1. Frame one show the distributor of the film which is '20th Century Fox' as the opening of the film. As it is shown at the beginning of the film it makes the audience aware, instantly, of who distributes this film and as '20th Century Fox' is a big studio, the viewers will know that this is a movie that has had lots of recognition. The font is consistent throughout the opening of the film which keeps it professional looking.
2. The second frame is the first scene we see of the film and it is a flashback of her opening presents on her birthday and everyone is laughing and being loving towards the girl but the sound is distant as it is clear this clip is from someone looking back at videos in the past. There is also a text overlay that says 'A Europacorp M6 Film Grive Productions Co-Production'. This is telling you the producer of the film and the co-producers in the first 37 seconds of the film.
3. This clip shows more of the old home movie that is being looked back on, you can hear dialogue of the mother asking her child 'do you like it' when she opens a toy pony' and there is slow, soothing music as a sound bridge.
4. This shows the character Bryan waking up in a dark room and we can assume it is present time as setting of the scene has changed and a flash has been used to resemble a time difference and the music eventually stops 4 seconds into this new scene which can tell us that we are back in reality. Because Bryan is sitting in a dark room alone this could say that he is very lonely and not happy with his life and to assure that this message is put across we hear him to a deep sigh which can mean that tells us he may be upset.
5. This long shot shows us the extent of Bryan's loneliness and also gives us an idea of what time it is due to the moonlit window in the background. The fact that there is no other lights on in the house says that no one else is around but him. Frame 5 also has text overlaying it saying 'Liam Neeson' which tells us the actors name, and as he is well known people will think that it will be a good film.
6. This is a medium close up of Bryan sitting in his chair in his house and just after he sighs he puts a picture frame back on the side of a girl riding on a horse, this tells us the reason he is sighing is because he misses this girl. We can also assume that this picture is of the girl from frame 2 as she is riding a horse and got given a horse as a present so this is obviously an interest of hers.
7. Frame 7 shows a manual for setting up a karaoke machine which may be for his daughter for her birthday which he opens up, sighs again, then takes it with him off set.
8. As the character leaves frame 7 we are left with the picture of his daughter that he put back on the side which gives us the idea that this karaoke machine is for her and that she is an important part of his life. The title 'Taken' also begins to emerge and the fact that this is next to her image could tell us that she is the one who is taken.
9. The last frame ends on 1:30 where it goes to a busy street somewhere in America where a car pulls up and a man begins to get out.
1.The first frame shows who the distributors of the film are and it has a sound of a light bulb being turned on as the sound of it. This follows the conventions of my influential film as it starts its first frame with the distributor.
2. The second frame shows the production company which is also following the conventions of my influential film as their second frame also shows who produced it but they do it as a title on top of a scene of the film.
3. This shows a normal looking living room with everything in its place. It is a long shot panning right to show the whole of the room. The film Taken also shows a normal situation at the beginning that we can assume is a flashback. Our film also uses music that builds tension and builds suspicion which is following the conventions of Taken.
4. Shot 4 is a computer generated flash to represent that the film is flashing forward or back. In Taken the film also does a flash forward so this is following the conventions of my influential film.
5. This long shot shows what the film has flashed back to and it is a crime scene and the lighting has dulled and it shows a character for the first time. It also shows a name which has something to do with the production of the movie. This is following the conventions of Taken as when the film flashes forward it shows a darkened room and reveals the first character of the plot.
6. Shot 6 begins to zoom into the knife on the floor getting closer to the weapon in the crime scene, in Taken, shot 6 also begins to get closer to the focus point, the making of our film has been closely linked to the conventions shown in the film Taken.
7. Is a canted angle of the character and the knife whereas in Taken their frame 7 is a close up of a manual, this differs from my film but not so much as both shots are important in the plot of the film.
8. Frame 8 is the last character shot of the opening and is a close up of the characters face, emphasizing the damage that is done to the character whereas in Taken this frame shows the title of the film.
9. Lastly is the title 'DESCENDANT' which has a frame of its own and is bold and unmissable. Taken showed its title differently and kept it small and as an overlay so the scene carried on behind it so my film differs to how Taken showed their title.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product represents young, vulnerable women who have been a victim of murder. One way in which we created this representation was to cast me as the actress as i can look like a young vulnerable woman. In PulpFiction, Uma Thurman is shown as a vulnerable young woman who has become a victim of a drug overdose, we used similar angles as the angle in Pulp Fiction as it puts an emphasis on the bleeding nose and mouth. The clothes used in our film were a revealing vest top to show the youthfulness of the woman and how her fashion is modern and skinny jeans, this helps to outline the shape of the actors body and to show her frailness is something that would have weakened her, Uma Thurman also wears a revealing top which can represent her vulnerability. The makeup was done by me and I made myself look drained of blood, have a bleeding nose and bruises and a cut on my forehead, this shows that the victim has had a heavy fall to the floor and has been badly beaten whilst being murdered.This is similar to the female character in Pulp fiction as she also has a bleeding mouth and nose which shows shes had a bad fall and is in a vulnerable state. The blood around the victim in our film shows that the woman has been laying in this spot for a while and has been left on her own which puts an emphasis or her vulnerability. Lastly, the positioning of the character is important as it makes the fall look realistic, the characters position looks really unnatural and uncomfortable which shows that she is definitely dead and not just laying there.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
British Film Industry would most likely distribute our media
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
The focus group/ target audience for our media product is going to be aimed at teenagers who are 15 and over. Having it at 18 would make the target audience too niche, also lowering the amount of people who are watching it, therefore having it at 15 means there is more consumers and the context of the film is based more around this age as it isn't horror enough to exclude under 18's. The film would also be aimed at teenagers who have an interest in horrors and thrillers and have watched films such as Insidious and Sinister, this could be boys or girls as both can show an interest.
I believe that Kennedy would be our ideal audience as she is a female teenager over the age of 15 and enjoys these types of films and would definitely watch this sort of film at a cinema.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
1. What is your favourite movie genre?
2.Why do you like this genre so much?
3. Have you watched my influential film, 'Taken'?
4. Where do you think the titles should be placed in our opening?
5. Do you think the makeup was an effective part of the film?
6. Do you think the music builds tension?
7. Where do you think the film title should take place in the opening (beginning/middle/end)?
I handed this question out to my class and this is one of the responses I got back. I used a questionnaire as the people in my class would be a typical target audience due to the age group (17). The person that had answered this questionnaire had watched my influential film 'Taken' and our Opening of our film so was able to make a comparison between the two. They commented on how our movie titles were dotted around the screen and not in just one particular place which they said is similar to Taken meaning that our film follows the conventions of my influential film.
The person who answered the questionnaire also commented on the effectiveness of the of the makeup and said that it was useful as it made the character look like a victim and not just someone who's fainted or been knocked out. They also said that the music was useful as it added tension and made you 'wary of what might happen next' and that it builds suspicion. Lastly, the person who answered the questionnaire commented on the fact that they thought the title was put in the clip at the right time of the opening (the end) as it adds to the buildup. Also, as they have watched Taken, they would probably notice that their title was at the same time as our opening.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I learned how to use a tripod, attaching the video recorder on top to give it a steadiness whilst filming, as well as this you create a canted angle with the shoe of the tripod by changing it's position. Using the twist in the handle to tighten the movement left and right of the camera, enabling or disabling the ability to do a panning movement, this was used from the beginning of our opening of the film when the camera would pan across the room to show the audience the set of the scene. The tripod also has three legs which can be stretched or shrunk to a size of convenience so if you want a high angle shot you would extend the legs and if you want a low angle you would shrink them, this technique was also used in our film to show different shots of the room and victim.
Me and Jess Cooper learnt together how to use the podcast and co-operate it with audacity which allows you to merge different sounds together and change them, manipulating them to sound different to the voice that you recorded. We made a 999 call which was made to sound like a woman who's house was being broken into and she assistance of the police, in the phone call you could hear a gunshot when she says that the intruders have walked in and then there is silence so we can assume that she is dead then the shot of me on the floor would indicate that this was the woman who was talking on the phone. To record my voice in the phone call you had to use a cable to connect a microphone to the podcast, this microphone picks up your voice but we also had trouble with it as we found it picks up the sound around you so we had to find somewhere quiet to do the recording. We decided in the end that the phone call made with the podcast was not convincing or realistic enough to use so we had to take it out but we now know how to use it for future reference.
The video recorder was used to film the whole opening of our film. For our rough cut we tried using a 'Fujifilm' hoping for better quality but the attempt for that failed as the picture was pixelated and didn't record smoothly. The video recorder fitted to the top of the tripod giving it steady recording which makes the film look more professional. The only time we handheld the camera was near to the end when the camera followed the shape of my arm up to my face, doing this showed the injuries the character had suffered and gives the audience a closer view of it, making the watchers empathize for the character, making it feel as though they are in the room with the victim.
Using a memory stick as particularly important to the making of the film as it can be easy to lose all of the work and is safer to have the work saved on a desktop as well as several memory sticks of our group members, this ensures that the work will not be lost. Also having my work on my memory stick means that changes can be made at home also so you do not have to rely on just the school computers.
The school monitors have editing programmes on them such as Sony Vegas and Windows Movie Maker. For our rough cut we tried using Movie Maker which is a simple way of putting clips together and making titles between each clip but it is a very amateur way of editing videos and didn't work, making it look unprofessional. For our final piece we used Sony Vegas and our editor, Jessica, had to learn different editing techniques and I also tried to learn how to add titles and make flash backs. YouTube had helpful guides on how to use Sony Vegas and create flashbacks, changing the saturation and brightness and also teaching us how to add titles on top of the film which we found Movie Maker was unable to do.
When looking for different types of music to put in our opening, we used headphones to listen to it without distracting others around us., the headphones also gave us a higher definition of the sound so we was able to tell if it was of good quality.
Lastly is the computer which is vital for the making of our film as without it we wouldn't have been able to use the monitors to put our film together.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
You can see the improvement and progression between the time of my preliminary task (bottom collage) and my main task (bottom collage). In my main task, we learnt how to add credits and opening titles, we also learnt how to create a production company logo and add it to our film. In our preliminary task, we had no credits or opening titles so it looked like an average homemade film with no editing added to it. In our preliminary task the angles were very limited and the lighting was poor and casted reflections and didn't make the scene look very spooky which was the point of our short film. Also, the camera was vertical which was the wrong way to create a film as when watching them on the big screen/cinemas the picture is horizontal. All these factors were changed and improved when we got to the main task. We had appropriate costumes and makeup, the camera angles were more inventive and all horizontal, the lighting gave the scene a sense of mystery and spookiness and it generally looked a lot more professional. The main task shows how much we progressed as a group and how our editing was a lot ore advanced. We also learned how to use audacity so were able to successfully add music and sound effects.
Since the making of our preliminary task to our main task, my skills and understanding of computers and film making has improved a lot. In our preliminary task we filmed in the school corridors where the sound echoed a lot and so it was difficult to pick up on what the characters were saying and also took the scare factor away. In our main task we decided to film outside of school as it made a much better filming environment where we didn't have to worry about school timetables or students interrupting and also if we wanted any dialogue it would have been more audible (which we eventually decided against anyway).
In our preliminary task we used a various amount of camera angles but had little knowledge of how to use the tripod and so did most of the filming without it. We also found it difficult to add sound effects so tried to add our own whilst doing the filming, such as throwing an item at a box to make a banging sound at the same time as the actors were trying to speak but there was too many things going on at once and so it didn't work out well but once we got the main task we had learnt how to add sound effects and overlay different noises, this had a better effect and sounded more professional and made the filming more easier. Also in our preliminary we changed the lighting by hand instead of using a computer because, again, we was unsure of how to do this using an editing programme but by the time our main task was ready to be edited we learnt on Sony Vegas how to change the lighting and filters on the videos.
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