Question 7

Reflect on how you have developed and improved by comparing skills between the Prelim and the Thriller.

For our Prelim the skills we had were:

Storyboards: 
For our Prelim our location was based around college and we used a digital camera to take images, whilst we were taking the photos we simultaneously planned the camera shots that we would used. We had a short amount of time to formulate our Prelim, therefore our plot was basic: Having a fight, we also had added basic dialogue and not try to compose our Prelim to communicate a specific meaning.




However, for our Thriller we took planning into much more depth and consideration. We focused on mind-mapping and coming up with different scenarios, as we had watched and been influenced by a variety of different Thriller openings: Taking of Pelham 123, One Hour Photo and Psycho. Having these resources to look at to influence and draw out intertextual elements was much better as we could sense where we wanted to go with our Thriller and what we thought would look good.














Location and Mise en Scene:

For our Prelim we did not take much consideration into showing Mise en Scene relating to the characters, we did not use any costume just the clothes we wore for college that day, this became a problem as the characters were wearing different clothes for the storyboard and on the day of filming, therefore this effected the aspects of continuity within the Prelim, however it was not a drastic problem. Our location, however did link to elements of our plot; having a fight with a friend from school. It was also snowing on the day we had planned to shoot our Prelim, therefore we had to be extra careful with the equipment.


For our Thriller we took much more consideration into the Location of our Thriller, as we wanted the Mise en Scene to be much more specific int terms of creating the characters background and making them relevant. We used my bedroom to show Kaylin's environment, stating her age; teenage girl e.t.c

In terms of costumer, Kaylin wore a school uniform which made it obvious she was a student and for Damien, he wore a black shirt and trousers which formulated the 'Anonymous' part within our title.

Feedback:
We did not ask for any feedback for our Prelim from any of our peers, which was a disadvantage for us as we could not get any improvements or suggestions from them, making our ideas formulate and not considering the audience.


Moreover, for our Thriller we planned it a great deal more. We had made a Prezi and pitched our ideas to the class which enabled us to receive both suggestions and opinions. This was effective as we could add in more detail to our Thriller, as well as gaining our audiences insight, considering what they think would work and what wouldn't, hence making it more enjoyable and intense for them as that is what Thriller films tend to communicate.


Camerawork/ Framework: 
For our Prelim we had been informed and educated on the 180 degree rule which is vital in films as if you don't abide to it the continuity of your film will look less consistent and may confuse the audience.

We practised using this rule whilst filming our Prelim, it was difficult to stick to at certain points, however we managed to abide by it, making our Thriller have fluency and so the audience can comprehend what is happening. 

Our Thriller also represented the 180 degree rule, and we had abided by this throughout the filming process. 

Keeping on the right hand side and not obstructing on the left side.







For both out Prelim and our Thriller we used Match Cuts to show the action being applied to when it has been conducted. This was a good shot to use as it communicates what happens without fully seeing through the action, therefore making our shots more varied and not keeping our filming too static.

PRELIM:                                                                                              

                 








                                                           THRILLER:  

Editing:

Overall, I feel that my editing has improved as I have learnt how to put titles on, as our Prelim did not include titles, I was able to learn how to adapt titles onto the screen. Positioning them in the frame and so on. 

I have learnt how to use transitions and also making my editing continuous, also adding Soundtrack from Soundtrack Pro onto our Thriller. Although I was not able to do some of the effects before I have learnt how to and will hopefully use them in the future. 

Teamwork:

I have enjoyed working in a team and I feel my cooperative skills have improved by formulating ideas together and considering what each of us though could and could not work. Trying out everybody's ideas to make sure w all had equal contribution within our Final product. 

Question 6

Question 3

Which type of Media institution might distribute your media product and why?


When we were pitching our Thriller ideas, we discussed having Sony as our distributor for the whole of our Thriller. This was because Sony is a conglomerate company and has recently distributed films such as: Skyfall which is an Action Thriller. They are prestigious in the film industry and would provide a hefty budget to make sure our Thriller is modernised; using the lastest technologies to enhance the quality of our film.


However, idealistically I feel our Thriller, being made by students, would possibly fit in to the category of being an Independent Film, which unlike Sony does not promote a large scale distribution behind it and they are not exhibited widely in cinema complexes. Therefore, I feel that our film could thrive off of a low budget, independent film company such as: 'Dogwoof' which has distributed documentaries, which our Thriller almost carries a sense of as our plot communicates awareness of online safety, however we have portrayed our Thriller in a fictional sense, although basing it on events which happen in reality.

I think that 'Dogwoof' is the most suitable distributer for our Thriller as it makes films which are similar to ours and realistically would be possible to make this happen, although Sony has economical and technological assets, our film could thrive better off of this and would support the issue of awareness better, rather than having a blockbuster version as it takes the truth away from it. 

Question 6

We used a variety of software when creating our product, below is a Powerpoint explaining which ones, what they were used for and what was learned when using them.


                            

Evaluation Question 6 - Augusto Pitsilides

Evaluation - Question 1

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

We followed the conventions of a narrative opening. However we did challenge some parts and developed the titles to make ours original.

First thing that nearly all films consist of is the ident of their production company at the start of their movies, in ours we have our independent company "CANDI FILMS" whereas the film in going to compare to "Panic Room" also follows this rule. The production company are the people who helped the makers produced the film such as providing equipment’s. The distributor can follow right after this.









With our titles, it is similar to "Panic Room", we have the titles on background of a shot, and both of us tilted the font to align them to a certain structure. In our case, is at top of a shelf, and on theirs is a along the side of a building.


However we used social media sites logo to represent certain letters in the text such as "b" for Bebo and etc. This shows some originality that is uncommon in titles of a film. This all falls back to our main theme: Social networking.

On the other hand, with the film name title, we challenged the convection of putting our title 'ANOYMOUS ATTRACTION' at the end instead of inputting it in the middle of the titles like "PANIC ROOM". We use to try gain the audience attention within few minutes so they don't get put off within those minutes. This also keeps the movie a mystery, creating the viewer to be excited for the rest of the film.

Our titles are a clear font and are the colour white which contrasts with the blurred background, making them viewable to the audience. Where as "PANIC ROOM" used a similar colour as the sky in their opening as shown on the following image.   



 

Evaluation - Question 7

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

Looking back, there was so much we have learnt in such a short amount of time. We now understand that all of the preliminary helped us with us with our opening sequence in all areas of pre-production, production and post-production.

Pre-Production:

Prior to recording we did research on Match cutting and the 180 degree rule with aims to master it.

• Match Cutting is joining two different shots from two different angles/positions and making them flow from one to the other in time so it does not seem there has been a time-lapse in between them. This gives the film a realistic feel that it is all happening in the same time space.

• 180degree rule is filming within the 180degrees of line of sight. The 180 degree rule prevents the image being flipped, which would lead to confusion within the audience. By following the 180degree rule all of the mise en scene stays relitive to its location. 

After researching those techniques we had to plan a storyboard that implemented the use of them within it. After deciding the location we went there to take pictures and plan shots for the story board.

There was no need for artificial lighting within our prelim as during the filming period it was snowing, which gave a glow to the outside areas, nor had we specifically chosen props as the scene was just school students fighting.

In our final product we transferred all of the useful skills we learned in aim to make our product as good as possible. We used match cuts on many occasions, such as during the typing scenes, when opening the door, and the unlocking the door scene, where we used a wide shot of her approaching the house and opening her bag, to a close up of her pulling her keys out of her bag, followed by an over the shoulder shot of her opening the door.

As you can see in those shots the 180degree rule was also followed, the camera stayed on the left side of the character as she approached the house, and then directly behind her for the over the shoulder shot, however we did not break the rule by flipping to the other side.

A list of props had been decided that would allow the audience to infer who these characters were, for example in the shots above you can see from the protagonists clothes that she is a school girl.

We decided to only use natural lighting, and the lighting within the house as there was nothing that specifically needed extra lighting.

Compared to the preliminary task, filming was much more easier in the full production. During the preliminary we only had to follow 3 different rules; video must contain match-cuts, 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot. There was much more pressure during the preliminary task as we put a lot of thought into what shots to do, unlike filming for our opening, everything seemed more natural without stressing out from thinking of what types of shots to film next. For example when outside the house we was filming at, we immediately discussed about 180 degree shot, where the camera is going to be, if we are going to pan or not. However we shown that we were much more advance in the full product with more types of shots whilse following all previous rules we have learnt in the past.

We were much more organised in the final product, we pre-planned out our shots and were ready as soon as we got to the location we wanted to film at. In the preliminary we spent about 5 minutes discussing about shots because we were not as prepared as our final piece. Even though we had a image storyboard, we were unhappy with some shots during filming.
We also tried to make use of the fig rig during filming the final piece to either create a tilt shot or try to use it as a steady held hand shot.

Editing was a big step from preliminary and final opening piece. In the preliminary, all we done was simply added match cuts shot reverse shots and changed the speed of the clips. Editing our opening, we put 110% into it pulling out all the stocks in the limited time we had. Although our group was unfortunate on starting editing late, we came to workshops nearly every day to finish editing. The skills needed during the prelim was not needed as much as it did on the thriller opening, the following are key   parts of editing we learnt during editing our thriller that we did not in our prelim:

Unlike our preliminary, we added sound effects and soundtrack into our opening sequence to create realistic foley sounds and tension towards certain parts of our opening scene. 

We could not add our opening titles into our prelim but we added titles into our final piece, but unlike other titles we added symbols of social media sites into letters of our titles which connotes that our film has something got to do with social media. 

In all of our titles we used a clear colours that is visible because we made sure we used colours that is the opposite to certain backgrounds for example: white on black.

Also on the shot where it says "Edited by Minh Ngan" we tilted the text so that that it seemed as if the font was on top of the shelf.

We also used a software called "Camtasia" to film, edit and cut clips that we filmed from the computer to give a clear closeup shot so our viewers can see clearly. This is something we learnt during the process of editing our final piece. 

Here we added a split screen of two shots at the same time to show the charecter is typing and what he is typing at the same time. We done this by decreasing the size by half, made sure we film the Camtasia clip in the same resolution, and panned it so its even.

Once we finished all our editing, we added filters/video effects into clips to create a more distorted glowly effect, showing a snippet of the character, how his like, his past. The main two effects we used were "bloom" and "light rays" then we adjusted it so it was not too strong that it destorys the video clip but improves it.  

Finally we revealed our film title at the end of the opening after the dramatic sequence of the character damian. Here we created a frame image of a male and a young female on photoshop which symbolises our film. Then on final cut we used Gaussian blur to be able to put a clear text to of our title name "Anonymous Attraction" 

Looking back at  Our Prelim   we have come to the conclusion it was a bad attempt. We had planned it prior to filming, and had everything gone according to plan it would have gone extremely well, however we learned a valuable lesson which that we needed to film three times more footage than we would actually need, as when it comes to editing we found there were many shots that were needed as there were minor errors within them, as well as this we found we did not have a wide variety of shots, instead we had the same shot repeated.

When filming timing before acting commences, and a still shot after the acting is finished should be used, because we didn't use this technique there were some shots were we immediately started talking, which made it harder to edit.

The use of violence, also made it difficult to film, as when Minh was punching Augusto the punch was not real, meaning a lot of editing was needed to try and make it look realistic, however it didnt. After reviewing that we decided not to use physical violence within our film, as it brings a sense of unrealism to it, unless we are prepared to actually hit the other person.

Editing the final product was a lot harder. As we used a variety of shots and match cutting possibilities we spent a long time making sure the timing between these shots was perfect, we also added titles and effects over the film, which we neglected doing on the preliminary task.

To conclude, the Preliminary task was bad, however it heavily influenced how we tackled the real task in hand, it allowed us to develop our filming, editing and visualising skills.

Anonymous Attraction (final media product)

Youtube version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKccBMQVClw

Evaluation - Question 4

http://prezi.com/6bgchroxxss6/present/?auth_key=qz6pas7&follow=y__mik_cwjh9

Question 5

_________________________________________________
Sofar we have reached our audience in numerous ways; on the 25/03/13 our Thriller was shown at 'Screen in the Green' in Islington, after our Thriller was shown we got some feedback from audiences from the first viewing:

Our Thriller was predominently tragetted at teenagers and young adults, therefore we used this information to help us adapt the mise en scene; making it relavent to our audience. Our Thriller opens with a long shot of Kaylin walking through a park, towards her home. This general setting makes this relatable to all different types of people. Furthermore, our thriller is set in Islington, London an urban, city setting which allows our audience to connect with the area. The use of laptops, which were uses to represent the communication between Kaylin and Damien via Tumblr can also address our audience; due to Damien's grooming towards Kaylin, this can infuse an element of awareness within our Thriller, making our audience question and think about what they do online and is it safe?

The use of contrasting protagonists Kaylin and Damien can also attract our audience. Both characters have a conncection through social media, as most people in modern day society use some form of social media, whether it be youtube, facebook or twitter. However, both characters have differences in their outlook. Kaylin being a 15 year old girl which is a relevant factor as some of the audience members may be of that age and may experience or own some things that Kaylin does. Whereas, for Damien's character his deameanour can be relatabe in terms of being a young man, however in terms of being an online predator, it would be wrong to assume that the audience of our thriller could relate to the same persona we have built for Damien.

Our title 'Anonymous Attraction' was formed around the plot of our film, as well as forming some of our camera shots; cutting Damien's face out keeping him a stranger to the audience, so they can feel the intensity and experience what Kaylin is witnessing.

Feedback from our Rough Cut:

"He noticed that the Jump Cuts from Kaylin walking home to Damien making Coffee were too quick; as it would appear to the audience that shots of Damien would appear more frequently, as well as effect the continuity of our opening. Therefore, we aim to show Damien at a slower pace.

In terms of using Camtasia, we initially placed the responses of Kaylin at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, however Dan noticed that the audience may not be able to comprehend what the characters are typing to one another. We aim to change this by using our 'split screen' idea which we had thought of firstly, having a visual of Damien on the laptop on one half of the frame and then on the other half showing what he is typing in the response box.

We also still need to add sound to our Thriller, we have recorded Foely sounds of a kettle boiling and a keyboard which we will add, as well as construct our soundtrack using Soundtrack Pro and syncing it in time with the way our Thriller will run, ensuring a tense mood throughout the opening"

Our feedback that Dan had given ua allowed us to imporve our Thriller massively:

• We re-positioned the Jump cuts making them further apart to enhance the continuity of our Thriller; not making Damien appear as often.
• For our Camtasia shots of Kaylin typing we used the idea of having a split screen which we came up with a while ago, furthermore this would allow the audience viewing our Thriller to have a clearer view; reading the conversation between both characters.
• In terms of sound, we included Foely sound in certain places; typing for the keyboard and the boiling of the kettle, we also decided to incude soundtrack but vividly in the background, which could enhance the reality of the situation portrayed in our Thriller.

Evaluation - Question 3

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


At our pitch, we decided as a group that our thriller will be produced and distributed by Sony, a conglomerate company that can provide a mast amount of support in terms of finance into our film. This can help in marketing like their previous film, SKYFALL. But after reviewing our thriller we notice it would be very unlikely that a conglomerate company will distribute our film because of it being created by a underrated film makers. They would just be risking their money on a film that may not become successful.

In terms of Production Company, we stacked to "CANDI FILMS", a small independent production company with a small budget we can work with. They can provide with all the basic equipment needed; camera, tripod, lighting, computers, software and etc. We introduced them at the beginning of our opening with an ident identifying who they are.












Due to our low budget film. A small media institution will distribute our film if they like it and thinks it possibilities of well, because it’s a low budget film, it would be cheap to screen in cinemas such as a independent cinema. One distributor may distribute our thriller is STUDIOCANAL, a independent UK distributor that has released several small budget movies in UK that has had some success. One of them is "Attack the Block", similar to ours, their target audience were also teenagers, this is evident in the poster, they are advertising their social media sites which teenagers can follow. It was also nominated for 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 17 wins & 21 nominations.

Question 1 (Evaluation)

 Candi Films is an original ident that we have created, this significant ident is crucial to our opening thriller. The layout, format and meaning of this ident tells the audience about what kind of film we made. The typing of Candi Films suggests, the film is somewhat related to socializing by the typing of the production company. This ident, is follows the conventions of a film because the production company always show up first.

New Market is the production company for the film Memento, a brilliant thriller that has influenced one of our intertexualities. This ident also appears first in the film, this is an indication that we have followed the conventions of a thriller opening, we chose not to challenge this because as Candi Films has the most importance in our thriller.

The next title that appers after the Candi Film ident, is 'Produced by Candi Films', this also follows the conventions of an opening because in the film Memento  However, Memento has other titles such as 'In Association with', and we did not and this is because we did not have any partnerships with any companies. We only used titles that fitted to our thriller, and the ones which was relevant to our opening.

Starring appears after the production company, than the directors title; this title doesn't challenge the conventions of the title sequence. We chose to place Starring after these two important titles because we feel that the actor/actress has a significant role in the film. However, in Memento the titles do not have Starring, the main characters like Guy Pearce appears without being introduced, this suggests that famous actors like himself are already known, whereas the characters in Anonymous Attraction aren't famous.

The main title, Memento appears after the castings, in contrast to our thriller opening, we challenged the conventions of the title sequence  We chose to put our title at the end of our opening, and this is because it allows the audience to see the images that appear on the title scene. This unusal placement of the title, is rare because you would normally see the title somewhere at the beginning  As out media product is unique, it stands out to the audience.

Another reason, to why our title is at the end is because if we put the title somewhere in the middle of the other titles, such as if it was placed inbetween the production title and the castings, it would ruin the flow of our opening. Therefore, we have deicded not to placethe title in the middle of Damien and Kaylins scenes.

In our opening thriller, the idea of blood being reversed added a cool and unique twist to the move of Memento. Therefore, in our opening we used the intertexuality of rewinding one of the flash back scenes, i.e. the hand washing, so that it looked crazy and psycho; illustrating the characters mental illness. We used this intertexuality, because it portrays Damiens intentions, washing his hands suggests washing away evidence, of perhaps murder?

This particular intertexual element, wasn't thought of when we was planning our thriller opening. However, during the process of editing we decided to add the effect of Damien washing his hands, backwards (reversed) could suggest that he did this before, perhaps he is washing his hands to get rid of his past ex-girlfriend, hence the 'broke up' and flashback intervals scene. Washing his hands could suggest, he is ready to move on... to another victim.