Evaluation

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

Cross-cutting-  Our cross cutting was inspired by the film 'Da Vinci Code'. In 'Da Vinci Code's opening scene there is a cross cut between a man running away from a killer and a contrasting scene where a man is talking in front of an audience. We thought that this was effective because we liked the idea of there being a complete contrast in two events and yet somehow the audience can tell that the two scenes are linked and they will want to know how. The two screen shots on the right of the text display the fact that both scenes were of complete contrast and yet the fact that they were being cross-cut the audience knew somehow that they were linked.

How we have used this in our opening.

 

In our thriller opening we were inspired by this convention. We believed that it would be a good idea to have a cross-cut between two contrasting scenes where one there is a lot of movement and the other there is not a lot of movement at all. We therefore used this convention in our own thriller opening: the two scenes that we used were the boy in his room with the two men in suits walking fast. The two images on the right are the scenes that we used in our opening. As you can see in one scene the two men are walking and are clearly going somewhere important and the other is of a boy sitting in his room doing nothing.










Shot Composition- In our thriller opening we liked the idea of not showing the faces of people who looked like they were up to something. We got this idea from the film 'The Usual Suspects' opening where the man that is setting the boat on fire's face is not being shown even though you can hear his voice. This keeps the suspense up because the audience want to know who the man is and the fact that his face is covered up helps hide his identity.

How we have used this in our opening.

In our thriller opening we decided to use this conception to help maintain the idea of secrecy. We thought that it would be a good idea to cover up the faces of the two men not seen because it makes the audience think that something mysterious is happening. We use it on more than one occasion in our opening but it is with the men on each. We used this convention whilst the men were walking and also when they were opening the breifcase so that the audience wouldn't be able to identify who they were straight away. We wanted to maintain the mystery and suspense throughout the whole 2 minutes.

2. How does media product represent particular social groups?

Copy of How does your media product represent particular social groups? on Prezi

3. What kind of media institution might distibute your media product and why?

Here is a link to our wikispace page: http://nfgszeus.wikispaces.com/What+type+of+film+is+%27A+State+of+Mind%27+and+how+may+this+be+affected+by+distibution%3F

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

Our typical audience member for our movie A State Of Mind would fit the profile of this:

• His name is Mike , short for Michael which only his mother calls him, and he is in his Mid- 20's.  He has a girlfriend but they are not having a serious relationship. His job is at BT where he works as a tele communicator at a call centre. He went to University and got average grades where he studied Computing and ICT.

• He particularly likes Thriller films and the Spy/ Psychological sub-genre. He is a fan of top mainstream Hollywood actors such as Daniel Craig or Angelina Jolie. 

• He likes to go to the cinema with his 2 best mates and he only likes to go on Wednesday because he is an Orange Wednesday customer and he likes to save money.  He has a lot of free time so he often goes, mainly in the evenings.

• Mike is a big fan of new technology and likes to buy his films on Blu ray but he still buys a lot of films on DVD if they are cheap. He is not a big fan of 3D as he thinks it is a gimmick. Mike likes to buy his technology from specialist shops such as Richer Sounds. He wants the best service and best quailty products. He has a Full HD Flatscreen TV in his apartment with surround sound.

• Mike is not actively involved in politics, however he does sometimes watch the news to see about what is happening around the world. 

• Mike does not read a great deal, he likes to read technology magazines occasionally. He sees no point in newspapers as he can get all the information he needs on the internet.

• Mike likes to travel, he is interested in different cultures and different technologies. He went to Hong Kong when he was 12 and would like to work there one day.

• Mike is a big James Bond fan, he has the entire collection of the films and he considers himself to be just like 007. Mike also likes watching 24 and wishes he was tough like Jack Bauer. He is a big fan of Crime/Thriller TV shows and always records them on Sky. Mike does like Psychological films as well and he has seen Inception many times. He also likes to write on internet forums such as IMDB to discuss the story in his free time.

• Mike is not too bothered about music. He generally tends to listen to Indie music though but he does not really have any preference.

• Mike's main hobby is going to the cinema but he also likes sports and paintballing. He goes      to the bar to watch football matches but he mainly likes to do it to meet girls. Mike has a hobby with military collectibles since his grandfather served in WW2. He generally likes to go paintballing with his friends and finds it very stress-relieving.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

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

We used many different technologies whilst making the opening to 'A State Of Mind'. These were:

Final Cut Express- this was completely new to me but after looking at tutorials I gained a clear understanding of how to use it and I played a big part in editing our opening

HD Cameras/Tripod- To film our piece we used an HD camera on a Tripod and we found it was fairly simple to use. We would film the shots and then upload them onto the Apple Mac that we were using and then put them onto Final Cut Express.

blogger.com- Obviously we used blogger to create our posts. This was new to me but it is fairly simple to use.

prezi.com- I also used the website prezi.com to help me create some presentations. I would them upload them onto blogger.com.

youtube.com- We used youtube.com to exhibit our production and also our preliminary task. After the editing was complete we uploaded our videos onto youtube.com.

7. What do you feel you have learnt from the progression from the preliminary task to the full product? 

Below is our preliminary task full with notes:

When we first started out with our preliminary task we only used basic camera and editing techniques. This was to display the fact that we knew how to use them and also allowed us to develope our skills by starting at the beginning and working our way up.

When we reached our final task we knew that we would need to use more advanced editing and camera techniques. We had already displayed the use of a matched cut and the 180 degree angle in our preliminary task and we knew that we needed to use them and more in our final task. Also, with editing we only experimented a bit with fades in the preliminary task but when it came to the main task we added visual effects like a blur.

Evaluation

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


Ways we USE forms and conventions


Cross cutting - is cutting from two or more lines of action. In thriller films cross cutting is often used as a way to create suspense, tension,mystery in our opening we decided that these effects needed to be brought across so we used cross cutting. The example used is a man running in a hallway to a man giving a lecture this makes the audience think what is going to happen and wonder how? why? and if? these two men are linked in some way which is releveant to the storyline.

We replicated this in our film by having cross cutting from the boy in the bedroom to the men walking. We believed that this would create the effects we desired. As it creates mystery as the audience do not know what is going to happen it also makes them think how the two are linked. We found this technique pretty easy to create and we think it works well.

Shot Composition - 

In our opening we made sure that we used shot composition carefully as we did not want our henchmen to be revealed as this adds to the mystery/suspense of the opening we achieved this by composing out shots so that their faces were not revealed. This makes the audience think and ask questions such as who are they ? where are they going ? what are they doing ?. As this was an idea that we came up with we asked ourselves these questions at the beggining to create their purpose in our film. The example we used to show this is The Usual Suspects as we had came across this while doing research. We felt this was a good example of the technique to use as the face of the man is not revealed this is intentional as is makes the audience try to guess and wonder throughout the film who he is.

 

 

We used shot composition in our opening, here you can see the men are walking and we have composed out shot carefully as to not reveal their faces.

 

Ways we DEVELOP forms and conventions


Reaction shot to fade

The way we have developed this reaction shot is that conventionally there would normally have a point of view shot of the boy after he has looked around or a motivated cut to what he is looking at. Instead we used a fade and didn't reveal in our opening who the boy was looking at. This adds to the sense of mystery as the audience has no idea who opened the door and who the boy is looking at. This makes them wonder what the possibilities could be and the outcome of those possibilites.

Use of music to mimic scenes

As a typical convention thriller films have music which accompanies their opening credits we decided to develop this as we matched our music with what is going on. For example the tapping sound mimics the sound of a keyboard this links with our film as we have a man typing on a keyboard in our opening credits. The music also sounds like a ticking clock sound which symbolizes that time is of the essence and it gives the impression the boy is running out of time as the men are walking. There are also heartbeat like sounds which symbolize life and death this links with another sound we have in our soundtrack which is sudden 'booms' in our music this could link to the gun we have in our opening scene which could also relate to life and death. By matching the music with the footage this makes the audience think more deeply into the plot of the film it also makes it more mysterious.

Ways we CHALLENGE forms and conventions




Sound Bridge to credit

We challenged using a sound bridge in our opening by having it fade onto a credit instead of showing what happened in the next shot this increases the the suspense, mystery and tension and makes the audience anxious to know what has happened.

A male victim rather than a female

In our opening of our thriller film we had a male victim instead of a female victim this challenges traditional conventions as there is normally a female victim as females are usually the 'damsel in distress' and the male role is the one who usually saves the 'damsel' as it is usually his love interest or someone he cares about e.g family member, close friend. Conventionally males are usually powerful, strong, the hero. Men are very rarely shown as vunerable, weak or in need of saving we challenged this typical sterotype as we had a male victim making him look inferior and oblivious to what is going on.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
To answer this question I have used an online presentation service called Prezi:

Evaluation question 2 on Prezi

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

To Answer this question we have used a website called http://www.wikispaces.com/

http://nfgszeus.wikispaces.com/What+type+of+film+is+%27A+State+of+Mind%27+and+how+may+this+be+affected+by+distibution%3F



4. Who would be the audience for your media product? 
Our typical audience member for our movie A State Of Mind would fit the profile of this:

• His name is Mike , short for Michael which only his mother calls him, and he is in his Mid- 20's.  He has a girlfriend but they are not having a serious relationship. His job is at BT where he works as a tele communicator at a call centre. He went to University and got average grades where he studied Computing and ICT. 

 

He particularly likes Thriller films and the Spy/ Psychological sub-genre. He is a fan of top mainstream Hollywood actors such as Daniel Craig or Angelina Jolie. 

He likes to go to the cinema with his 2 best mates and he only likes to go on Wednesday because he is an Orange Wednesday customer and he likes to save money he also takes full advantage of the pizza express offer which accompanies orange wednesdays as he usually goes there after the film has finished. He has a lot of free time so he often goes, mainly in the evenings.

Mike is a big fan of new technology and likes to buy his films on Blu ray but he still buys a lot of films on DVD if they are cheap. He is not a big fan of 3D as he thinks it is a gimmick. Mike likes to buy his technology from specialist shops such as Richer Sounds. He wants the best service and best quailty products. He has a Full HD Flatscreen TV in his apartment with surround sound.

Mike is not actively involved in politics, however he does sometimes watch the news to see about what is happening around the world. 
Mike does not read a great deal, he likes to read technology magazines occasionally. He sees no point in newspapers as he can get all the information he needs on the internet. 

Mike likes to travel, he is interested in different cultures and different technologies. He went to Hong Kong when he was 12 and would like to work there one day. 

Mike is a big James Bond fan, he has the entire collection of the films and he considers himself to be just like 007. Mike also likes watching 24 and wishes he was tough like Jack Bauer. He is a big fan of Crime/Thriller TV shows and always records them on Sky. Mike does like Psychological films as well and he has seen Inception many times. He also likes to write on internet forums such as IMDB to discuss the story in his free time.

Mike is not too bothered about music. He generally tends to listen to Indie music though but he does not really have any preference.

Mike's main hobby is going to the cinema but he also likes sports and paintballing. He goes to the bar to watch football matches but he mainly likes to do it to meet girls. Mike has a hobby which is collecting military collectibles since his grandfather served in WW2. He generally likes to go paintballing with his friends and finds it very stress-relieving.

5. How did you attract/address your audience? 


To answer this question we have annotated our Thriller Opening on YouTube. We have pointed out the main features that attract our audience and why they do. Our target audience is Males aged 18-30. The main features fell under these categories:

• Camera Work (movement and angle)
• Editing
• Mise En Scene
• Establishment of characters

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

Offline


Tripod

A tripod can be used to keep the camera still we used this when filming the man under the stairs and also when the men were walking this kept the camera stable as desired.

Mac

We used Mac computers to edit our film on and edit our blogs. Mac computers are quite advanced and are especially good for editing on using final cut express.














Camera

We used an HD Camera (Canon Legria HFR106) to film our opening as I had not used a camera like this before I had to learn how to use it effectively for example zooming, taking still photos,mounting the camera onto a tripod e.t.c.

We used final cut express to edit our opening. This software can perform a variety of tasks e.g cutting clips, putting them together in a sequence, adding music and credits. I as I had used this software before I had some knowledge but as new things occurred I had to look at tutorials on the internet accordingly.



Photoshop was used for editing some images and pictures including our logo for our film company I have had previous experience with photoshop before it is professional and relatively easy to use.

Online

I used Prezi to create a presentation for question 2 I found this fairly simple as it was quite straightforward to use.



Survey Monkey was used when we conducted our research as we needed it use it for polls and questionairres. It was rather useful for getting an outside opinions on things we could not decide as a group.






As part of our media studies course we had to create a blog as part of our coursework. Before doing the media studies course I had not blogged before however is was quite easy to pick up and get the hang of. It became very useful as we coudl refer to previous stuff we had posted.



Youtube is a video hosting website which I had used before this became very useful to us as we could look at other films to see how they attracted their audience and what techniques they used also how they affected the audience. Youtube is also useful as it is an easy way to get yourself noticed and us as agroup have uploaded our opening to youtube.

7. Looking back at your Preliminary Task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

 The Preliminary Task was extremely helpful to us as it gave us a chance to make a practice video before we made our Main Task.  Through this we learned how to :

- use the cameras , tripods and other equipment

- choose locations, props and costumes

- film with appropriate lighting

- edit our video on Final Cut Express

To answer the question fully with examples we have annotated our Preliminary Task video on YouTube.