'Who's next' A-level media 2013

Here is the final product of our film, it was uploaded using the Google + account  and shared onto my groups various blogs and different profiles (Facebook) watching our work after we had uploaded it on-line we realised that the site YouTube had lessons the pixel quality of the film over all and because of this the lighting may seem dimmer than what it actually is. also we found that the sound wasn't as crisp or clear in the final upload as it had been on final cut pro ( which we used to edit with) this came to be a problem as watching it back the scene with Cassie and Eva speaking at the same time one character's voice is drowned out instead of talking in harmony with each other.
 I however, am pleased with the final outcome of the opening movie as it was something that no one in our group had previously done before, we had learnt to control sound, cut and edit videos and text, upload and produce a movie opening that I believe people would genuinely want to watch. My favourite part about the opening scene is the continuation that we included for example when Cassie is in the mirror doing her mascara, it then cuts to Riley doing her mascara. This helped the video flow and gave the film a professional feel.
Things I felt could have been improved were the props, camera steadiness and lighting. In my scene we were trying to re create the feel of a late night however we did not take in to context that the camera would not pick up everything we wanted in the dim light that we had (something which we have now thought about thoroughly and learnt ) so to improve this we would have put the direct light on and kept the curtains shut, this therefore would have still created the feeling that she was in her room at night but the audience would also have got a clearer view of the scene. The props or background object in the scene I felt were not always important, for example in Riley's room there were a lot of teddy bears as she was filming in her own room that conveyed her personality however she was not what we were trying to portray we were trying to put across her character's personality which was quite girl- next door, boisterous but pretty. The teddies do not lend them selves to this idea and therefore I feel like we should have looked out and thought about the shot more. Another prop we felt was not correct upon inspection was the fake knife used in the film.
Throughout the editing process we were so transfixed on creating a flowing motion picture we forgot to really open our eyes and analyse absolutely everything in the shot, for this reason we did not see that the knife did not look authentic enough, this could have also been because of the lesser quality on YouTube but the knife didn't look like it would convincingly kill someone which meant our film was less convincing to the audience. the steadiness of the camera was sometimes questioned, however the clips we put in the film i felt were steady and when we wanted a more raw feel that's when we went for a more unsteady clip, therefore i feel we did a good job at concealing any technological errors. Overall I enjoy the opening movie that my group created and i think that as this is our first time we have executed a professional and fixable movie.

Thank you for listening,

Chantelle Roberts.


Here are some pictures of the main events that transpire in our film, 'Who's Next?'.

Progression part 2

Here our group discuss the progression we have made since doing the preliminary task.

Audience feedback

This is the bulk of our audience feedback, we used this to test  if the film catered to the age range (15-20). We used facebook and youtube to find out of our film had gained the recpetion of our target audience. In posting this on The social networking site we were open to critiscm and praise. 

One of the commenters said they enjoyed the drama, however they felt the build up as quite slow, although this is true we wanted to fully introduce the characters to the audience in a ploy to evoke emotion where they can identify with certain characters.

Another comment was from someone who said they enjoyed the split screen phone call and they enjoyed the suspense of wondering if Scarlet was dead or not.

Emily from Youtube said she enjoyed the hand scene but felt the film's overall look would have been better if the video flowed in a smoother way.

Overall the reception of the film was positive with the audience giving pointers for us to improve our work, including making the scene s more suspensful would have helped us hook our audience more.

Technology

These are the main programs we used to create our opening film.

iMovie

We used iMovie in order to upload the  videos we had recorded on camera, then imported them through the mac desktop onto final cut pro where we started the process of our editing.

Final cut pro


Final cut pro took the most time to master and craft our editing skills, this is because we used this program for basically all of our editing. Throughout the process I learnt how to cut parts of the video, merge moving images together, create text that flows over the motion picture, remove sound and speech, continue shots (like the mirror to mirror shot and the zip to zip shot). We all had to take part in editing to ensure that we knew exactly what we were doing. I feel that I have learnt a lot since starting the short film because before hand I had never used the apple Macs, this shows my progression since the start of the first task.

YouTube(internet explorer) was another section of the technology that we used, during the planning process we used YouTube a lot to research film openings from our film genre. We were toying with horror, crime and thriller movies to ensure that all bases were covered when it came to the conventions of the genre. Also we used this site to find our summit logo which we eventually put on our work. Within this website we also had our Google + accounts which is what we created our blogs on, the YouTube enabled us to link our short film onto Facebook which gave us our audience feedback. The audience feedback was extremely useful as we were able to decipher whether or not people liked the film.

Here is another example of the technology we have used. Garage band was a useful program for our group as we created most of the soundtrack to our film on our own. This is a film that i created after the preliminary task, however we decided not to use it as it didn't fit with the emotions we wanted the audience to feel when they watched the scene. Instead we created another piece of work which enabled us to create a song which would evoke as much emotion for the audience as possible. Garage band was a seemingly easy program to get the hang of but it required creativity and originality and as a group we came up with many different ideas to ensure that this creativity came across.

We also used Apple mac computers, these were new to me and required me to hone in on my skills and learn about the different programs that were available on these desktops. We chose these forms of media as the complexities were not too difficult to master and although we have a lot to learn we were able to grasp the main concept of the function of the technology. The macs proved to be very useful certainly over other forms of media equipment as if we were on different laptops we would not have had programs such as garage band or final cut pro. with out final cut pro it would have been very difficult to edit the film. The garage band app was very useful as we created and thought of the majority of our music on that application, if we had another form of equipment it might have been harder to use. the camera's also proved to work really well and the camera quality enabled us to get a sharp picture- this meant we could portray the motion picture to the audience exactly as we had wanted it to be seen, the school also provided these which made the technological side easier to deal with as we weren't researching for the bets equipment to use and we just got onto it, the camera's were also easy to use and came with tripods made to fit the camera.

Progression from preliminary task

Since the preliminary task, I feel I have learnt to use the processes of:

 Continuation, match on action, 180-degree rule- these were things that we learnt whilst producing the preliminary task. For example, with continuation we created the mirror to mirror scene- this was effective as we were able to make the scenes connect and flow more easily. Lighting- the lighting proved to be very tricky as we were trying to portray the time scale which fits in to the mise-en scene. lighting is important as it will help set the scene to show the time the movie is set. For example in my scene, we see the wine bottle and glass, this represents the characters somewhat classy/girly-girl nature and shows that she is old enough to drink and handle her liquor. This was effective and also sets her apart from the rest of the characters in the movie as the other scenes shows teddy bears and trinkets that they might have aquired over the years. We used this to present a subliminal difference to the audience- she is older and with age she could possibly be seen as more wiser. The choice of drink was also chosen carefully, if I had chosen a spirit or cocktail she would have been portrayed as a younger, more immature girl ready to party.

 Other things that we have learnt since the preliminary task include the camera steadyness, we could not always use the tripod as we wanted to pan, zoom and show difference parts of the room at a specific pace, for this reason we needed to appreciate the patience of a steady hand - although in the film not all the shots are completely steady. We had tried our best to capture the qualities of a proffesional camera man/woman. Our preliminary task showed things in the scene that didn't need to be there, however in our final task we proved thatwe had learn to think about everything in the scene to make sure it was all appopriate and that it fitted into what we were trying to convey. We also learnt to focus on the mise en scene to portray the correct feeling we wanted our scene to have, for example. the dark lighting, the different type of room(to suit the different character's personality), the props and extra items to give additional information.
 In addition, we learnt how to edit on the program final cut pro, the cutting of the sound in certain areas enabled us to add music, or other speech which helped us convey our technological skills, the skipping of certain parts of the video meant we could get rid of many of the unwanted clips we had produced, we were able to create text over the video- which we edited and made the title and the names of our actors and producers, we also learnt how to mesh certin clips together, this proved useful in our video call as it enabled us to show the audience that the charcaters were speaking together. These programming qualities we learnt proved to be very effcetive as it gave us the chance to make our film look proffesional and helped the clips to flow together creating a succint short film. Our team working skills were also put to the test as we began assesing everyone's best skills and putting them in different roles according to their strengths. For example, I did alot of editing (more towards the end of our time in order to look over it and make it flow more) and filming (Kimberley - 'Cassie's' Scene, which I enjoyed as I tried to get a varied amount of shots throughout the filming process, that was my best attribute towards the group.

Filming notes

I used this picture as a template as to what I wanted my eyes to look like for the film. It was a simple smokey-eye, which was the original plan for my make-up. I didn't want to go too extravagant because the character's personality is not extra-vert.

Girls who wear make up and like to keep up appearances would find my character suitable to their social setting for example I think my character is the most girly out of everyone therefore certain social groups (like girly- girls) will find that they have something in common with my character. We used this as a tool to create a response in the audience and it helps create a dependency for the survival of the different characters. the dependency helps reel the audience in and its what's going to make them sit at the edge of their seats and hope that their favourite character comes through.




This was one of the accessories I used for filming, I used this gleaming bracelet to add pops of colour which was part of my character's personality.
The jewellery contributes to the characters personal style and this helps represent the interest of certain audience members, in the film the others are fairly dressed down however Eva is more extravagant, it was important we made this difference clear as it ensured that although the girls were all friends and shared similarities in interests we all had different traits and personalities. It is these different traits and personalities that allure the audience. These small touches add to the overall enhancement of the portrayal of the character and it enable the audience to grasp the character in a more detailed way.

Target audience demographic

Audiences that enjoy thriller films could choose to see our film as that's the main genre in the film. However we decided to narrow it down the likely age range that would go to watch this Thriller, here are some of the reasons why they might be there to watch it. On average the most common age range to go to the cinema is anyone between the ages of 16 and 24. Because of this we decided it would be a good idea to try and target these specific people so that if we were going to film the rest and put it in the cinemas then it would gain optimum profit. We have made the film appeal to both males and females. 

To make the target demographic easier to analyse I have split the groups into 3:

• 16-17 Girls
• 18-24 Girls
• Boys - this is more general as boys in the same age range from 18-24 have the same common interest as oppose to females.

Girls.

We have targeted 16-17 girls because they mostly like to go to parties or aspire to go to them when they enter university (freshers weeks are aimed at targeting young party fuelled adults). This is the stage when they are going through sixth form or college which could be a stressful time and they like to have fun. The girls in the film are also young actors and are based to be from this age group. The girls in the group have different personalities and that is why they have become great friends, they are able to play against each others strength. This movie would also appeal to girls as they like the idea of having a loyal group of friends. This may help boost confidence of those girls that feel they are alone. We have targeted 18-24 year old's because they are the most common ages to go to the cinema, we have adapted the start of our film to target them as the actors are young and they are playing as young girls. Another thing that would appeal to this age range of girls is the dress sense because they are all different styles which are popular at the current time. The girls in the film are meant to be girls at university and college who tend to go out to parties frequently.


Boys.
In general boys are attracted to things that would give them an adrenaline rush which is apparent in action adventures, horrors and thrillers. The film should also appeal to girls which makes it easier for the boys to take their girlfriends out to see a film that they would both enjoy. If the boys did use this as a date film, it gives them the chance to console their scared girlfriends during and at the end of the film if needed. There is also a sexual nature to the film which would appeal to the boys because there are attractive girls going to the 'IT' party in Uni and there will be girls of all different natures. This could include some ‘slutty’ girls like the character of Cassie going to the party.