Heather Close Evaluation (New)

Heather Close Evaluation Matt Duval

Contents Page Click here to view my Final Video Click here to go back to my Blog Question Slide Number In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge conventions? 3 How does your media product represent particular social groups? 9 What kind of media institution might distribute your film and why? 11 Who would be the audience for your media product? 14 How did you attract/address your audience? 16 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product 19 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? 22

To get Ideas for our film opening we needed to think of how other films portrayed the thriller genre. We picked this genre because it was most popular in our survey. (28% Blue Section)
We picked three films to analyse which were: Firewall, Face Off, and Phone Booth.
In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge conventions?

In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge conventions? (continued)
Firewall
We particularly liked the titles of this film opening. They are lime green on a black background. The titles faded slowly in and then slowly out. – This is one of the conventions we used in our own film opening (below).

Face Off
In Face Off we liked the how the sniper was slowly following John Travolta without him knowing just like we did in our film opening. There was also a shooting within the first minute or so of face off like our film opening.

Phone Booth
We liked Phone Booth because it makes you think “why is this happening?” this makes the audience want to keep watching the film to find out the answers. Our media also tries to leave the audience with unanswered questions in order to keep them interested in the film.
The music is repetitive and helps to build tension. We used this convention by also making our music repetitive. I feel that this works well with the genre we are using.

Establishing Shot
Phone Booth
Another convention of phone booth that we used in our opening scene was the establishing shot. In the Phone Booth scene there was a pan of the times square before the film began. This helps to show the audience where they are.

Other ways that our media used and challenged conventions
For example we lowered the light levels in our film because the most scenes in firewall were all black and white or dark colours
Another convention we used was from firewall, in firewall the man was been followed we tried to recreate this in our film.
We also used a the slow-motion scene when he gets shot. This is common in many thriller films.
A convention we changed was the one in firewall where he was taking photos of the man, we changed it to CCTV watching the boy in our film.
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How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film has lots of representations of social groups ranging from Race to Gender and Age .
Race – Our film represented black people as being vulnerable and targeted by showing a black boy being shot with a sniper rifle in the opening scene. I think that this is an old fashioned representation of back people as they are now seen a equals.
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How does your media product represent particular social groups? (continued)
Gender – The only people shown in this film are all male, I think that our film represents males as successful business men, victims and murderers. This is a common convention of the thriller genre as they often have a mainly male cast.
Age – Our film could depict a modern stereo typical representation of teenagers being mischievous people. Or you could see him in a more old fashioned representation where teenagers are seen as humble and innocent. The teenager might of even been mistakenly identified and shot for something he had nothing to do with.

What kind of media institution might distribute your film and why?
If we had the budget of a Hollywood film. It would of probably been distributed by a large global film distribution company. I believe this because our film used a lot of the conventions of a high budget blockbuster. But we had a budget of £0 so the most likely people to distribute our film would be a small independent film company.
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What kind of media institution might distribute your film and why? (Continued)
I think that it would be distributed by Metrodome Films because the film would probably not be noticed by big distributors such as Universal Vivendi and Twentieth century Fox.
If we had a higher budget to buy better equipment to use in our films I think that our film would have more distributors willing to distribute it. An example of one of the films distributed by Metrodome would be Shifty.
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What kind of media institution might distribute your film and why? (Continued)
Without a high budget it is possible to distribute your film for free using the websites such as YouTube or Indie Movies Online.
I think that as time goes on and we get more views on the Internet. Our company will become better known which could attract the attention of distribution companies, looking for new film production companies.
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Who would be the audience for your media product?
To determine the our audience we have chosen to carry out a survey
These are the results of the survey displayed as pie charts
The average viewer for our type of film is a seventeen year old male.
I would rate this film a 15 because most other films with the same
content are rated 15. This rating would also allow 88% of the peopole we surveyed to watch our film.
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Who would be the audience for your media product? (continued)
Here are some more results from out target audience survey
We found out that on average members of our target audience go out to the cinema 1-10 times per year.
Our survey says that most people prefer to watch high budget blockbusters rather than low budget independent films.
From this we have decided to make our film opening similar to a high budget film opening.
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How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience buy making the opening minutes of are film suspenseful.
We also don’t reveal too much information, which leaves the viewer with unanswered questions, which they are keen to find out – this makes them want to continue watching the film until the end.

How did you attract/address your audience? (continued)
To attract the audience we tried to variety the of shots from different angles and in different locations. This helps the audience to keep viewers so they remain interested in the film and do not get bored.
We also made our own music for the film sound track. The music didn’t turn out as good as we would of liked because some of the strings were removed when we converted from Logic to an MP3 File. The music was made repetitive so the audience concentrate on the video rather than the sound.

How did you attract/address your audience? (continued)
The shooting was also in slow motion which shows that that scene is important to the audience.
This is one of the most significant parts of the film because it is part where the actor gets answers the phone, gets shot and then falls to the floor.
The slow motion effect was applied to the video and the sound effect of the sniper rifle.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product
Editing
The program we used for editing was called Adobe Premier Pro. I think that this program gave us a professional looking film opening. When we started to edit none of us had any prior knowledge of the editing program. So this forced us to learn how to use it from scratch. We had to ask our teachers for help, but we tried to solve most of the problems on our own.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product
Editing
We have all learnt a lot about editing software and editing during our project.
I have learnt how to add a slow motion effect to the film and when they are needed during the film.
I have also learnt how to film and edit a match on action. We managed to use one of these when the phone was used one of these in our film when the actor dropped his phone on the floor. (screenshot below)
At the beginning the editing was easy but when you get to the more complicated things it becomes more time consuming.
One of the problems that we with the editing was transferring the music from garage band to adobe premier pro. This was a lot harder than we initially thought and took lots of our time.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product (continued)
Cameras
We used new media technology in the construction of our film. To film our short film we chose to use Canon MD 205 digital video cameras. We also used a low cost Jessop's tripod to keep the camera steady and provide a smooth pan for our establishing shot.
What I have learnt about cameras:
I have learnt that this type of camera is cheaper and easier to use than a traditional film camera.
These cameras create digital videos which can be quickly edited and transferred much easier than non-digital films.
Also if the fold out screen is folded in during filming it will conserve the battery life of the camera, making it last longer.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? At the start of the year we did a preliminary task where we had to film someone walking through a door. We had to show that we could use continuity - this means that we had to keep everything the same and couldn't edit it or make any changes to it. The preliminary task video that we filmed was not great. It contained lots of camera shake as we didn’t use a tripod. We also used the zoom feature on the camera and went all the way from a wide shot to a close up. This looked terrible when we watched it back on a larger screen. In our final project we were allowed to fully edit it and use as many shots as were needed. We learnt from our mistakes in the preliminary task and used a tripod to get a steady shot with no camera shake. We also moved the camera rather than the zoom to get closer to the actors. This made our final project look much better than our preliminary task

Heather Close Evaluation (New)

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