Evaluation - Question 7 - Kayla

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

By comparing our final film to our preliminary task it is very clear we understand editing a lot more now. I feel as though the preliminary task had less planning and so the characters weren't very believable, although by over working our final film we ended up changing the storyline multiple times making it hard for us to, again create believable characters. For the prelim task we only had to create a one minute long film and we had to film on the college property. The fact we were so restricted with our prelim meant that when these restrictions were lifted we were able to be a lot more ambitious with our opening, also the fact our main task had to be two minutes meant we had a whole extra minute to create something that seemed realistic.

I feel as though because we had so many options, my group became too ambitious which is the main reason our storyline changed so much. We originally planned to film our opening on Brighton beach and we were going to have a mother and her daughter in shot. We assumed we would be able to get an older woman and a child to be in our opening but it was highly unlikely and so we had to use me and Ailsa. We decided to use us as that meant we didn't have to rely on anyone outside of our group.

With the camera work i am now picking up on a lot more mistakes we made in the prelim task that we were able to see and prevent in the main task. Our framing in our prelim could have been a lot closer but we ended up with footage with too much background that was unnecessary and not relevant.

 

With our final opening i think we were much more ambitious with our camera angles as we had more knowledge of the effects of certain angles. We used a high canted angle so that the viewer would feel uneasy to represent how the character 'Nikki' felt walking into a therapists house. 

Where as in our prelim task we just used simple eye level angles and didn't think about the effect on the viewer.

Evaluation - Question 6 - Kayla

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

As it was mine and Claire's job to edit our opening we learnt that technologies such as Final cut pro aren't always trustworthy. Whilst editing our footage kept getting disrupted and having to be rendered, which was very aggravating when we were matching up clips as we would go to watch it to see if our continuity matched but before checking it we would have to render it even if the footage wasn't in the right place therefore it would take a lot longer to just get a few match on actions. The reason our footage took so long to edit was due to the fact we used a Canon camera and so some of the footage was too high quality for FCP therefore we had to change all the footage so that it would be less hassle to edit. Another problem we had was, if we had been editing on one mac and then try to open our project on another mac, it would have trouble playing so we did try really hard to stay working on the same mac but it wasn't reliable as other people may have been using it. We also realized that when editing you should back up your project once every few minutes because we were working on our project when our mac crashed, it crashed due to the size of the video files, this is when we decided to reconvert our footage to a different file type. It was quite annoying that our mac crashed because it meant we lost the edits we had been working on for about half an hour, luckily we had it fresh in our memory so we tried to re create the things we had lost and in the end it was ok. 

Once we adjusted to the software and we got use to adding transitions ect, it got a lot easier and quicker to edit our opening and so by the last day we were really confident with the software and so we got a two minute opening that we were proud of completed.

When filming we learnt that setting the white balance is very important and so we got used to setting it before we used the camera. We also realized that framing is key and we had to set up the camera a lot closer to the characters than we thought we would have to. With more knowledge about framing in the main task we learnt not to just zoom in the get the shot closer but we actually moved the tripod closer, this kept the quality of the shot and also helped us when it came to editing because it meant we didn't have to change the framing on FCP which would have taken a lot longer than just having the camera in the right place.

Evaluation - Question 5 - Kayla

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Our target audience is people 15+ and we decided as it was a psychological thriller it would appeal to the male gender more but as the main character is female it would also appeal to females, so our film wasn't aimed at a specific gender. I believe our thriller would appeal to our target audience as from the very beginning it has a lot of Enigma and makes the audience want to keep watching. We did this by having very little dialogue and not giving too much away, for example we didn't give away who Nikki was talking about and so by just watching the first two minutes the audience would be asking 'who is she?'. The name of our film ties in well with the question of 'who is she?' as its called 'Find me' this title is very ambiguous as no one knows who is saying it or who it is about.

The scene where Nikki is sitting on the swing in the park is also very enticing as it leaves the audience wondering why she is there and who she is smiling at, which also means people who enjoy thrillers are more likely going to want to watch out thriller after watching the first two minutes.

Evaluation - Question 4 - Kayla

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

We decided our target audience should be young adults aged 15 and above, we decided as it is a psychological thriller men may enjoy it more but woman would also enjoy it as they would relate to the main character.

Evaluation - Question 3 - Kayla

Evaluation - Question 2 - Kayla

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

 Nikki is a white British, middle aged woman with a clear mental defect. This image allows our audience to emphasize with her character on a similar social level. The people this type of character would may attract are young adults who have these problems happening around them all the time or may even be experiencing them themselves. In order to convey Nikkis mental illness, her appearance was scruffy, she sat on her own in most scenes suggesting her isolation but also she was in a park which has connotations to children; indicating that she may be troubled by her past/childhood, later reinforced by the small child's rucksack she picked up, we also used a close up of the bag to emphasise the fact this might link to the storyline.

The particular social group our clip is representing are the underclass who are troubled and generally in need of help. For affect and to draw in the audience we purposely overexaggerated nikkis character so that the audience have a clear idea of the problems these social groups face. to be able to develop her character, the scenes would switch continously to show her isolated, but also in some way seeking the help she deserves along with the fast editing frequency which creates an exciting suspense and contributes to the intended tense climax to come maybe later on in the film.

The gender of our character was specifically chosen because females are stereotypically the weaker gender and so this could be intriging for the audience to see what happens in her life and how she deals with it.

We are representing our particular social group by what she is wearing, the lack of effort that went into her outfit suggests her lack of energy. The use of bright lighting around her in contrasts to her body language significantly the dark place that she is in as she seems completely unaware of the beautiful nature surrounding her.

Evaluation - Question 1 - Kayla

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

Our media product was a thriller opening. When filming our opening we tried to keep the dialogue to a minimal as lots of thrillers start with just ambient sound, i feel as though having less dialogue also builds up tension which is one of the conventions of a thriller film.

Match on action - Continuity - Claire and Kayla

Final Opening piece - Claire and Kayla

Evaluation - Question 7 - Luke

Prelim  advantages	The thriller opening advantages
Met the deadline	Met the deadline
We made it as a comedy	We met the criteria
Made people laugh	Our camera editing lighting all improved from the Prlim
It was a fun experience	There was a share on the work load then last time.

 

 

Prelim disadvantage	The thriller opening disadvantages
Filmed on my own	We didn’t film in Brighton
Editing on my own	We changed our story line
Done the sound on my own	A few argument in the group that had to be sorted
There was paper as the only prop	We only had a bag for a prop and paper
No costume	We asked Kayla to where normal mum clothes however I don’t think a mum will wear high heels in a park.
Music didn’t match	We didn’t have a sound track
Teacher for an actor	We didn’t get the actors we wanted.

 

From looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that my new group put in a lot of work just for 2 minutes of filming. Everyone had their role in the group so we got all the work done on the deadline. Kayla and Claire were doing a lot of the editing of the film. They were telling me that a lot of time when in for the continuity editing to make it look professional. I feel from looking at watching what Kayla and Claire was doing I would of struggled with putting clips that are the nearly the same together. As a group we all found that hard. Also I thought was a negative was that we had a few issues all the way through. We changed the storyline to many times. I think it did have a effect on the group because we could have done more for the titling. However with them issues I think as a group we done well to overcome it and meet the deadline. In my last group you can tell by the quality of costume and sound that the Prlim was rushed and didn’t look good.

 

In my last group for the prelim I had to do everything. I had to do the camera lighting editing and blog. This was a massive struggle because none of my group helped me. However this time it was different. I was the camera man when filming and from last time I thought my framing was a lot better and knowing straight away where the white balance is. This was a advantage for the group because then Kayla and Claire wouldn’t spend as much time in the editing room cropping the picture or re-filming because I forgot the white balance.

 

Furthermore I think as a whole our ambition was very high as a group. We wanted to go to Brighton to film however this didn’t occur. The reason for this was that  we didn’t have enough money to get there. Also Claire emailed the Brighton Pear and the price was to much to film there. However we did film in a park. This was a contrast from my last group when we done it in college in a class room.

Evaluation - Question 6 - Luke Harrison

the technology that we used for the film was camera, lighting, editing. this also included sound and titling editing.


what I think went well was that we used the pace of the editing to create what Nikki was feeling through out. however this took along time matching her every move.


the titling editing when really well. we had to create our own company for the film. this was very interesting  because it had to be completely different to our title but also stand out to the audience.


Company name at start of film.
 
with the mysterious music each letters came at one at a time.

what I have learnt is that when you are filming we had to make sure white balance was on. this was very important to do this so our work would look more professional. if we did not use the whit balance then the colour of the lighting would be orange and not whit. this would not look good at all. we also understood how to use close ups and medium shots but to also get them in the frame with not much space above the actors head. this created more interest in the character.