Friday 8 April 2011

Evaluation What have you learned about media technologies

Who would be the audience for the media product?

Lifestyle summary of Nathan Francis (typical target audience)
Nathan is a 18 year old mix-race male who attends St Charles Sixth form Colleges. He's currently taking Music, Media, Drama and English, he's aspiring to be a music events manager.

Nathan Francis

On a saturday night you may find the following items in his sidebag.
  • His Blackberry
  • Juicy fruit chewing gum
  • Moped keys
  • House keys
  • Carmex
  • Cigarettes
  • Lighter.
On a saturday night Nathan is most likely to be getting ready to go out raving out with his two close friends, Jerome and Tion.










They usually goto IF bar in Ilford, sometimes Nathan performs on stage as in his spare time he raps.















Also in his spare time he likes to see his girlfriend Sasha and her family, most Sundays he goes to her house for sunday dinner. Nathan and Sasha love watching films when together, which are usually rented or at the cinema. The last 5 films they watched at the cinema were:

  • The Rite
  • Anuvahood
  • Unknown
  • Number 4
  • West is West

The last 5 rented films they watched were:
  • Chopper
  • Salt
  • Im gunna git you sucka
  • Grownups
  • Friday
Nathan enjoys comedy, actions films, and horrors, however sasha hates horrors so they both watch thrillers together.

Audience Feedback

After the screening of the thrillers I asked 3 people that had watched it at the cinema, and someone who hasn't taken media before. Below is a video of what they thought.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

EVALUATION What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract your audition?



'Asleep' is a suspense thriller written and directed by Tony Lawson, he founded his cinematography production company FLIKBOX Motion Pictures in 2009 and 'Asleep' was their first official short film. The student film was filmed with a $20 budget (£12.26), and shot on JVC GY-HD110U. It has 23,623 views on youtube where it was first published. Not only did youtube give him constructive feedback it was able to help promote the independent production company.




This gave me the idea to also promote our thriller 'The Other Side' using youtube. Youtube's biggeset advanytage as its available to everyone regardless of age, gender etc, theres no specific audience, and its free. However there are some downfalls such as the idea or actual film can be copied by anyone.




Another type of media institution is Facebook, Facebook is used worldwide by over 500 million people. A lot of people use Facebook to promote or showcase their products/services including for example Adam Deacon used Facebook to promote his film 'Adulthood'; this was the best type of promotion for his film as his target audience was mainly young adults/teenagers and Facebook is widely used by these audiences therefore this made his promotion highly successful. 'The Other Side' could also be promoted via Facebook as its target audience is similar to 'Adulthood'. However, Facebook's disadvantage is that it the actual Facebook group/fanpage  depends largely upon open Facebook users to repost the links in order to make the fanpage popular.




Vimeo is another type of institution. Vimeo was created especially to encouraging individuals with a wide range of video interests; and inspire people to show their creative sides. It is not greatly used, but the people that do use all have similar interests unlike youtube, where the categories are vast.



Monday 4 April 2011

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

Before the creation of 'The Other Side' we had a preliminary task which was to make a short clip of a bag swap. The prelim task was very different to our thriller task as we were only just getting familiar with all the camera's and equipment and it had to be created and edited in a short space of time. Although there were a lot of downside's it was also a good experience to test different camera shots and how to use all the equipment. During filming a lot of mistakes were made but from our thriller you can see a major improvement from the camera angles used as in 'The Bag Swap' they were minimal.

A vital difference between our prelim and final thriller was that genre was totally different. Our prelim had one objective which was for the bag to be swapped but in our thriller we had many objectives for example to portray confusion as it was  a physiological thriller. In our prelim we also had no theme, costume and target audience unlike our thriller. In our prelim there was no titles but in our thriller the titles showed a lot about the thriller.

In our prelim we started with a small introduction about the film which tells you a bit about what you was going to see. In our thriller we started with the candi production ident which makes the thriller seem professional . In our our thriller as you see we have short long titles with a low fade at the back of them to show the intensity, in the prelim our  titles were at the end as the time period to create the clip and edit was so short we never had time to put it in the right position and our skills weren't developed as much so that we could it comfortably.







Since learning how to use the camera's for example gaining knowledge in zooming, panning and learning how to record we have put clips together using the video drive and editing them using Final Cut Pro. As you can see there is a shot from the prelim and a shot from the thriller you can tell the differents with the quality. In the thriller you can see how we have got used to the different camera angle shots as you can see its a low angle close up shot of the feet. On the other hand you can see in the prelim we had a shot were the person is not even in the shot as we were not used to panning the camera in different direction we lost sight of the character as the framming is poor, which shows how far we have come since the prelim as a group.


THRILLER
PRELIM
Another vital thing we have improved on is using the sound on Final Cut pro as in our prelim you can hear the noises in the background for example the rush and people talk which looked and sounded very un-proffesional, however in our thriller the sound is very effective as it the only thing you apart from the glass dropping which i felt was vital we got that right as it decreases the quality of the work.

                                                                  Location

The location was another big difference as the prelim was set in college there  is no thrilling element and you can immediately tell this is a college project but when doing our final thriller it was set in a all white bathroom which was off school ground which gave it a professional spice as it was not done by nobody else in AS Media this year so it was a very unique location.















                                                                  Outfit

The mis en scene like the outfit was also changed and made specific for the thriller unlike the prelim were it was just do it in whatever clothing you felt comfortable so it didn't portray nothing to the audience. In the thriller you see the outfit is all white which connotes purity and angel-ism but that is quickly changes when blood appears on his hands.



  








      
                                                                                                                            

                                                                   Effects/Editing

In our thriller we had used a lot of effects for example fades in and a glass smashed in rewind with also slow motion, we did this on Final Cut. Another use of editing was we used a cross dissolve transition which shows the same shot in two different perspective. We also incorparated a fade in which we thought it was more challenging and creative as it merges to scenes together and we did this a flashback motion. In our bag swap we also used a rewind which was incredible but we felt it was used to more  effect in the thriller as it showed the confusion unlike in the bag swap we used it but it never really had no effect on the audience, we also did this on Final Cut Pro. When using slow motion we wanted the audience to feel the characters emotion that is why we used this and a main inspiration for this was the video below.

                  
                                                           Technology

The technology was a big turn around as I personally never used a apple mac before and I feel I have improved because I have learnt how to edit, make sounds and how to use a Apple Mac comfortably as at the beginning I was a total amateur and had no experience using such a computer with a higher technology .














                                                                Teamwork

My time on this project I have learnt that teamwork is vital. My group went through alot of hard times as we never agreed on all aspects of the film. At the beggining we had diffulculties with the name as it was called deceptus but had to be changed as the audience might have percived it in a different way. We also had diffulcuties with attendence as at the begginging sometimes we had different members of our groups not turn up on certain occassions. Once we had a group meeting and sorted out all of our issues our team was very punctual and that made us achieve a great opening sequence. We all gave ourselves certain roles for example I was the actor/editor, Imani was the editor, Samarge the director and Michael the music producer. Overall I have learnt how to use a JVC camera, still camera's, memory cards and a tripod. My experience was good and I would defonetly do it again as I enjoyed working with a team throughout my filming process.