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

Thought-out doing our preliminary task, myself and Harrison only knew basics of filming and various camera shots. We only had the use of a school camera with no other extra equipment meaning our shots were sometimes quite shaky. While we were filming out final piece, we had use of a tripod meaning our shots were a lot more steady and professional looking.

While filming, we managed to use skills and techniques we could not apply while doing our preliminary task. We used such techniques as tracking shots going along while the character was walking and also various different angle shots in order to show power and status with the main actress. Something we have learnt along the way is what techniques can be used in order to give more power. We found that if you have one main character through the whole thing, by having them centered will single them out and make them seem more authoritative. Also by having low angle shots looking up at the characters gives them more power.

In our preliminery task, we only has use of one camera where-as in our main film I used a camera the school provided while Harrison used a better quality one from home meaning we could get the same shot through two different angles in order to see which one was better and gave off the best result.

Because the preliminery task was a practise to get used to the basics of camera work, we obviously need to do various different bits of editing to improve the quality of the film. We had to cut parts out in order to make it as close to 2 minutes as we could. We also did various different things such as making parts of the film slow motion and changing the brightness or colour. This was good as it showed our our skills and how much they had progressed frm when we first started.

All in all, I feel myself and Harrison were a good pair to work with eachother as we brought different things into the film and have made significant progress over the filming and editing process or our opening.

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

When i first started thinking about what our film was going to be about and starting the filming process, the only thing i could do with technology was film a basic video. Trough-out the filming and editing process, we learnt how to blog our entries, edit our film and convert it. We used many softwares such as blogger, final cut express and MPEG Streamclip. It was also a new experience using the Mac's as myself nor harrison had used one in this way before.

Being in a partnership with Harrison was useful as he had done filming through-out GCSE last year meaning he had some basic knowledge in useful camera angles and how to use one effectively. I used a JVC camera which the school provided for me while Harrison used his own Sony Camcorder he brought from home. This was useful as we could film the same shot but from different angles to see which one was better - there fore giving us a better end result.

Once we had finished filming, we went onto editing using Final Cut Express. This was a completely new software for me and Harrison to use meaning it took us a while to get to grips with it. We have learnt to use such effects as changing the brightness of the clips, making things slow motion, changing the colour to black and white and also learnt how to render scenes meaning we could watch it on final cut.

Evaluation: How did you attract/address your audience?

Due to our film being a thriller, we had to attract an audience that would be mainly into thriller films, as well as people who are more into other genres that could enjoy the film also. In order to do this, we needed to use various different tension building techniques to keep the consumer interested. As well as doing something thriller watchers would be interested in, we also wanted to create something that they hadn't really seen before and would be intrigued to watch.

The first thing that was a counter type to a stereotypical thriller film is that the clip was filmed in daylight as opposed to at night - which the majority are. We used the music to build up tension, using a violin throughout and adding a funky strong beat to make it more upbeat. Through-out the whole scene, right up until the very end you are not sure are to what the main aim of the clip is, keeping the audience interested. The majority of the film shows her walking through the back roads and pavements making her way to the centre of town. By doing this and not walking along a main busy road the whole time gives the sense she has something to hide. Around the middle of the shot, we have added in some jump shots while she is walking through the battle ditches and past Audley End House. This creates a sense of urgency effectively making the audience wonder where the actress is going in such a hurry.


Another thing we used to build tension was a count down and ticking noise at various different points of the film. This made the audience wonder what the counting down was going to and what the point of it was - which the consumer finds out nearer the end.

Evaluation: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Myself and Harrison discussed the certificate of the film very early on in the production of it so that we could know roughly what type of thing could be included in the film and what would be suitable rather than deciding right at the very end who we would aim our film at. This worked better for us as we had a main focus as to what we could include in the film and what would be inappropriate for our target audience.

After looking at our finished product, we decided that we would label our film as a 15 as it didn't include any gore or murder scenes yet the main story behind it may have been too much for someone who was below the age of 15.

If the film was made into full length, i feel the age may slightly change in the sense of what is included, but not drastically. Different audience' would be attracted to the film in different ways. For example, both male and females would be interested in this film. The older viewers would be more interested in the characters, purpose and storyline of the film where-as people nearer to the age of 15 would be more drawn in by the action.

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

One way that myself and Harrison's film could be distributed is through things such as YouTube or various other different sites similar to this. These are sites where you are able to watch and download videos - so would there fore be a great place to promote our film opening and get peoples opinion's through commenting on it.

Another way we could distribute our video is through linking it to various different social networking sites. This would be very effective as many people use them and by linking the video on that or adding an advertisement down the side or along the bottom, people may click on the link and watch it. If they like it this may then lead to them passing on the video link to other people and so on.

Also, we could make copies on the video and hand it out personally, making people see the video and getting opinions on it leading to people buying the film.

Evaluation: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film, we have only used one main actress and the rest of the people in it are all in the background. With our actress, she is meant to subtly give the appearance of a terrorist while not giving it away to the audience that her main aim through-out the clip is to bomb the town.We wanted to get someone who could have a straight, emotionless look on their face. Sterotypically teenages are looked at as trouble. In some ways this is shown in the film, which you find out in the end, but over the whole of the clip you can't tell that the actress is planning something so challanges the stereotype.

Stereotypically, you would not expect a teenager or a girl to be carrying and planning on planting a bomb, hence us deciding to use this character type. We thought it would be more effective as the audience would not be expecting it.

Another thing we decided would be effective is when she was walking through the town, no-one looked at her suspiciously as if they knew something was about to happen. This what we were hoping to gain in our film as it was all about building suspense and tension. If everyone walking past her knew what was about to happen and were looking at her, this would not happen and the audience would automatically know something was going to happen.

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

For mine and Harrison's film opening, we decided to go with the genre of thriller. As well as meeting this specific genre it also challenges the typical conventions.

As we were aware, we knew that the conventions of a thriller film used suspense, tension, excitement as their main elements and will usually have a criminal or murderer. There is also normally some sort of main plot or chase scene. We have captured this through showing the police officer coming out of the police station as if something is about to happen. We have filmed flora walking through various different rural areas with not many houses as if she was trying to dodge any busy places, which you would kind of expect from a thriller film.We have built tension through the use of editing, by making things slow motion as well and using fast clips from different angles. Byhaving a police voice over and a helicopter sound at the very start of the clip gets the viewer interested as to what the film is about as opposed to having this sequence in the film where it is more obvious as to what the clip is going to be about.

As well as following the typical conventions of a thriller film, it also follows those of an action one. Conventions of an action film would include a hero, fights, chases, explosions and car chases. In our film opening we have included a selection from the list which make us think that the clip would follow an action convention as well as a thriller one. Its a chase when the helicopter at the beginning and police officer at the end are searching for the actress and you can expect an explosion when she drops a bag at the end.

You would expect a film following the conventions or a thriller or action film to be quite dark and mostly filmed at night time, but we have filmed it through-out the day. At the end when she is in the market square everyone is still lively and happy, not knowing what is to be expected.

Finished Piece

Now that myself and Harrison have finished our opening scene, we gave in the clip and had it analysed by our teachers. He was pleased to see we had taken his comments into consideration and re shot the end of our film in order to build up more tension. His only comment for us to improve our finished film further was to add more titles in. We tried doing this after school but unfortunately the programme would not let us edit the titles meaning we could not add any extras in. This was not too much of an issue as the teacher had said the film was at a good standard anyway, the titles were just to boost the marks up.

Music

Myself and Harrison could not find any music that was suitable for the film that built up tension at the same time. As a result, we decided to make our own music using Garage Band. By using this, it mean that we could choose specific instruments and beats in order to build tension whenever needed and create the correct atmosphere.

Other Issues

As well as having the problems with the deletion of certain parts of the film, we also had an issue of when we would be able to finish editing the film. This was because myself and Harrison were both away during the half term so we decided we would stay after school and do it then as opposed to leaving it to the half term when neither of us would be able to do it.

Editing Issues

Once we had re-shot our required scenes, myself and Harrison got together after school to add in the extra clips and edit them all together. When we attempted to put the data onto the mac, it said the desktop space was too full so decided we would delete some files, then load up the new shots. Unfortunately, once we had deleted it we realised we had deleted the files that were in use in the film, therefore deleting part of the film. We thought we would have to re-shoot the majority of our film but we managed to restore it so we sorted that. 

New Ideas - Police Footage

After being told to re-think our ideas on how to build up tension, we decided that as we have a sound clip of a police officer at the beginning it may be a good idea to film a policeman coming out of the station. We put it in slow motion to create a bigger sense of tension and also links in with the clip where our actress drops the bomb which is also in slow motion. 


In order to find a policeman that would be available to be in the film, we went into the police station and asked one ourself and the receptionist found one that was more than happy to be in it.

Teachers Feedback

While receiving some feedback from our teacher after handing in the first edit it is clear that we need to re-shoot the last 20-30 seconds in order to build more tension up the the bag drop. Our teacher has said that it is not entirely clear as to what is in the bag and there is no sign of the bomb doing any damage as there is no footage of people around when Flora drops the bomb. We will then edit the new footage and use jump cuts when Flora is walking so tension is building.


As we do not have a lot of time to re-shoot Harrison is going to film with Flora this Saturday but I will be unable to attend this time. This is not a problem as I know what I am doing and we do not need two cameras set up as we only need to do a first person shot of Flora walking into a crowd. 


We can only hope that the weather is similar to the last shoots weather. If not then we will have to spend more time editing to make the weather link in with the other footage earlier on in the film. 

Timing Issue

Harrison and I have found out that the requirement is to be as close to 2 minutes as we can get it. Unfortunately, our film is 2 minutes 6 seconds which is too much over than they would like it to be. Due to the fact it being only our first edit, this gives us time to try and cut down the film as we do not want to loose  marks as a result of it being over the required time of 2 minutes.

Completed First Edit

Myself and Harrison have just finished our first edit for our film opening. We uploaded the police voice over that Harrison recorded to it and cut it down by a few seconds to ensure it fitted perfectly. We decided that making the voice carry on for a few seconds into the first shot showing the actress would be more effective as I have seen it done in films such as the Bourne films and Shooter. This engages the audience and briefly sets the scene. We then made sure the voice over went over the first countdown timer footage to create tension and link the two parts together better. While the voice over is still going on, the music starts to play and when the talking stops, the music takes the dominant position in the shot. 

Timer

To the left is a screen shot of the timer we are using through-out various parts of the sequence. Harrison filmed the timer on his IPhone which we then downloaded onto Final Cut Express.

Titles

Below are some screen shots of the title's being shown at the start of the 2 minutes:

Police Voice Over

We decided that for the helicopter scene at the beginning, a police voiceover would fit in perfectly with the type of film it was. Over a recent weekend, Harrison recorded himself - acting as a police officer - as if the police were chasing Flora, our actress. He did research into various different police scenes similar to ours so he could achieve the appropriate tone of voice and create the right script. He used his software at home to create the right effects to make it sound exactly like a police investigation would.

Film Title

Harrison and I were unsure on what to call our film as it was only the beginning and because we didn't want to give too much away - which was the point of our opening - we wanted a subtle title that would be of the same subject as the opening, but not giving too many clues as to what would happen in the film.
To get ideas for our film title we typed in "bomb" into a thesaurus and got many different words which could have been associated with our scene's, although we felt many still gave too much away about what would happen in the film. We then decided on the name "Case Closed" as we felt it tied in well with the police investigation from the police helicopter scene at the beginning of the film. Below is a screen shot of the title in the film:

Downloads

Other than flying and taking footage from the sky today, we have also managed to download 2  helicopter sounds in an mp3 file. One is a sound from outside the helicopter as it flies over and the other is from inside the cockpit of the helicopter so we will use both in the film. This will be in the background while either myself or my dad do a voice over from a police mans point of view in the helicopter. We will find out what kind of vocab and langauage the police helicopter pilots use and we will then create a small script in which Harrison will do the voice over to. 


We also downloaded a ticking noise for our bomb countdown which will be playing throughout the film after the helicopter scenes, but getting louder towards the last few scenes and eventually the ticking will be the only sound in the last scene.

Harrison then went on to film a countdown from his mobile phone which will flash up in some scenes to remind the audience that the timer is ticking and to make them wonder what this timer is linked to.

Aerial Shot

On Sunday 9th January, Harrison went to film from his dads plane. They flew over Audley End House, Saffron Walden and smaller areas around here and managed to get some really good footage. This footage will be used at the beginning of our film and will be made to look like a police helicopter is searching for the girl with the bomb. Harrison made sure he zoomed in quickly on certain places such as; Audley End as this is a place where the girl was seen so it looks like the police are specifically searching this area.

New Location

Great Chesterford

Saffron Walden - Battle ditches

Aerial Shot

Background Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETJ5cdDBoaE&feature=related

This is the music myself and Harrison are planning on using quietly in the background through-out the scene as well as a ticking noise.

New Plan

Due to us not being able to film in Cambridge, we are now going to film in Saffron Walden on market day. Unfortunately we have had to fire Chloe as our actress as she was not reliable and we have a new one who can attend all filming days.

This is our plan of action for this week:
Wednesday 5th - Film pupils coming out of school and actress walking towards school.
Thursday 6th - Film pupils coming out of the doors at the end of C corridor.
Friday 7th - Uploading blog with progress so far.
Saturday 8th - Film actress walking into town from a cars point of view and from a followers point of view.
Sunday 9th - Film from plane flying above Saffron Walden Market.

Tester Filming

While Harrison and I went to Cambridge, we managed to get some practise filming in on the way, getting different ideas of camera angles and what shots we could capture. We filmed the train arriving at the platform in Audley End, a view from inside the train looking out of the window as we were on the journey and one of myself opening the train door when we arranged at Cambridge (myself filling in the place of Chloe while going through test runs). In this part of the opening scene, we will most likely edit it so its in slow motion with mysterious music playing in the background to create tension. We aim to do more filming in January with Chloe there so she has a full idea of what's going on and what she will be doing when it comes to filming the final piece.

Plan B for Grand Arcade filming

As a result of not being able to film inside the Grand Arcade itself, myself and Harrison decided to film just outside the centre instead where it will still be busy, so will be filming people going inside the building.

Grand Arcade Filming

On Wednesday 29th December, myself and Harrison went to Cambridge to speak to the management team of the Grand Arcade. After waiting a few weeks for a reply from the Management team, we decided to go to them regardless and speak to them in person. Unfortunately, no-one was there so we got escorted to the security office instead. They took down Harrison's details and said they would get back to us but it was unlikely we would be allowed to film. in the shopping centre. When they got back to Harrison later on that day some-one from the management team revealed we would not be able to film inside the grand arcade.

Camera shots on the train

This mid to long shot would show Chloe and part of the bag, leaving some mystery as to the importance of the bag - which you later find out is the main focus through-out the opening scene. This shot also seems like its from the view of another passenger on the train. This is another shot we will definitely be using.

Camera shots on the train

This is the shot we have decided to use during the scene where Chloe is sat on the train throughout rush hour meaning it will hopefully be fairly busy. The  reason we are shooting the train part during rush hour is so that Chloe is not quite so obvious nearer the beginning of the scene there-fore creating tension which is what we are trying to achieve in this thriller.

Storyboard

This is a storyboard showing a rough idea as to what is going to happen through-out the opening scene.