Evaluation

Evaluation

Final Cut!

Rough Cut

This is our rough cut we have decided that we need to re-shoot some scenes because the framing at the beginning in the internal location of Scotts cousins house, which we have decided to call the male protagonists house. This means that the top of the male protagonists head has been cut off so the rule of thirds has not been put in place because the focus should be the centre of the male protagonists face in one of the close ups at  . However, its slightly out of place so conveys an unprofessional piece of media. we also need to edit the end so it is as though time is passing as the doors open because it looks too much like a rough cut from when the male protagonist is looking at the CCTV cameras.

Theses are more changes we need to make to the rough cut to produce our final cut from Louise Wilmhurst's (Loua's) blog. I agree with all the changes that need to be made.

We also need to create a title for our opening sequence because although we have decided its an action thriller it needs a name.

Survey

This survey will help us evaluate our opening of the thriller because it will obtain opinions of people both out and in side our target audience.
The results:

This table compares what males and females thought the sub-genre of the film was however in the survey I worded the question wrong and asked what the thriller genre was which I was worried that would lead to some confusion for customers filling in the questionnaire. However the audience understood fine and answered at a staggering  68% for females and 80% for males. I think this could have been biased because we asked a lot of the students from our media class to fill in the survey.

This pie chart shows the ratio of males and females that took the questionnaire. As 60% were male and 40% were female, it suggests that the survey could have been biased. This is probably because we posted it on twitter and Facebook so we could not choose who to take the survey. This means that if we had more time we could have gone out to a busy high street and asked people to fill in the quick survey after watching the opening sequence on an iPad. This is because in order to fill in in the survey people are required to watch the thriller first. Even though this would be time consuming at a possible four minutes survey for each person it would have given us more equal results as we could of chosen how many males to ask and how many females to ask.

These two pie charts show the differences between age and gender who took the questionnaire. On one hand males aged 10-20 were 35% but on the other hand there was 45% of females of this age which suggests that younger audiences have answered as they are more frequent users of Facebook and twitter. Furthermore, there is 30% of males aged 21-30 whereas there is 25% of females of this age. This could suggest that more males are interested in thrillers at this age. There are 16% males aged 31-40 however there are 15% of females of the same ages. Thus this could mean less people are into thrillers Facebook and twitter at this age. There is an equal amount of 41-50s for both males and females at 11%. This could mean less people like thrillers at this age. There is 8% males of ages 51+ that took the questionnaire and 4%  of females. This all shows a negative correlation because as the ages decreases so does the interest in our product.However as shown from the bar chart below which compares males and females that would like to carry on watching the film. It suggests that males are significantly more likely to continue watching  which means we could expand our target audience to 21-40 from 15-30 as it was before therefore we have a broader target audience of 15-40.

This shows that more males wanted to carry on watching the film than females this is probably because males prefer thrillers and females prefer rom-coms. also our actor is male which encourages more males to like the film as it is connoting that males are more dominant. 

The fact that the highest percentages are for ethnicity means we have put enough mise en scene symbolizing the characters ethnicity of being Russian into the opening sequence. For example the Russian vodka, the flag, and the hat all represent that the character is of a Russian origan. I also think our actor has a European look to him which adds to the symbolic effect especially when he creates the diegetic dialogue of the Russian words that translate to "yes I've got it" referring to the brief. All of these are signs of the the characters ethnicity which our audience understood.

I think I worded this question wrong and should have asked why the person thought that it was the representation they had chosen. However, what we plan to do is upload the final cut to YouTube and ask for peoples comments to see what people really think about the opening  sequence to our action thriller The Brief.

Once again I feel this is quite bias because we encouraged a large amount of students from our media class to fill the survey in . However I still think that others who filled in the survey thought it was a 15 because it has vodka, guns and Russians involved and Russians are usually stereo-typically associated with  spy's. Also the red titles are symbolic to danger and violence which means this is indexically consistent to the rest of the film.

Lastly there is a huge difference between those who thought that it was original compared to those that though it was cliche. This may have been because some people may not have understood the term cliche. Therefore, throughout the survey I could have used too advanced terminology for people that do not study media.

these two graphs are in answer to the question do you think the music is suitable? This shows that 19% females did not think it was suitable and 81% did think it was suitable. Whereas 13% males did not think it was suitable and 87% did think it was suitable. This suggests that the music was suitable because the majority of our target market thought they were.

While filming!

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the first filming session on 3rd March 2013 because I had other commitments made prior to the organisation of this. Therefore Scott and Loua went to film the first part of shot list the where they filmed at Scott's cousins house. However I was able to attend on the 7th March 2013 as shown on the photo below (Loua's taking the photo):

While filming it was quite difficult because when we looked up the time the train was due to come and when we got there it came earlier than expected so there wasn't enough time to set the tri-pod back up after filming from the other side of the track.  Thus we have scheduled to film again on the 14th March 2012 because the shots were too wobbly to use. Also when I got back after filming I up-loaded the footage to the computer and started to edit it. However, when my class mates watched the clips the lens was for some reason blurry so they deleted the work I had done, obviously I wasn't very happy about that but they eventually apologized after they realized they should have just rendered it. So Scott has now re-edited everything I had done and we shall all be re shooting scenes tomorrow and possibly Sunday. 

Shot List

Loua made this shot list as we have now decided to create roles for each of us
I am the researcher
Scott is the Editor/camera man
Loua is the Leader/organizer hence why she organised a schedule for us to try and keep unfortunately the problems that arose prevented us from keeping to these dates.

Actor

We had to find another actor to fit the Russian persona of our character so we found Callum Welsh in our media class who has a European look to him.

Props!



This is Russain Vodka which represents the ethnicity of our actor.

 

The gun connotes violence, the pattened folder "map of London" written on it symbolising that there is a map of london inside it however this is difficult to read because of the small font. this happens again with the brief the paper with the russain words "Toll Cekpet" this means that the audience miss the sybols being made and may need a close up to show detail. like the photo below:





This is the inside of the brief showing the mission ahead for the russain spy

This is the next page of the brief which has a russain flag on it to reinforce the representation of Russain ethnicity.

Filming in a station Location!

As we are hoping to film on a train station we need to get permission so I have researched into this and found that professional companies have to pay a fee, fill in an application, write a risk assessment meet with someone in the rail networks team to discuss safety measures all with seven days notice and as we are running out of time with filming we may not be able to do it in a train station therefore I have written an E-mail that I found to try and persuade them without the hassle as we are students on a low budget. Hopefully we will obtain confirmation sooner rather than later.

email to Felicity Jump about filing on a station



I then got a reply within the same hour which said:

So I researched into the national rail enquiries and found a number after being put on hold several times they gave me another number which once I called gave me the email address of an Emma Gacione who two days later has not replyed. Therefore as our deadline is coming in thick and fast we may have to change the ending.



Email to Emma Gascione

ok so bad news we have not had a reply from Emma Gasocione but we had heard of an A-level group going to Gerrards Cross station and it was fine so we decided to jsut go and film without asking for permission.

Once again we came to a dead end and were asked to leave as they thought we were filming for profitable purposes, so have now decided to go to Seer Green station as it has no desk.

We are not really sure where this is so we have changed our minds again to go to Denham Station which even though it is further away it is easier to drive to because we know where it is more.

  

This is the photo of Denham station

New Story Board

This is our new idea in a storyboard!

Changes

Since last time I blogged a large quantity of changes have happened to our project. We have decided that the first shot of a hand held point of view (POV) camera angle too difficult to obtain. This is because it would take a lot of practise to get a wrist to act as a neck. At the beginning of this process we wanted to be inventive and create a brand new idea. However we have found that with the low budget it us easier to go with traditional ideas. Therefore the fact that this shot is used at the beginning of the thriller means that there are no establishing shots which the research contains a lot of the time. Also as the beginning of our opening has quite a few of theses hand held POV shots we have come up with a more simplistic idea. Thus starting from scratch while being traditional simplistic and not cliche!

The idea is of an Action Thriller in which a Russian receives a phone call says a Russian word for "yes" which is  looks through his brief of the mission and then gets his bag to go to the Gerrards Cross Train station to for fill his mission the last shot should be of the train doors closing to leave it on a cliff hanger. We were worried that this would be too short and simple so was thinking to get the Russian character to plan his mission by visiting the areas in London and taking photos of the location he was going to carry out the crime of killing one of the royals. However we felt this was too long and the photographing bit too cliche.

Analyzing an Action Thriller

So now that are doing an action thriller I have decided to review this video:


Camera Angles
A wide variety of camera angles used including ped-down, long shots, pans, over the shoulder shots and many more. features of character not revealed until quite a while into the beginning of the sequence to create suspense and to properly establish/introduce a new character.

Music
Non diegetic score digital connotes its modern and the guitar is a string instrument that creates tension in the title sequence which fades out after credits dips to black. blurred credits in time with sinister non diagetic music In time  Dietetic sounds of the train creates continuity. Foley sound of a gun shot just before drums kick into the title.

Mise-en-scene
The prop of the news paper article created verisimilitude because it was designed like one and had large font which explained more of the plot "Criminal Master Mind Still At Large".
Another prop of a cigarette which is indexical the fact that he dropped it and stepped on it, connotes that he smoked it before as this is the habit people have experienced or seen. This could could interpreted two scenarios either nervous or rebellious.
The costume of  black shoes black trousers black tie white shirt and grey coat symbolism a mysterious businessman.
body language of animated photographed guy tense as holding a prop of a gun.
Body language and facial expressions didn't connote much emotion as it was relaxed because he was just getting onto a train which isn't dangerous but seemed to be concentrating on reading the news paper.

Editing
Title sequence before scenes connotes action thriller immediately
blurred credits create mystery and tension
zoom out of title in capitals to show importance "Money" on black back ground fade from white to America dollars in text - fade out bigger the rest of the credits and centered to reinforce importance
animation in credits - bold big credit not capitals "Arial" 
animated gun in sink with real gun being picked up 
clear cuts to to give a false sense of security 
fade to black to convey time movement
cut off going to sit down on the train 

Magazine research

For another part of my media exam we will have to discuss convergence and expansion if magazines therefore I made some notes of the research I made about the changing magazine world.

how are magazines print changing becuase of new media technologies?

My case study
 

we then presented our research about our case study and peer assessed them

Next we had to find an article that was about the ever changing media world:

we wrote notes on them and then discussed what we found out in small groups so that we would be able to have five artiles that we could comment on in the exam.

Shooting schedule

Shooting schedule

Our actors consist of Reece Collins (as victim) and Aidan (as killer)

Day 1 (Sunday 27th January)

1) POV shot of Reece lying down, waking and beginning to struggle

3) Pan to left (still POV) to reveal syringe on table and zoom in

4) Close up of the syringe with Reece in background panicking 

5) Over shoulder shot of Reece looking over and up to the window

6) POV shot of Reece lying down and identifying the white lab coat hanging up.

Day 2 (Tuesday 29th January)

 However this was rearranged to Thursday 31st January because the actors couldn't make it and we couldn't change them as we used them on th 27th

1) POV shot of Reece lying down, lifting his cut hand up to the camera

2) Over the shoulder shot of Aidan's hand on Reece's shoulder and injecting him

3) Medium shot of Aidan and Reece fighting and struggling-using tracking

4) POV shot of Reece lying down, and Aidan slowly walking towards him

Loua (Louise Wilmhurst) made the shooting schedule I feel we added more shots to the shot list that were not in our story board. This is because in our story board most of the camera shots were hand held but this made it difficult as this wasn't detailed enough so didn't flow.

Lighting More Research

The Big Combo

Low Key
In filming, the lighting of a scene so that there is a contrast between dark and light areas, making artistic use of deep shadows. Low-key lighting is used effectively in dramatic presentations to create variety and establish mood, particularly in thrillers as its as if something is lurking in the shadows. In film noir it is especially traditional to use low key lighting to increase tension as there is more of a juxtaposition between light and dark as seen in the picture on the right of two silhouetted figures in The Big Combo which was filmed in 1955. Another more recent use of low key lighting would be in the tailor of a film called Brick as it hides the features of the character creating a climax of tension and mystery.

High key lighting is basically the opposite of low key lighting (high contrast) as high key lighting has low contrast for example in the wizard of oz:

This photo is of page 39 from OCR media studies for AS third edition by Julian McDougall. This primary research explains that even though we have a low budget there are still lots of ways to use lighting.

Evaluation 2

What is the Represention of your fillm opening?

Unfortunatley I'm not entirely sure what our thriller is trying to represent because I thought it was conveying two streriotypical males. However I don't think it is a strong enough representation I think is should be social status but my group may disagree with me. I wanted it to be ethnicity but once we chose our actors we couldn't turn back as they are both white British males.

What is the instution for the film opening?


What Genre is the film opening?

The genre is a crime thriller as connoted throught the red and blue flashing lights however if we cannot edit this on the computers as predicted then we were thinking of getting another actor wearing a police hat or costume that signifies crime through police.

Who is your target audience?
We were thinking that the audience would be males aged 15-30 because we have rated the film a 15 and males dominate the sences shot.

Metal Hammer Analysis

We started a project to create a presentation about a magazine I was assigned metal hammer and so started by looking up the publisher, we learnt what synergy was -promotion of other arms of the pulishers business and then finished by analyising the front cover, contents pagest and feature pages  and explaining how they would appeal to the target audience. I tried to reduce the amount of writing on the powerpoint by making bullet point so I don't read off the board as I have a habit of doing so.

Setting

POV shot of Loua's Garage looking right

POV shot of Lou's garage straight on

Loua's Garage

Loua's Garage

to the right of Loua's garage

from the door of Loua's garage

the outside of loua's garage

We decide to film here because it was close to school (within walking distance) therefore at any time in frees or after school we could go and do the filming. It is also close to where Scott lives which outnumbered me as I wanted to film in my shed as I felt it was more eerie  but we voted and thus decided to use loua's garage.

Animatic!

In class we had to design an animatic by taking individual photos of our cut up storyboard in order and then add music and titles to it so that the director has a general idea what the plot is with camera angles through shots.



This

2013 up until Easter

So once we have ordered the story board this is what we have to do before Easter: