media

1. Media Studies Evaluation Adam Mughal

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

4. The sounds effect we used in our film were all sounds imported from the programme called iMovie. A frequent sound effect we used was called ‘Drone’, this is an eerie continuous sound used for the scenes with tension and anxiety, this helps to generate these things during the film. We also edited our film on iMovie. We sped up the beginning scenes of the man running to signify the start of something and slowed down the sections of the film when tension was arising. We also merged together clips with significant relevance so the shot involved plays on the mind of the audience and the scene becomes more engaging. We used plenty of editing techniques to make the film flow and become engaging. We used a Sony Handycam to film our main task and with the shots we had learned in lesson we constructed an opening to a film using these shots. We included such shots as high angle, low angle, long shot and establishing shot to open our film. Using these shots it enabled us to keep the stalked man’s face anonymous and build the plots story line. Also using the establishing shots allowed the audience to understand the story and what is going on. When filming our fast shots we used point of view shots and close ups to allow the audience to feel as if they were behind the camera and the close ups play significant importance to the item being focused on.

5. Another piece of technology we used during the shooting of our film was a tri-pod. This enabled us to film from heights, angles which provided a flexible scope of filming as we could capture the scene with a relevant camera shot. The tri-pod also allowed steady shots when needed, eg. When the two walkers are walking towards the camera the audience can clearly see the story unfolding and there is no disruption with camera work. Also when filming the anonymous sections of the film the tri-pod was advantageously useful, the tri-pod acting as a crane, held at height, looked down onto the running man preventing the audience from seeing his appearance. More over the tri-pod is convenient when filming a panning shot, the camera remains steady and it can be rotated during filming, twisting the camera along with the moving object.

6. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

9. The Walkers The walkers, Adrian Swart and Adam Mughal, are perceived as two very normal in every day life walkers who come across the situation of the stalker and victim in the house. They are both wearing hiking clothes which are stereotypical of every day walkers and look as if they are genuine characters on a walk through the woodlands surrounding the stalkers barn.

11. Film Comparisons The film Sleeping With the Enemy has many comparisons to our film. Julia Roberts played the victim who was being stalked by her estranged husband. Although the victim is female unlike our victim, we thought this is very stereo typical of stalker films and using two males would make our film unique. Once her estranged husband finds her he tires to kill her, something which was perceived in our film before the walkers intervened. They also use familiar camera shots, in particular close ups when the film is coming to en end, the plot starts to get tense so close ups emphasis that effect.

12. Who would be the audience for your media product?

14. What kind of media institutions might distribute your product and why?

15. What does a production company do? A production company is responsible for supervising the filming from concept to completion. The company may also be directly responsible for raising of funds for the production. They also chose the cast and the production crew (Directors etc.) and overall make sure the running of the film is smooth and try to correct any errors made. Our production company is called ‘AAAN Productions’ which stands for each letter of my groups first names. It was an easy way to find a name for our production company and everyone was happy with the naming. I created a logo for our production company which will be presented on advertisements etc. This will make customers recognize the logo and hopefully become well known.

17. Who would distribute it and why?

19. Option Two Paramount Pictures Corporation is a global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment, with robust and multi-faceted divisions across all areas including digital, home entertainment, network and cable television distribution, studio operations, and consumer products and recreation. A unit of the leading global entertainment content company, Viacom, Paramount is part of a family of prominent and respected brands including MTV Networks and BET Networks. Paramount consists of several film labels including, the legendary Paramount Pictures; leading youth brand, MTV Films; the preeminent family entertainment label, Nickelodeon Movies; and specialty film labels, Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics. In addition, the Studio will continue to release a number of films under the DW label. Paramount also has established distribution deals with iconic comic book creator, Marvel Entertainment and renowned animated film producer, DreamWorks Animation. Paramount Pictures Corporation

24. How did you attract/address your audience?

28. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of creating this product?

31. Ken Burns Effect This screenshot shows Alex on the far right in the way of the clip we needed to include in our film. To remove Alex we used an effect called Ken Burns. This will eliminate Alex which will leave the two walkers in the shot which is what our desired shot was. This screenshot shows how we selected where we wanted the shot’s boundaries of vision and the yellow line signifies the direction in which the screen pans out.

32. Here is what we began with, the shot of Alex filming on the right and the two walkers. We had to cut Alex out so we could continue to use the clip. This is the finished clip of Alex eliminated and this leaves Adrian and I in the shot. It has made the screen slightly smaller and also pans away whilst its playing. We then put this into our Main Task.

33. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt from the progression from it to the full product?

35. Preliminary Shots In this shot, Nick is being watched using a high angle shot, whilst being filmed the shot has a stiff feel because the tri-pod wasn’t moving in time with Nick and was slightly jittering towards the end. This shot is of Nick running from the scene, as he sprints out of the warehouse the shot is from behind him, and whilst he is running along the road the camera switches angle however the timing wasn’t accurate and the clip loses momentum. This shot shows the confrontation between Nick and I, this shot used shot reverse shot, which worked quite well because the audience saw the reactions of the two characters.

36. Main Task Shots This shot shows the psycho, Alex, taking the axe from underneath the cupboard. We placed the camera underneath focusing on the axe and when Alex reaches down to reach the axe, the shot is effective and engaging. This is a panning shot of when Nick is sprinting through the forest. This is a well worked shot because the pan is smooth and the clip becomes an action shot because the camera is following Nick sprinting towards the barn. This shot, from outside the window, is Nick tied up in captivity. The effectiveness of filming from outside the window is so that the audience feel like they are actually watching him which keeps them interested in the scene.

37. Preliminary Editing After the skills we had previously learnt, we started editing on our Preliminary Task. We first of decided what was to be used and what was to be used, so we had a group of clips that were good and could go straight into our film. We only briefly edited our preliminary due to lack of experience with the programme, although we had tried it out, there were more in depth effect which would gloss the film however we were not able to use these. We used sound effects and transitions to develop our film further but were limited to using these often as it would spoil the effect of them in the film.

38. Main Task Editing We found when editing our main task compared to our preliminary, that we could really dictate the effect we wanted to give from sections of our film, and this was due to the experience and using cameras and editing software. We had developed an understanding of where effects would fit best and used this many times in our main task. Because we focused our film on a stalker thriller we edited in quite a few jump cuts in the beginning to throw the audience straight into the action. We made sure there was emphasis on the jump cuts to engage the audience and make the action start away rather than slowly progressing the film until a climax . As you can see below editing of the sound we found a strong point, we managed to select the most appropriate sections of sound so that the whole film came together to present a typical thriller atmosphere. We managed to select an opening backing track to our film, we then overlapped a ‘Drone’ sound and faded out the backing track. Whilst this happens the film has a transition from the opening credits to the beginning of the film. We thought this was very effective and drew the audience into the film.