Evaluation

We decided to evaluate our first film opening, 'Porphyria' because it gained more marks due to the sound quality and more obvious use of skills. Here is the script I wrote from the notes we created for our evaluation, on Liberty's blog:
http://libertyshawmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/evaluation-script.html


Here is our final finished video opening for 'Porphyria'...

And here is our evaluation...

Evaluation Notes

Rough notes made by me and Liberty, on what kind of points we will make in our evaluation:

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

-       Uses the conventions of a normal horror, where the protagonists are oblivious, and then accidentally stumble upon something, to which the film is about.

-       Challenges this, where the victim is dying willingly, rather than typically resistant, which confuses the audience, which then fits the genre of the psychological aspect.

-       Challenges conventions of horror, where it happens in the daytime, rather than night-time, to make the audience feel like, any time is never safe

-       Challenges conventions where killers are usually male, (Saw) however fits the conventions of supernatural films, where the female is often the dangerous one. (E.g. The ring)

-       Topless Sam -  represents a victim as vulnerable and powerless, which uses genre conventions, but then challenges this when he is being sacrificed willingly. Connotations of rape – half-naked, tension, pinned-down, which is similar to distressing events to fit with the genre convention, but again is controversial when he is doing it willingly. This confuses the audience and fits the psychological genre.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Teenagers – curious, adventurous, girl = scared, vulnerable

Professionals in lab coats = scary, authority

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We decided that our production company will be a collaboration with the film company 'Lionsgate', an independent television and film distribution company in North America. The reason we chose this is because it has created many films with similar genre to ours, which is better than a bigger media ownership company like Universal or Columbia which don't specialise in particular genre's or smaller film projects

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Middle –class Teenagers – research shows they are interested in this type of genre because of their developing minds

This target audience are the most active in terms of social networking, cinema attendance, magazine buyers, and therefore it is easier and effective to advertise to them to make more money in the film industry.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Protagonists are the same as the audience – can relate to them.

Lab-coat people – represent middle class professions, to be controversial with the target audience

Both men and women involved so can relate to both genders.

Some researchers believe this type of thing represents the decay of society, which this generation seem to enjoy, where something irrational is happening.

Unrealistic to social norms, yet realistic enough to believe – escapism from the real world, which teenagers are most likely to want.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The range of effects on Sony Vegas to create appropriate atmosphere

Camera – taught each other how to use it

The learning of new technologies helped us be more independent, which helped us to reach early deadlines

Blogger  - learnt how to record our progress, and edit posts in terms of layout and importing pictures/videos etc. Became the important source for the development of our project.

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

-       Developed camera skills

-       How to make it more professional in Vegas

-       Worked better as a group – splitting up responsibility

-       Learnt how to be more creative in Vegas using a range of effects and transitions

-       How different types of music can make it appear different or make the audience feel something different

-       Developed a good sense of obvious storyline in terms of target audience

-       Effective use of our time

-       Developed better knowledge on how specific setting creates a certain atmosphere in a film

-       Adapted well from when we lost a member of the group and gained a new one

Final Version

Here is the final version of our video:

We made the following changes due to our feedback:

 - Changed the music to two tracks called 'Creepy Music Box' and 'Scary Music' where they both sound like eerie music boxes to create a more mysterious atmosphere, and seem to fit with the pace and footsteps of the whole clip.
 - Changed the contrast of all the 'inside' clips to make them look darker and creepier.
 - Increased all the volumes on speech to make it clearer and easier to hear.
 - Improved 'jumpy' clips that didn't run smoothly.
 - Cut down the length of the credits clips, to make them not 'drag on' too much and to cut down the length of the whole opening which was over the time limit. 
 - Cut down clips of the couple walking, to again cut down to within the time limit.
 - Changed the date on the transition text, so the clothes of the characters fit better with the time period. 
 - Cut out the flash of the hooded figure as the couple enter the room, as it seemed irrelevant and too random.
 - Changed the text colour and tracking of the title text, to make it fit more with the genre and to seem more eerie and mysterious.
 - Cut down all of the clips of the victim and the figures in lab-coats at the end, in order to stay within the time limit
 - Added in flashes of the mirror and peacock, in place of the flash of the hooded figure, because they set the scene and are less confusing for the audience.
 - Cut out some of the background noise in the speech sounds, such as loud bangs, to make it sound clearer.

Feedback

Most of the feedback from our first draft was very positive, where people thought a lot of the clip worked well, which shows an improvement from our last coursework piece.

• A lot of people were concerned with the music, where the second part (The cover of 'Famous Last Words) didn't fit with the genre conventions, which we had tried to seem ironic, but we can change this to make it more understandable.
• Some people also said the title text colour didn't work or fit with the rest of the film, so this is something we can easily change.
• A few people said the longer 'flash' sequence confused them, so this is something we can work on or cut down.
• Our opening ended up being a time of 2:43, when the limit is two minutes, so when we asked the question on which bits to cut out, the only parts people really said were to cut down some of the clips of the couple walking into the building. Apart from this, there wasn't anything else useful for cutting down the time, so we shall work on this ourselves probably in the actual opening credit titles sequence.

More detail on the exact answers: http://www.libertyshawmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/feedback.html

Feedback Form For First Draft

After completing our first draft, we created a feedback form for people to fill in and give us comments.

 

 

Liberty First Draft

Here is the first draft of our second film opening 'Liberty'.

Out-Takes

Out-takes from our film opening 'Liberty':

Credits

As we did in our previous credits, we used Wikipedia to find the order of opening credits that should appear on the film officially, and as well as our main roles, we assigned each other particular roles which would be used on the credits, which is a lot more than in our last project.

• (NAME OF THE STUDIO) (LIONSGATE Studios, the large, existing studio pictures company that we decided our production company should be associated with)

• (NAME OF THE PRODUCTION COMPANY) (Masquerade Productions, our own production company)

• STARRING (Kane Mitchell, Abby Haley)

• (FILM'S TITLE) (Liberty, which we will actually have after the credits as part of our revelation and suspense techniques)

• FEATURING (Samuel Snowdon, Alexandra Haley, Liberty Shaw, Liam Hand)

• CASTING or CASTING BY (Alexandra Haley)

• MUSIC or MUSIC COMPOSED BY or ORIGINAL SCORE BY (My Chemical Romance, performed by Eric Wuest)

• PRODUCTION DESIGN or PRODUCTION DESIGNER:

• SET DESIGN and COSTUMES or COSTUMES BY (Alexandra Haley)
• EQUIPMENT TECHNICIAN (Chris Haley, who took us to the location and helped us set up)

• EDITOR or EDITED BY (Rosy Armitage)

• DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY (Liberty Shaw)

• PRODUCER or PRODUCED BY (Rosy Armitage)

• STORY or STORY BY (Lili Arlo - a made-up name using the first and second letter of each of our names)

• DIRECTOR or DIRECTED BY (Liam Hand)

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opening_credits)

Filming

We filmed our video clips on Sunday 3rd March, where on Saturday the 2nd March we spent the day preparing props and costumes, and watching films for inspiration. We drove up to the location in the middle of no-where in North Yorkshire, and spent a lot of time moving furniture around to create our setting, and covering up mis-en-scene that wasn't necessary, as well as changing into costume and doing make-up. We explored the area and decided which parts of the location were best for filming. We then filmed the opening object scenes which we thought we needed for the credits, and then moved onto filming outside shots, followed by all the inside shots. In some cases it took several attempts to get the right shots, but we got a variety. 

We ended up doing a few things differently to our shot list, such as not including the 'blood dripping' scenes as we felt no need for them and found them difficult to film. We also didn't make use of all the rooms, only one room with stairs up to a balcony, as we thought this only had the appropriate lighting and mis-en-scene for our opening. We all varied in roles, with directing and filming and acting, and overall we enjoyed it.

We planned to use this room, but decided it was too cluttered and didn't fit the genre conventions:

A few shots of our setting:

Music

We all decided that the song 'Famous Last Words' by My Chemical Romance would be a good song to use in our opening because it relates very well to our concept of last words, and is a very dramatic and powerful song:

For copyright reasons, we decided to use a cover of the song. We have chosen a violin cover because it seems to fit well with out theme and in some places is almost ironic, but we shall edit is slightly to make it sound more 'creepy', as well as for copyright reasons. The person doing the cover we have asked permission from through YouTube messages, to which he replied saying we can use it, which is a lot simpler than trying to get permission for the original.

We also decided to use the music 'Rising Tension' from a copyright free Youtube channel called 'Bye Bye Copright'. We think this is useful because it creates suspense within the credits to already keep the audience hooked, as well as having quite a calm atmosphere to begin with, which fits well with our imagery, that can create quite an eerie effect to our video.

Film Name

We decided to use the name 'Liberty' for our film, because we firstly thought one word would have more impact than a whole phrase, and it also is a very strong concept in society today. We thought it would be effective if the last words of our victim in our film opening, were also the film title, and so 'Liberty', which means 'freedom', can relate well in the sense that the victim is accepting death as a form of freedom, which works well with the fact he is willingly accepting his death. We first found inspiration for this title from a member of our group's name: Liberty Shaw.

Risk Assessment

Here is the risk assessment drawn up by Liam, which we used to take safety precautions in order to do our filming.

Storyboard

Here are our storyboards for the filming of our opening:

More information on Rosy Armitage's blog HERE