1. Coursework Evaluation Answers Draft
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
The genre of our opening sequence is a dance drama therefore we
have used multiple dance choreography shots to illustrate this. The
costume was a leotard, tights and ballet shoes these construct the type
of dance we are focusing on, similar to that of the beginning of Step
Up, the female dancers were wearing the same clothing so we
developed our idea from this. A dance studio was used for the setting;
we didn’t use a classroom or a street because that would wrongly
challenge the reality of the film, so we stuck to the dance convention.
The camera angles we used made our actor/dancer elegant and
feminine and we focused on her arm extensions, jumps and travelling
for example the tracking of her feet. This follows the conventions of
dance films as they focus on the parts of the choreography that stand
out.
We didn’t make the editing jumpy or have the cross cuts to quick as
we wanted to portray a smooth and gracious dancer and that the
audience could make the link that the dancer’s personality was similar.
However the subtle flashes between shots gave a tenser feel that we
wanted to achieve which is perhaps different and challenges the
conventions of dance films. We had more of an original idea and this
needed to be shown through the editing.
The music we chose is soft piano but has very subtle hints of a
dramatic storyline, we did not use pop music or your typical dance
like music as the style of dance was quite different and we stuck to the
stereotypical view of ballet and chose something classical and smart
which suited the genre of film that we have portrayed.
2. 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and
why?
Our distribution would be American Hollywood Film Industry as that is
the market we are working in. We have chosen Hollywood as they have
big budgets for films and we would want our film to be a big Hollywood
budget film. http://www.arthousefilmsonline.com/about.html
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
We have learnt how to use Adobe Premier Pro to cut shots, rearrange
them and how to change the speed or duration. We’ve also developed an
understanding of how to dissolve shots together or one shot to black or
vice versa, by using cross dissolve. Also we have used luma curve and
other colour enhancements to make the visual a higher quality or for or
sequence more shadowed. We’ve learnt how a film actually comes
together and is processed. (add others)
We have used After Effects to stabilize the shots so that they smooth
from one to the next better, this adds to continuity.
We used a camera for the filming of the sequence and a Rig which helps
keep the camera steady so our shots flow. This worked really well and
made the quality of our shots better. (short doc)
For our music we started using Garage Band to loop piano and strings
tracks, but eventually we knew we’d better results if we bought a track
from iTunes amelie comptine d'un autre ete.
3. Tumblr has been used as our blog station to write down all that has
happened and what we have learnt in the process. However we have used
a variety of different media technologies as blog posts, cameras have
been used for the filming of ourselves talking about our sequence, as well
as IPods for filming and transferring data. We have used Dictaphones for
podcasts as another way of showing our wide use of media. As
presentation we have used Prezzi. (Add others) and we have used Cam
Studio to record what we have been doing on the computer in the editing
software we have used.