Evaluation- Part 7

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

 OUR PRELIMINARY PIECE.

OUR OPENING TWO MINUTES.




Problems that we encountered in our preliminary task:

• We didn't know how to use the editing software that well, so we didn't cut shots to fit properly.
• We wasn't aware of the fact that our sound was on or what was on the sound so we took a gamble with it, and it didn't turn out for the best. All of our sound is just wrong.
• We had some 180 degree line mess ups and our shots didn't line up where they should have done.
• We didn't bother including titles so it was just a random piece of filming as we couldn't work out where the 'add title' button was.

How we got over this:

We watched our preliminary over and talked through it and what went wrong with it, and we put it down to the fact we weren't organized with our headphones to listen to the sound which we will have to change as we can't take a risk on our final product. We also realized how little we knew about the editing software that we had to use, so we watched the tutorials and asked classmates to help us when we were stuck, we then soon figured what we needed to out and worked our way from there. So I gained more knowledge of the editing software.
   We managed to listen to our final piece making sure that we didn't have any unwanted sound left on there. We struggled to find how to mute only certain bits but with a bit of patience we worked it out in the end. All in all I think that I grasped the capability of using sony vegas much easier than I would ever of done before.

Evaluation- Part 6

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


computer- 

DELL 'optiplex 745'

The college computers that we used are simple to use but old, and the majority of websites are actually blocked including key websites needed so we had to get them unblocked for our usage. Also they don't have large memory capacities so would often freeze when using sony vegas unless we were on the computers specifically for media students.


 my personal laptop-

                                                        TOSHIBA 


I used this at home to do blogging, create prezis and just do more general work. I know how to use this very well as it's my own personal possession and I didn't have the annoyance of crashing at it has a large memory capacity.


blogger-

I think that this website is very useful in terms of presentation and understanding. It is a sort of media diary and allows you to show your progression throughout the course. it was simple and straightforward to use


www.prezi.com -

I found that Prezi was very simple to use but it took me a while to find the embedding coding but that is the only struggle I found with Prezi.


Microsoft powerpoint 2010-

Microsoft powerpoint (2010) is very simple to use, and is an effective way of showing off a large amount of work but using a funner method  of presenting it. So when I realized you could partner this with slide share I instantly started creating a powerpoint presentation. 


slide share- 

his website was very simple to use as you'd already done all the work on a different programme for example I used Microsoft powerpoint, and just uploaded that onto there and it just converter it into a more presentable version for my blog.


camera-

PANASONIC HX-DC1

I found the camera work very easy to do as it was a simple video camera- the memory on this isn't a tape it is just stored onto the camera so we could plug it straight into the computer via cables- this was a quick and simple way of doing this, quicker than using a tape we thought which is why we chose this camera instead of the cameras that took tape.


tripod- 

We had some problems with the tripod to begin with as we used Emma's which had a broken leg which we didn't know about until we went out and got to our filming location, so we had to try and act as the third leg, which was a pain. We then got a tripod that worked for out second trip out filming and that was more successful. It was simple to use and put away which was a bonus.


Sony Vegas- (programme- then the process of rendering.)

The programme itself is very difficult to use at first- As we showed due to our poor quality preliminary task. So we watched the tutorials for a bit more support but, they were still not as helpful as we needed so  we asked our classmates, where the buttons for certain things were, and this way we learnt where everything that we need was on the programme. It took a lot of time to get to grips with it as we'd never used a complex film editing programme before; For example i'd only ever used windows media maker. 
The process of rendering is so simple as it's literally a click of the button, but, what format that we needed to render our preliminary film task we was unaware of which added to the lateness of uploading this task. So we learnt from the prelim. what format to render it under which made the rendering process so much easier.


www.youtube.com-

I used this to upload my preliminary filming and also my final product- two minute opening. It was very simple to use and it pretty much did it all for you. 

Evaluation- Part 5

5. How did you attract/address your audience?


Our target audience is teenagers- young adults (approx.15-21 years old)


We used a local setting to attract the citizens of Hastings and surrounding areas such as Eastbourne, Bexhill, Rye, Battle etc. 

We used an attractive female protagonist attracting those male audience members.

We used a mainly teenage/young adult cast- addressing those of the same age group. Using this age group as a cast it also attracts the older generation as they like to know what the younger generation are up to. 

We showed teens drinking which attracts a lot of teens and represents the typical teenage life.

Our titles are very simple and the fact that they 'slide left' it indicates that what it seen has happened in the past and in these scenes where the titles come up is where the protagonist is either talking with her friend or is very drunk, and a lot of people have been in this situation so they can relate to that. Our titles are on a black background adding a mysterious element to the film drawing in those thriller/mystery seeking audience members.

This shot highlights the thriller element of our film, which appeals to our target audience as our 'Audience feedback' results show that thrillers are quite popular for these generations. This draws in those thriller seeking audience members.

Evaluation- Part 4

Evaluation part 4

View more presentations from Oliviacalleja.

Evaluation- Part 3

3. What media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evasion is a small independent British film, therefore it's likely that it would be distributed by  small distribution companies that specialize in dealing with independent films. We created our own production and distribution company-LUJA PRODUCTIONS. This is so that we own all the rights to the film. But due to lack of funding we would have to look for more distribution companies. 
   We would have to look for those who specialize in small British films such as ours. 


Small distribution companies/ distributors linked to thrillers:
Optimum Releasing- submarine (2010) Not a thriller but has that independent film feel to it.
Overture films- paper heart (2009) - Not a thriller but a small not very well known film.
Compass International Pictures-  Halloween (1978)
Focus Features- Hanna (2011)


How are films distributed:
Unviersal and sony ->produced by sony but funded by universal
1.concept
2.production company is decided
3.Funding is foundfor the production company
4. When Sony pictures finishes film it's sent off to universal studios
5.Universal then sell the film off to TV companies, DVD, blu-ray, film download websites,cinema.




                Different ways that we could personally distribute our film

Evaluation Part 3 on Prezi

Evaluation- Part 2

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

Our media product is primarily aimed at teenagers, so we decided to cast our actors used in our film, also as teenagers so that the audience can relate to the narrative. We also show an image of a stereotypical teenage day/night out in Hastings involving alcohol and friends these two things the majority of teenagers can relate to.
 The girl that we used looks like a sterotypical middle class teenage girl. We showed this through the costume choice, even though we use a working class setting.
  We show a stereotypical side to females in the opening. She is the vunerable female 'the princess' of the film. The way this group is represented by our film suggests that there are currently real concerns for that age, class and gender. A major concern is the economic decline our kidnapper represent economic crisis, and how the girl is overcoming this by the end of the film.

Evaluation- Part 1

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


Our final product is a hybrid genre which is a combination of thriller,mystery and urban realism but we decided to focus of the thriller side of it. Evasion is recognizable as a thriller because of the CU shot of the main character Hannah deeply breathing and her distress shown through the acting. I also chose to film this short scene in a small confined area where there'd be minimum disturbances in interruptions and noise, I also chose to film this with the lights off, as you cannot really see a lot of 'Hannah' (Molly Hemsley) which creates more of the mysterious atmosphere, making it more intense adding to the typical thriller feel which gives a hint to the event about to happen in the rest of the film which gives that enigmatic feel to the opening scene(s)..

We chose to use natural lighting whereas most thrillers actually edit the lighting to make the shots darker which adds to the intense scary feel of thrillers, but as the majority of our shots are quite dark anyway due to the time of day that we filmed we didn't feel it necessary to edit the lighting. In the opening the main character Hannah resembles more of the princess role rather than the heroin, but in the end Hannah comes out triumphant  although this isn't shown in the opening, I believe that this develops the genre of thrillers as normally I find that you know the role of the characters from the very beginning. 
   We used 'Hanna (2011)' as our baseline film. This meant that we borrowed some thriller conventions from this film. I liked the fact that it didn't need music to bring me into the film as the music only lasted for 7 seconds and the rest of the sound was diegetic, we used this for our film, we opened with the diegetic sound and then put in music. 

Hanna's titling is quite typical of a thriller. It's a simple font to read and it stands out as it's in capitals and uses a bright red background with white lettering. We used this as a baseline to copy. We put red lettering on a black background. We chose to only put our titling of 'EVASION' up briefly as in Hanna that is what really stood out to me. 

Preliminary filming

I uploaded this video late on into the course due to the fact that my origional preliminary filming was lost. Me and Emma did this filming together. We also shared the role of editing, I did slightly more editing than Emma as she was off ill for a few days. We are aware of the fact that this is of very low standard and that the continuity in a few sections is all wrong this was due to lack of space, we couldn't actually postion the camera in the right place as we was filming in a small box shaped room and the tripod was too large for this area, for our actual final product we will take these things into account and there shall hopefully be a vast improvement to our work. The dialogue in the preliminary is all wrong as we had no access to headphones so no way of listening to our prelim, we were unaware of what could actually be heard, hence why some random talking/ repetition of sentences etc. This will obviously be changed for our final product.

prelim

Opening title/shot sequence

This is what I would like my film to look like but obviously in the editing process I will make more changes to this order but for now this is how I'd like it to gom but I do not know the length of each shot so I may need to go out and do some more filming to fill up the two minute time given; Also, I am adding the name onto the end of this sequence which is 'EVASION' 

Poster

I know that I didn't need to do this but I felt for my own benefit I'd like to create a film poster to get a bigger feel for my film- All I did was get a picture edit it on fotoflexer.com in two minutes. So I know it's not of high standard at all but I thought it was a rough idea of what I'd need to promote my film if actually made.

My film name

I want it to be a short, simple, memorable name summing up the entire film in one or two words.


The choices are: 
Hannah
Run
Escape
The Escape
Target
Evasion
Encounter
Victim 




I have chosen to name my film 'Evasion'

Different forms of media/ Advertisement.

I have realized how much I actually use different forms of media each day. So I have been keeping a diary of what media I have used/seen within just one day.


7.05am- wake up and check ipod- play temple run and check facebook.
8.10am-8.20am- check phone and reply to texts people had sent.
8.30am- sit in common room talking about 'The Woman In Black' film.
8.45am- check phone and text people before going to lesson.
10.25am- Checking websites online for past exam papers/mark schemes for biology.
10.30am- Get bored of looking at science website and go on www.tumblr.com whilst listening to music on www.youtube.com
11.10am- read the newspapers put out in the common room
12.05am- Learnt a few lines of 'Daisy pulls it off' with my drama classmates.
12.40am- Workshop with a photographer and in that we looked at his website and his colleges work.
1.30pm- 10 minute break. On phone checking texts and facebook
3.10pm- Walk home- Listening to Ipod, texting people, walked past a bus shelter with posters on it for upcoming films.
4.15pm- get in- watch TV- documentary channels (so adverts were rare about films apart from 'The Grey'. the adverts specialized in household products and charity causes)
5.55pm- laptop out- www.youtube.com ; www.facebook.com ; www.tumblr.com
6.30pm- Watch two films- 'Dude, where's my car?' and 'Get him to the Greek'




This allowed me to realize what types of media I use often and so what would be a good method of advertising my film. We could advertise in the local newspaper in our Sixth form section, as this would give the Sixth form something new to write about and we could also get some publicity. We could post it onto www.facebook.com as a short film and get friends to 'share' it to gain publicity. Word of mouth actually has a big effect on the audience of a film as, if a friend really enjoyed the film you'd be more likely to go watch it whereas if a friend hated it, you wouldn't be inclined to go and spend money on it. Due to our shortage of money we cannot afford posters printed or the space to put the posters in. So word of mouth would have to be a big factor of our advertisement. We could put out film on at the local independent short film cinema. The Electric Palace in Hastings; This would cost a bit of money, but, this is the main way that our film would get our film noticed in the industry. It's something Emma and I/ Luja Productions would have to discuss as a team.

New actors.

Actors- re-thought! on Prezi

I needed to come up with two actors for the next important roles of Hannah's mother and also the kidnapper. There would be more actors if we did actually chose to shoot the entire film but as it's just the opening two minutes I didn't think it as necessary to put in all of the other actors. 

Titles for my film.

The titles that I intend on using for my film include; The actors names- Molly Hemsley and Emma Lucas. But, I will also have to include other actors names as it's not a film with just these two actors in it. Therefore I will have to do some thinking about the casting of my entire film not just the opening two minutes. And then finally I will include the director/film makers names- Olivia Calleja (me) and Emma Lucas.The distributing/production company made by Emma and I (my partner for this project) - Luja productions- which I have the logo and information about in a few of my previous posts. When mentioning the production company as there is only one, I think that we need to highlight it more possibly by doing one shot with 'An independent film by' then over another shot 'Luja Productions' or mine and Emma's names. But I do not think that we can actually do much more in the titles as it is an independent film and we haven't received funding of any kind from anywhere and there isn't many actors so, that is all we can really do; But I will however have to discuss this with Emma in further detail.

Hanna (2011) opening sequence

Brave (2012 film)

Teaser poster
Directed by	Mark Andrews
Produced by	Katherine Sarafian
Screenplay by	Brenda Chapman Irene Mecchi
Starring	Kelly Macdonald Julie Walters Billy Connolly Emma Thompson Kevin McKidd Craig Ferguson Robbie Coltrane John Ratzenberger
Music by	Patrick Doyle
Editing by	Nicholas C. Smith
Studio	Pixar
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures
Release date(s)	June 22, 2012 (2012-06-22)
Country	United States
Language	English

This film although a animation- Which I am not doing; portays a story of a young, strong female. As this is distributed by Walt Disney Pictures this film is aimed at the younger generation, giving young females a good female figure to aspire to be like. I can tell that this film is aimed at the younger generation as the distributor is  a well known childrens film maker as well as many other things. The lead girl isn't what is sterotypically cast as the main character, generally if a girl is cast as a lead (which is quite rare) she is the ideal woman, slim, pretty, poncy and big breasted. This character 'Merida' is not much like the stereotypical 'film girl' as she has round facial feature, making her appear chubby. She is also ginger. Gingers are rarely represented in a good way. In real life people are often bullied for being ginger, so perhaps Disney is reaching out to those poor innocent gingers, and saying 'it's ok to be ginger, you can still be the star of the show.'
   In my film the girl chosen to play my main character, looks like the average teenager, which is what I want, as i'm showing her as a strong woman later on in the film, I want the younger female audience to relate to her which I don't feel as if they could do if she was this supermodel like person or insanely ugly. I think for small independent films the actors should be attractive but it's difficult for the average audience member to relate to people in which are so different to them. So, I think the fact my main character 'Hannah' (played by Molly Hemsley) is representing average people it allows the audience to connect with her emotions as well as her life  as they can picture themselves in it easily.

Hanna (2011)

'A 16-year-old who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.'


Director: Joe white- A male director but he is British, which gives slight relevance to me and my film. 


Main girl: Saoirse Una Ronan- She is around the same age as Molly Hemsley who is my main actor; Saoirse has been in a few well known films such as 'The lovely bones', 'Atonement' and ' The Way Back' so she is a semi well known actress so people are familiar with her so possibly likely to watch 'Hanna'. She is very like my protagonist in her looks, blonde hair, blue eyes, quite small in stature, teenager and also a girl. It is quite rare for a girl to be a main character and the film to be a success. This gives a lot of hope for my film to do well in the film industry as a very similar actress has been used as a lead role and although this film didn't do that well in the UK or the USA it did rather well in the rest Europe, so possibly this sort of film isn't what the British Film Industry is looking for.

 I watched the trailer on IMDb, I think this looked really edgy and high budget in comparison to my film. I think that my film differs with this in the fact that my main protagonist in the beginning kind of forms the 'princess' stereotype role, and needs to be saved but, in the end, no-one needs to save her. She can do it all alone. 

I then watched the opening sequence of this film. I really like the fact it didn't need music to bring me into the film as the music only lasted for 7 seconds. I like this  idea and may use it for my film. This would really benefit me as we don't have the rights to any well know current songs, I'm not musically talented so we cannot create our own song, unless we get a friend to write us some music which is our only real option other than going on a website with unprotected songs. I like the way that they highlighted the fact that this is set in  a natural environment with only the girl and the animal around by using diegetic sound. They didn't use many different types of camera shots in the opening just CU, X-CU, LS, panning and tracking. I plan on using these shots and possibly more, such as X-LS and low and high angle shots; I liked the fact there was very little dialogue, I thought this was quite good for an opening as it allowed you as an audience member to focus on the image and the scene before you really know the character, it also adds an element of mystery to the characters; I think I'm going to follow the structure of the opening of Hanna due to the fact it really interested me as an audience member, and it's of the same genre with a female protagonist. 

Webliography: www.IMDb.com 

Sound

Music

Our genre.

I originally thought that our film was a simple straight forward thriller mystery film, but with more thought into it, it is in some respects a exploitation film as in the beginning it shows the weakness of the young and also women. It is conventional for women and young or elderly to be the weak ones in films, but Emma and I wanted to adapt these conventions to suit our style and also our target audience of 15-21 year olds (also aimed at a female dominated audience but, a film for both sexes). We decided that in the opening we would give the impression of this girl being weak but throughout the film she actually comes out on top and the elder male kidnapper actually comes out as the weak character. So Emma and I are overturning those teenage female character victim conventions. We are borrowing conventions from teen horrors, this is because as they have been done before we know that it has a chance of working but we're also taking a chance on adapting the thriller genre for our film. I would like to keep the same tense mood and atmosphere with those scary elements of mystery, but whilst adapting the genre I want to make it more realistic as if it was a real event so that the audience could really get into it and in some ways involved.

In depth explanation as to why I chose my actors.

I chose to use Molly Hemsley as she looks like a typical teenager girl. She has a vulnerable look to her due to her small stature, her blonde hair and her blue eyes. Also due to these features she has a vulnerable look about her, which works really well with this thriller genre as in the beginning she gets kidnapped. She is an aspiring actress, so was willing to take part in this media project and also we got some good acting skills in our opening which we might not of got if we got a random friend to take part for us. It is stereotypical for films to portray young girls as small, innocent and vulnerable, so I as a director would lead the audience into thinking that is what 'Hannah' is like as well, but, as a female director I would like to adapt this conventional thought and actually change this protagonist into a strong female instead of a vulnerable female that her image would suggest. I think that this would bring in more female audience viewers but possibly less male viewers which could pose a problem as our audience range is already very limited as it's a low budget, independent film so losing audience members could be fatal to the success of our film, but I think it's a risk i'm willing to take. There isn't many films who would choose to use actors of such low experience and young age as it's quite a risk as a high amount of audience actually view a film for well known actors so using all unknown actors is a massive risk, but because i'm not aiming for my film to be a mainstream film I do want it to be a small British independent film, so using unknown actors for me isn't a downfall to the film. Plus, well known famous actors is far out of my non-existent budget. 

Shooting schedule

Coming up with a shooting schedule was difficult we overcame many problems such as weather and fitting the shooting around college and work times.

We began filming,
 TUESDAY 20th December 2011 (AM). We filmed for 2 hours. Actors used - No actors involved. Shot Numbers - 1, 2, 3, 6. Location - Hastings Beach, Underground Car Park. Synopsis - Establishing settings. Props - None.

WEDNESDAY 21st December  2011 - No Filming.

THURSDAY 22nd December 2011 (PM)- 1 hour of filming. Actors used - Protagonist and first actor. Shot Numbers - 4, 5. Location - Hastings Beach. Synopsis - Introduction to characters drinking, setting shot. Props - Bottle of drink, Characters costumes/make up, High heeled shoes.

FRIDAY 23rd  December 2011 (AM/PM) - 2 and a half hours of filming. Actors used -  Protagonist. Shot Numbers - 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Location - Underground Car Park. Synopsis - Protagonist in underground car park, protagonist drunk in underground car park. Props - Bottle of drink, Protagonist costume/make up, High heeled shoes.