Evaluation

Media Evaluation

REVELATIONS: Final Piece

EVALUATION QUESTIONS

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


- Discuss the ways in which your thriller incorporates generic conventions, identify specific scenes.
- How does your thriller develop or challenge these conventions.
- Does the use of conventions indicate what sub-genre or hybrid genre your thriller is?
- Does your use of conventions indicate what other thrillers have influenced your work? If so, then be specific with examples.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
   
   
   - What are the social groups represented in terms of gender, age, class, race etc?
   -Is gender represented in a stereotypical way? i.e. men dominant and women passive.
   -How does this link into the target audience? (explore this fully in question four)
   
   
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
   
   
   - Would this be something that could be produced by a major Hollywood studio, if yes then why? Is it similar to existing productions?
   - Would it be a TV movie?
   - Would it be an arthouse film?
   - Would it be an internet release only?
   - Why would it be released? Does it offer opportunities for franchise and /or merchandising?
   - Link your conclusions to a discussion of the mise en scene (visual style) of your thriller.
   
   
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
   
   
   - Consider the age and gender of your target audience. Link this to the narrative and style of your film.
   - What other films are similar to yours, who did they appeal to?
   
   
5. How did you attract or address your audience?
   
   
   - Link this into your audience profile (i.e. what age and gender they are)
   - are there particular points in your film that would appeal to or particularly terrify a Certain age group or gender? If yes then explain them in detail.
   - Consider the use of camerawork in this section i.e. point of view shots.
   - Who is the audience asked to put themselves in the position of, what are they being allowed to witness?
   - What impact does that have?
   - Link this back to generic conventions and the creation of suspense.
   
   
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
   
   
   - Strengths and weaknesses of the camera equipment.
   - Salk about the filming process, was there problems you faced, how did you resolve those issues?
   - Did you get to use new equipment that enhances your thriller? i.e. the dolly.
   - Editing software- Premier Pro. What have you learnt about editing, where there particular effects that you found useful for creating your overall mise en scene?
   - Link in exact time points when you are talking about a specific bit of your product.
   
   
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

- Discuss the planning stage, the research into genre, storyboarding, creating the anamatic  and explain how this detailed planning helped you to produce a thriller. i.e. you knew what shots you need to capture and what order to edit it in. this helps the process to be smoother.
- Has your use of specific shot types improved? i.e. match on action, point of view.
- Do you feel more confident with the equipment?
- How successful do you feel your end product is as fulfilling the task? (look back at the main blog at the task).

Titles: Fonts

Yesterday Imogen and Charlee began to look at fonts to use for the titles. As we're making a horror-thriller we decided that it would be smart if we use a font which is fits in with this. 

This was the first font they considered. Personally I think this this would be a safe choice as this font is a font that was specifically designed to look imposing and strong. It would suit our films titles although the font is kind of cheesy, the decaying letters and tall letters is something i feel has been used a ton before and I personally think a different font would be better.

The second font that was looked at is also quite spooky and I like the way they letters are thin and creepy, unfortunately it doesn't really fit in with the theme of our film. The thin letters and curves make the letters seem almost quite feminine which isn't conventional for a thriller film, especially ours when our protagonist is a male. Fonts in thrillers tend to be sans serif and quite bold and bright which this one isn't. This font is one we most probably will not be used in our title sequence.

The third font which they proposed was this, it's very similar to the first one however we have agreed that we prefer it as it's big, bold and a conventional style of font for a thriller. This along with the slight difference in height between the letters which we think look quite creepy is wy we will be using this font in our title sequence.

This font is called 'Dirty Headline'.

Filming: Dialogue

This is the script that Beth wrote and we agreed on for Archbishop Hartley (Luis) and Our news annoumcer (Finley):

Announcer:

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to Spotlight. Here today to explain to us the dramatic resigning of Pope Benedict due to the Saint sinner killings. The Lords messenger Arch Bishop Hartley.

Hartley:

May our lord bless you and keep you citizens of God we have received information about the dead sinners who whilst their sin was great their souls were redeemable without this violence.

Announcer:

What is the church doing about this situation?

Hartley:

Well we are obviously working with the police on these so called Saint Sinner murders and are trying to solve this as quickly as possible. There will not be a government enquiry but these murders are in no way connected to the resignation of the Pope.

Announcer:

I think the public will refuse to believe that, we all know what’s going on in the Vatican and no one here would be surprised if one of your alter boys turned and did the killings. We all know the treatment they get.

Hartley:

Obviously this has nothing to…The Vatican is in no way implicated, no minister or vicar is involved this is obviously a fanatic carrying out God’s work.

Announcer:

Are you saying you agree with the killings?

Hartley:

Obviously this is an observation upon the prophecy and the true Christians are being tested. I assure you everything is being done to persecute them but…

Announcer:

That wasn't an answer to my question

Hartley:

Well obviously I don’t agree but in principle Satan and his hoards must be punished.

Announcer:

Final question then your Holiness.

Hartley:

Yes, fire away

Announcer:

Where is your God now?


We will film the two characters separately reading the script to camera using a green screen backdrop. This way we can give the backgrounds of the shots the appearance of a news studio and a church as well as graphics that news reports give such as times, location and the 'Live' symbol, giving the interview a better sense of verisimilitude. 

REVELATIONS: Second Draft

This is our second draft, this is completely different to our first draft as we didn't use any of the same footage as the footage that we previously used we felt needed to be changed. I think this this has improved so much and is a lot better than our first draft.

At the start of the second draft, the TV has nothing playing on it and this is something that will be done for our final as we have not yet been able to film the section that will be placed in this part of the film.

There is also no non-diegetic sound or music and this is also something that will be rectified in our next and hopefully final draft. We hope to not need to change to much in order to finish but we will change and re-shoot any segments we feel is necessary. 

Editing

Since we went out and did a re-shoot we now have to work on the re-edit. In our second draft we agreed as a team that we thought there were a few too many fades in between cuts. This time we are going to need to do some more jump cuts and try some different transitions to create more of a pace as the scene in the second draft seemed very slow and this did not cause tension as we want to. We've now started use cuts to the room where the torture victims are, so when the protagonist gets up and starts walking it cuts to the garage showing the victims current state as the protagonist approaches them. We've done these sections in with added effects such as black and white toggle, Gaussian blurs, find edges and the brightness and contrast sliders and have used these effects for each cut and each transition to the the separate room. The use of the black and white filter was an idea that we have had since the beginning and we are really happy that we have kept this plan throughout our coursework. The black and white is useful to us as its a connotation that the room shown in black and white is a dark and dangerous place that is separated from the safe colourful rest of the house. At first we were worried that this would look like a flash back opposed to something happening in a different room parallel two the main scene, but after showing a few people they assured us that they understood what was happening. 

Filming: Actors, Actresses and Locations

Protagonist- Aidan Lever 
Woman Tied up- Lucy Wise
Child- Angelo Gizzi
Dead Male- Reece Collins
Dead Female 1- Cindy Sidhu
Dead Female 2- Melissa Kerrison

Locations-
Scene 1 - Living room
Scene 2 - Kitchen
Scene 3 - Garage
TV footage for scene 1 - Outside Church 






Reece- Torture victim                                                                  Angelo- Protagonists child





Melissa- Torture victim                                                                  Aidan- Protagonist



Lucy- Main torture victim                                   Cindy- Torture victim

Filming: Re-Shoot

Myself and Imogen deciding on
 the panning shot in the kitchen

 
Myself and Imogen filmed again as we needed more footage as the dialogue  actors, location and shots needed to be adjusted and changed. Unfortunately only myself and Imogen were present as Charlee was away and Bethany was unable to attend.


We first filmed the opening scene in the living room in which the protagonist, Aidan Lever, was placed on the sofa watching the news report (which we will add in later) and our child, Angelo, on the floor playing with a dog. We experimented with a few different shots and angles so we could decide on which ones would most closely follow our storyboard.

Cindy, Melissa and Reece (Torture Victims)

Next was the kitchen where there would be a fast pan that followed protagonist while he walked from the living room and through the kitchen.  I  did most of the filming whilst Imogen decided which angles to film at and what the actors would do as these are the technical areas we both felt comfortable doing, although I did have in input into Imogen's decision and vice versa. 

Next we filmed in the garage. There was a 
lot more dialogue involved in the scene this time as last time
we had more footage of the protagonist walking towards
the garage and in this edit we wanted there to be confrontation between the protagonist and torture victim. This would create a more gritty, intimating scene which is something we wanted have so that we could combine it with the suspense that is built up prior to the confrontations.

In all the the filming session went very well. The actors and actresses performed strongly, I feel as if the shots we got were ones that we can work with and that will look and although we did not have Bethany and Charlee present I feel we overcame this and completed the task in hand confidently and with skill.

Myself lining up a close-up shot.

REVELATIONS: First Draft

Changes and Alterations: Filming (Specifics)

We have had to change the location of our re-shoot as the location is now unavailable, this means that we wont have the scene with the protagonist walking down the stairs; as well as this we have had to change the actor who plays the protagonist as he's unavailable to film any longer so the plan is now to re-shoot everything. Although a nuisance, we will now be able to easily implement the changes we have made to the plan as well as being able to have a better idea of what we want after the first draft of our film. Additionally we have had to change two other actors, the dead man laying on the floor, and the child. The child will now be played by a young boy (Angelo) and there will be an interaction between him and the father as well as some dialogue from the child. We will also have a dog, thus to create a better sense of family and security in the home. 

Also after Imogen and Charlee's research into thriller dialogues including ones that where similar to our films ideas, we came together and had the idea that what we needed to write for Lucy. We decided that she needed to act more scared and have less direct dialogue with the antagonist. As well as this we have decided to added some violence to this scene and have the protagonist kicking Lucy and maybe throwing something at her. This will hopefully make the film more scary and realistic as well as adding a horror element. In our first draft we filmed the protagonists body and didn't show his face, we decided that this didn't really work so his face will now be shown and there will be an interaction between the father and son. 

Changes and Alterations: Filming

We showed the entirety our footage Mr Ford and he was happy with the majority of it and that we could use most of it in our final film, although there were parts of the footage that we felt we would want to go and re-shoot.

The section that we wanted to go out and re-shoot is the scene where the woman being tortured has just woken up and exchanges dialogue with the antagonist . We all agreed that the dialogue would need to be changing as it wasn't the type of dialogue that would be best suited for the type of thriller film we are trying to create. We've decided that Charlee and Imogen will go back and do some research on dialogue in thrillers which are similar to ours so that we can get ideas from this and then write a new script. 

At the moment this is the only part which we need to re film, however we may also need to re shoot the whole scene showing the people who have been tortured as the setting will change and so will the actors make-up  Therefore we may need to film this whole scene again so that the continuity is similar. This is something that will be decided in the near future.

State of the Magazine Industry HW

My article:

http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/magazines-are-hopes-for-tablets-overdone/magazines-by-the-numbers/

FILMING: Main shoot

Last Sunday we filmed our entire film excluding the opening shot which we went out and filmed on location a week or so ago. Myself, Charlee and Imogen were present but unfortunately Bethany couldn't make it so we were forced to make continue without her immediate input. 

I had visited the place where we were filming (Which was our friend Giles Westgarth's house) so I had an idea of where we would film and what the shots we would be like as we followed the plan on our storyboard. We would use the garage as the torture room as the space was great for what the film needed and the rough concrete nature of the room seemed great as part of our films mise-en-scene. There were parts of the room such as shelves that would need to be covered but this was no trouble as we had large dust sheets that would cover those areas and also were painted with blood.

We filmed the living room scene in a room upstairs, which was great as the door in the room opened up straight to a set of stairs that we would also be using in the scene. There wasn't much that we needed to change about the room to match our storyboard apart from moving a couple of pieces of furniture out of a couple of the shots that we needed to get. 

Our two captive actors (Lucy Wise and Jonathan Morris) were present and luckily for us Lucy is an amazing make up artist so she was able to give her self and Jonathan brilliant make up such as black eyes and cuts which looked great on film.

Were now in the stages of making our first edit so through this process we will decide if/what needs to be re shot and done again.  

RESEARCH PROJECT

- Magazine Industry

        - How is it changing/evolving?

        - What does the future hold?

- Audience and Institutions

        - How do audiences benefit from changes in the magazine industry?

        - What challenges are magazines (and publishers) facing?

- New Media Technologies

        - How are NMTs impacting on the Magazine Industry?

These are just some links to pages with good info I can use:

http://www.slideshare.net/SBakker/future-of-magazines

http://www.slideshare.net/jdojc/how-magazines-can-survive-the-digital-age

http://www.slideshare.net/Elasticpath/future-of-newspapers-and-magazines-in-the-digital-era-elastic-path-research-report

How is the Magazine Industry evolving?

- Magazine publishers are are becoming a lot more interactive. As the use of the internet has becoming part of daily life with easy and quick access to information through computers and smartphones, publishers have taken this as an advancement to the magazine rather than an enemy of which it could have been. They create websites, mobile applications and give the audience more of a variety in the way they read and explore their magazine's content as well as giving the market of the magazine more presence in the way the magazine is produced than in the past. Magazine publishers are creating different ways of exploring and receiving input by their audience through comment posts on articles placed on there websites and apps (If they have developed them yet). 

The use of web subscriptions is also a way that the magazine industry is evolving. Many magazines give audiences an oppertunity to may a monthly or yearly subscription to the magazine where they can read a complete issue of the magazine on there computer through a PDF download, web app, mobile app or e reader. 

KEEP UPDATING

FILMING: Opening Shot

We went out on Monday 14th to film our opening shot for our film. This was the TV broadcast made by the priest (Played by myself) warning people about the disappearings and capturings that our films protagonist has committed.

We filmed this on location at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Chalfont St. Peter (Shown Below). The weather condition weren't perfect as the snow was coming down very heavily and it was extremely cold. We are unsure that this has effected the clips but if it has made a substantial difference we will go out again on a better day and re-shoot what we need to.

STORYBOARD ANIMATIC

This is the animatic of our storyboard. Rather than uploading them separately, I'm just uploading the animatic which shows off our storyboard as well as timing and transitions.

PLANNING - Final Shot List & Changes

1. Close up of TV, slow zoom, shot of protagonist on sofa.
2. Zoom of previous shot.
3. Long shot of table with religious items and polaroids4. Close up of polaroids, title, jump cut to next shot.
5. Medium shot of child playing on the floor.
6. Close up of polaroids, title.
7. Mid shot of protagonist from behind watching TV.
8. Mid shot of child playing with toys, zoom up.
9. Close up of polaroids, title.
10. Medium shot of TV and sofa.
11. Close up of polaroids, title.
12. Medium high angle shot of door.
13. Close up, low angle of door handle.
14. Close up of polaroids, title.
15. Low angle, long shot of door from the bottom of the stairs.
16. Long shot of door.
17. Extreme close up of lock on door.
18. Close up of polaroids, title.
19. Long shot of boy playing with toys.
20. Close up of polaroids, title.
21. Close up of male torture victims hands.
22. Extreme close of of victims face.
23. Close up of polaroids, title.
24. High angle, extreme close up of protagonist and victims.
25. Long shot of female torture victim.
26. Close up of polaroids.
27. Blurred medium shot of protagonist.
28. Blurred but then changes into focused extreme close up of protagonists eye.



Since we made our first shot list and storyboarded, we decided that we needed to make some small adjustments to our storyboard as it wasn't quite polished enough to begin the filming process. We changed it by adding in a few more shots in and around the scene and more shots of the polaroids in order to fit in more titles as we had underestimated how many titles we would need. After we sorted these minor details we made additional changes such as adding in a wider variety of camera angles as we didn't have many angles it was mainly camera distances so we made some more changes and in order to achieve more points towards our final grades, the varied use of camera angles was necessary. Also we changed some of the timings of the shots as we decided that some were slightly too long and some weren't long enough. we still need to write the timings on the shot list which will be done once we have decided as a group.

COURSEWORK DEADLINES

Filming, All footage captured - January 28th

Post production, Rough Cut - Febuary 15th

Final Deadline - March 8th

Individual Evaluation - March 29th

FINAL FILM: Actors/Actresses, Equipment, Locations and Props

These are our groups final decisions on our film.

Actors and Actresses:

Protagonist - Giles Westgarth

Child - Beth's Little Brother

Male Captive - Connor Barbor 

Female Captive - Lucy Wise 

Priest on TV - Oscar Bath (Myself)

Locations:

Basement - Giles Garage

Stairs - Beth's House 

Living room - Beth's house

Church for TV Segment - St Joseph's Church

Props:

Religious Paraphernalia: Beth

Children's Toys: Beth 

Chains: Myself and Imogen

Sheet for Basement floor: Myself

Table: Myself

Tatter clothing: Everyone

Preacher costume: Myself

Equipment:

HDV Camera 

Boom Mic 

Tripod 

Lighting Rig

Adobe Premier Pro CS6  Editing Software