done, is the credits - something which, once again, shouldn't take too long to complete - we've even already got the majority of this done.

With not long to go, our film is under the last stages of completion.