Amberino =D: December 2010

Of Finished Opening Sequence

Questions & Activities

Question/Activity One: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Here is my Photoshop file of my 9 distinct key frames:

The aspects me and Sophie have considered in our distinct key frames are: Title of film, Setting/Location, Props, Camera and Editing, Title Font and style, Story and how the opening sets it up and How characters are introduced.
For the Title of the film, we used a student from our class as the actor and he is holding a pocket watch, and on the back of the pocket watch is the title, edited in on Final Cut. We used the pocket watch as a prop for this title as we think it gives the audience an idea of what the film may include.
Setting and Location has been probably a main aspect to include in our title sequence, our re-make of The Sorcerers is based in a college, so we have the Production Designer credit this is text on a college sign we created by taking a picture of Long Road College sign and editing it in Photoshop. For a characters credit we have used one of our classmates as an actor and he's sitting behind a laptop in a classroom, so this gives the idea of a college too. Another character is introduced while she is writing her name on the college toilet mirror.
We have used Props in nearly every credit, my favourite is the Original Music By credit, we have opened up a MacBook and layed out some music sheet we created on the keyboard with a half written composition, we have used a few props such as: a pen, a cup, board markers and a memory stick.
For Camera and Editing, we have used a lot of zooming, close-ups and mid-shots, we have also used an over the shoulder shot which is for our last credit.
The Title Font and Style is different for every credit. As we have used props it is what sort of text you would expect to see on say a music sheet or on a certificate.

Question/Activity Two: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I Have chosen the main character in our re-make of The Sorcerers to compare to a similar character. The character I am going to be comparing Alexi to is Tom Chambers who plays Max Tyler in BBC 1's Drama series of Waterloo Road. He used to be head master of Waterloo Road school, he was very serious and strict. In appearance I think that if Alexi done his hair like Tom he would look similar. Character wise, we have made our main character very professional and quite scary, Max in Waterloo Road is the same but I think he may be more intimidating. In our re-make we are going to make Dr Montague the bad guy, to make him powerful and Max on Waterloo Road plays that sort of guy to certain people.

Question/Activity Three: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For this activity we had to do some researching before we could get started, we had a few questions which were like guidelines, a few were: What does a production company do?, What the distributors do or who they are? Where do they get the money from to fund their films? etc. Me and Sophie started looking up films that were similar to The Sorcerers, we then looked at who the production company was who supported them and things like that, we then went onto researching into their company and that's how we started with our re-searching. After researching we had to write a script, so we had 3/4 main points and me and Sophie divided them between us, I wrote the script for what i was going to say and Sophie done the same. When we put it all together, it didn't make sense, we then started to work together and read it through, what we wanted to add in on the script we wrote on a post it note and stuck it to the paper where we wanted to say it.
Recording the voice over was the hardest part of the whole process, we recorded it so many times. It was coming up to the end of the day and we were recording one last voice over, when i suddenly got the hiccups during talking, me and Sophie decided we would do it the next day as we couldn't carry on. Finally we got the voice over right. the last thing to do was to export it as a MP3 and to import it into final cut. I had a few difficulties with final cut as my media went offline, so before i could import the voice over I had to reconnect the media. After reconnecting the media there was one thing left to do which is to put the voice over in the correct place for timing reasons.

Question/Activity Four: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Me and Sophie have made a spider diagram and have listed all the things we think someone would be like who would watch the film The Sorcerers, the categories are, Shops they may shop for cloths in, TV what sort of programmes they may watch, Films- they may watch, Clothing- they may wear, Bands- they may listen too and finally Spare Time- what they may do in their spare time. In the Shops group we have listed: Cult, Grindstore.com, Drop Dead and Loud.com, all these stores or websites sell clothes that are quite grungy, baggy, sometimes casual.

For the TV group we could only find one programme related to The Sorcerers

Next is the Films group, in this group we have: A Clockwork Orange, Jennifer's Body and The Faculty. Two of these films are based in a school, the same as our remake of the opening sequence of The Sorcerers.

The Clothing category sort of ties in with the shops, but we have listed what we would think someone in our audience would wear: Baggy jeans maybe faded, maybe quoted t-shirts and casual hoodies. It's not Gothic, and it's not chav, just casual.

The Bands we think our audience may listen to are: Marilyn Manson and Rage Against the Machine, Marilyn Manson is quite heavy music and Rage against the machine is opposite, maybe they don't stick to one genre. As The Sorcerers isn't really much of a horror me and Sophie found it quite funny.

The last category is the Spare time, we thought the person would maybe: Draw/Sketch, Play computer games and maybe enjoy reading books.

This is our spider diagram.

My idea of someone who would watch our film

Question/Activity Five: How did you attract/address your audience?

Question/Activity Six: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

While constructing this project we used a few technology programs, we used Photoshop, Final Cut, Garage Band, iMovie and iPhoto, and also we have updated our blogs nearly everyday. As I was in Level Two Creative and Media last year I didn't have too many problems with Final Cut or Photoshop. But I have learnt a lot about Final Cut, we wanted to add motion to some of the still credit shots, so I tried using the motion key frame on Final Cut to add a zooming in affect to the still picture, I got so frustrated and confused it just wouldn't do what I wanted it to, it would either zoom in at the wrong time or would start zoomed in, I had to re-do it so many times I can't evan remember, In the end i admitted defeat and Dave came and helped me, and now I know how to create a successful key motion frame, I am very proud of myself for then going onto adding more key motion frames to some of the shots and getting them right.

As we were constantly uploading footage from the camera or still pictures from the still camera we had to learn how to manage iPhoto and iMovie, iPhoto isn't so bad but iMovie was a disaster at first, you cant just plug it in and it all loads up, you have to have the power pack plugged into the camera for it to work on your laptop and then you have to get iMovie up and then find the camera on there. Because most people were just using any camera if you imported all then you would get everyone else's footage as well as yours, which is very confusing, at the end of the project i think the whole class are experts on iMovie.

Question/Activity Seven: Looking back at your preliminary exercise, What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back on the preliminary exercise we done back in November, I feel as though i have learnt a lot about the position of where the camera should be in certain shot for example the 180 degree rule. When I'm watching TV I'm looking out for it all the time and notice when they mess it up. In our two minute opening sequence we have used a number of different shots, we used a few mid-shots, using the camera we zoomed into a close up a few times, we also used an over the shoulder shot which was used for our last credit. Editing in Final Cut is an extremely stressful progress, you have to be patient, and not rush, if you rush you end up confusing yourself and generally everything will go wrong. The biggest problem most people had was their media going offline on Final Cut, this is because we were going from B102 laptops to G19 laptops and we had to transfer all the video from our memory sticks, and sometimes it somehow gets lost and then you have to go film that bit all over again. Also in Final Cut you can use it too add movement/motion to the video or still shot, in a few of our shots where they may have been a bit jumpy from where we've hand held the camera for a shot we have had to take a still picture of the last few seconds of a shot and then slotted it into the timeline next to the video, at the end we have used the still shot to zoom in using Final Cut.

In this still we have had to take a still picture and edit onto it using Final Cut, the reason we had to take a still picture for a this particular shot is because we hand held the camera as the shot was a Panning Up shot from Stephens legs to the laptop where the characters credit appears, as we were panning up it was a bit jump and trying to keep it still while concentrating on the laptop is hard so we just had to edit it on Final cut.

We didn't get to use the 180 degree rule as we didn't include any dialogue into our sequence we have about 3 or 4 words in the whole two minutes, looking back now I think we should of included more dialogue as we could of used more shot types. We also didn't use the Match on Action shot type or the shot/reverse shot, as we didn't have more than one character in a scene so couldn't use the Shot/Reverse shot.