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Evaluation 6 and 7

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

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

Evaluation 4 and 5

Evaluation 4- Who would your audience be for your media product?
Evaluation 5- How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation 3

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

Evaluation 2

Evaluation 2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation 1

Evaluation 1- In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Costume

We picked muted colours in our costume because we wanted a very drab feel to the opening- that is, bright colours would have conveyed a positive emotion, which wasn't the statement we wanted to make at the beggining of the film- the muted colours set the atmosphere of the rest of the film.

Ripped jeans were a choice we made to make it abundantly clear that this is a normal teenager, not an agent or a spy, as ripped jeans are an item of clothing stereotypically worn exclusively by teenagers.

The coat was to accentuate the drab colours, and also because the setting of our film is late November, early December.

The attacker is wearing black to highlight his anonymity, and the gloves were a stereotypically villainous symbol to convey quickly who was the protagonist and who was the antagonist.

Props

We only had two props, the phone that the protagonist uses and the metal bar the attacker uses to knock her out. we were considering having the phone crack after it drops,  but decided that it would be too hard to read the completed downloading bar. We also briefly considered having the metal rod swapped out with a baseball bat, but realised that a hint metal rod was more realistic, as it is more easily concealed.

Actors

We were always going to have a teenage girl cast as the protagonist, but we had a few different ideas before we settled on Kira. But we finally felt that Kira had the right look of panic on her face when she shot the scenes that lent itself towards realism.

Originally the attacker was gong to be seen, before we decided to include POV shots in our opening, and we were going to cast a teenage boy as the attacker (at that point in planning it was an age appropriate casting decision). Unfortunately, those plans fell through and we then reworked the antagonists age, and included POV shots for effect, making it unnecessary to find a middle aged man to cast in the role, as the face of the attacker is not seen in our film.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire planned doesn't seem necessary anymore as all the pertinent questions were answered in the response to the showcase

Showcase and response

          



         


These are some of the reaction we captured after our opening was screened to parents and peers at the media showcase. The overwhelming consensus was that the female protagonist was a large draw for young female audiences. The only criticism we received was in regards to acting- something that is subjective, and the complaint wasn't consistent throughout the comments we received.

Similar products and target audience

Products similar to ours are:



'Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit' produced by Skydance Productions














'Ocean's Eleven' produced by Marv Films



'The Man From U.N.C.L.E'  produced by RatPac Productions



These products are marketed towards people the same age as the protagonist- namely males in their mid-thirties, but research shows that they wouldn't be interested in a film with a young female protagonist- and that young girls are interested in spy films with a female protagonist.

A single man

Title                        
A single man

Director            
Tom Ford

Writer         

• Tom Ford

• David Scearce

Distributed by     
The Weinstein Company


Production Company
Lawrence Bender Productions

Plot 

George Falconer is depressed and struggling to cope a year after his partner of 16 years, Jim, died in a car accident. He plans to commit suicide that night, but people that he meets that day change his mind, especially one of his students, Kenny Potter.

My review
This was an interesting film. Colin Firth's acting was phenomenal, and his portrayal was both touching and realistic. I, personally, loved the non-linear story. The flashbacks really added a richness to the emotions and events, that wouldn't have been there otherwise. The cinematography was also extremely well done, in my opinion. The saturation added a nice tone to the shots; it reflected George's mood. It was mainly grey-ish and washed out, except during certain conversations when his mood peaked, when red tones were heightened. However, I can see how the slightly surrealist impression that the style and soundtrack give could turn people off the film, but I really enjoyed it.

Evaluation Plan

These are our evaluation questions, and I have finished planning my responses- I have yet to film them, but videos should be appearing in the near future. This is the final stretch!

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

2)  How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

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

4)  Who would be the audience for your media product? 

5) How did you attract/address your audience? 

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

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

Finished film!

We finally finished editing our film! We fixed the issues brought up in the review, and are happy enough to post the final version. So here it is.... Classified!

Good Will Hunting

Title                        
Good Will Hunting

Director            
Gus Van Sant  

Writer         
Matt Damon
Ben Affleck           

Production Company
Lawrence Bender Productions

Distributed by     
Miramax films  

Plot 

"the film follows 20-year-old South Boston laborer Will Hunting, an unrecognized genius who, as part of a deferred prosecution agreement after assaulting a police officer, becomes a client of a therapist and studies advanced mathematics with a renowned professor. Through his therapy sessions, Will re-evaluates his relationships with his best friend, his girlfriend and himself, facing the significant task of confronting his past and thinking about his future."                       
                                     
My review
I really loved this film, the character and the plot were amazing, None of the conflict felt forced or unnatural. The long on the characters faces worked amazingly well and the emotions were palpable. The soundtrack was one of the best I've heard. I would definitely recommend this film to anyone.

Our filming experience

Meet the rest of my group. Although we've never made a vlog together, they do exist! This is them talking about our filming experience, and some of the compromises and changes we decided to make during filming, and post-production.

 

Trouble with the credits

During the reaction it came to my attention that there was a repeated name in the credits that had to be changed. Unfortunately, the new title kept dropping in quality half way through the typewriter effect, and it would not go away, no matter how many times we started from scratch. Eventually we figured out the problem and managed to change the title so that it did not turn pixelated.

Long shots

One of the problems brought up in the response was that some of the scenes were too long, and became somewhat boring and lowered the tension, so we added in some more reaction shots of Kira looking panicked, which hopefully solved the problem.

Music

This was a point of contention between members of our group, as each of us had a clear vision of the sound that we wanted to use. The beginning was decided before filming, as the music was exactly what we wanted, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that during the running shots we couldn't find the right music, we knew what we wanted, but we couldn't find one that fit, or decide on which one was the most similar to our vision. We eventually decided, but after it had been added we realized that our choice didn't work in the slightest, and we scrapped the sound. We finally found the right music, which was a mix of tracks, and the opening came together.

'Elementary'

I found this article about gender roles and race in CBS's Sherlock Holmes adaptation, 'Elementary'. It was extremely interesting, and deconstructed how changing the gender and race of Watson (from British Male to Asian Female) changed the dynamics of the characters from previous adaptations.

Reaction to our rough opening

We had roughly finished our editing, and we showed the result to our class, to see what the picked up on to improve that we had missed. We are hopeful that all the issues brought to light will be easily solved!




Sorry about the quality, It was filmed on a phone, so there was nothing we could do...

Broadchurch

Title                    
Broachurch (season 1)

Director
Various          

Writer    
Chris Chibnall        


Network
ITV

Plot 
When a young boy is murdered, a small town is rife with suspicion and blame as the police try and find the killer.                    
                               
My review
This show was amazing. The premise was one that I had heard before, so, despite many gushing reviews I was not excited to watch. However the shots were so brilliant from the very first second, the atmosphere so intense that I was hooked. There is no doubt in my mind that the shots and music are virtually unparalleled in any T.V. show I have seen in recent years. The acting was also extremely compelling, and very real, as many scenes were shot in one take, with no rehearsal time. I absolutely loved this series, and I will be watching the second, although it will not be able to rival the first as this is a show that only really works once, due to the suspicion being placed on virtually every key member of the small coastal town.

Blip in the title

Unfortunately, there is a blip in our title where the font flickers for a second. We have worked extensively trying to correct the problem but we couldn't find any reason why it should be flickering, and therefore couldn't fix the problem.

Recording sound

We folied our sound over the top of our opening, as it was the sound effect of a phone ringing and a busy message which did not record well, as the sound was coming  through the phone, on the initial filming. We also added the voice answering, as it was also coming through the phone, and we needed to get the timing exactly right to match with Kira's reactions, which was easier to do during the editing process.

Title

We decided to have our title 'wipe' from the screen as Kira ran past, and we achieved this through keynote. The editing was extremely fiddly and intricate as Kira did not always run at the same speed, so it didn't look right when the text decreased steadily, but we managed to edit it so it was relatively smooth.    

Typewriter effect

Once we decided to use keynote we suddenly had a wider range of effects to use on our titles. Kira had the idea of the typewriting effect, and we all readily agreed, as it was very fitting for the atmosphere and themes of our film.

Keynote

As I mentioned in my previous post, I used keynote to create the title and the credits. Keynote is the equivalent of powerpoint on apple.

To be able to transfer the text from keynote to iMovie the slide on keynote has to be the right shade of green for green screen.



Then it is merely a matter of adding the text and choice of animation.




















Once this is done, then the title is ready to export. It is exported to Quicktime player so that it will easily import to iMovie.

Once in imovie, select the animation you wish and drag it over the video, and click the green screen option, and your text is now superimposed over your opening.

Typeface choice

We had some trouble choosing the font for our credits. We were originally going to use iMovie to produce our titles, but both the choice of fonts and the choice of where to place the titles was limited, so we moved onto keynote, where the font choice was considerably larger. After looking at all the available fonts we eventually chose 'Lucida sans typewriter' as it fitted the theme of spies and secret agencies that would be much larger in the latter part of the film.

Re-filming

In the original filming the central character of our opening had her hair in plaits. However, when we looked over the footage, we fount that this appearance did not quite have the effect we were looking for, so we re-filmed the shots where Kira had loose hair, and felt that her panic came through better than in the previous shots. It also helped the character seem as though she is running from something, as she has less make-up and less hair-styling.

Arq

Title                        
Arq

Director                  
 Tony Elliot

Writer                    
Tony Elliot

Production Company
Lost city
XYZ Films
MXN Entertainment

Distributed by        
Netflix

Plot                        
In a dystopian world, where the Earth is polluted and at war, Renton and Hannah have to fight to protect an unlimited energy source whilst stuck in a time-loop                                      


My review
This film was, in my opinion, extremely well filmed. The tension was
 extremely high throughout, and this was acheived through long moving shots. There was very little cutting between camera angles, and the camera instead panned over the scenes. The tension was also heightened by the restricted location. Except for the about a minute near the end, this entire fast-paced action film took place within a single house, which added a certain tension due to the closeness of the enemy.

The plot left a lot to be desired. It had so many plot holes that it hardly made sense. As with any time travel fiction it needed a hard and fast set of rules that it sticks to, and Arq didn't. They tried to complicate it too much, by having a closed time-loop, and it fell a bit flat.

Overall though this was a very well filmed action film, and the tension worked well, but the plot means that I agree with the 3/5 rating it received on Netflix.