Evaluation Question 1

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

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We watched and took notes on how different social groups are presented within the media today. After research we came to understand which groups are presented in a positive or negative light in the media today. We then went to put this into our thriller opening, trying to follow the stereotypes to help the audience understand the characters best. 

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of Media Institution might distribute your media product and why? 

We chose CandiStudios as our production and distribution company. We felt that they were best suited to distributing our film due to what their history with films similar to ours and the fact that they could provide us with the relevant studio equipment

CandiStudios are a small independent company who have previously helped distribute and produce thriller films. We watched a couple of their movies, especially psychological thriller films, and was certain that they could understand what it is that we wish to create. 

It was important that they were a small independent company rather than a big major one as our budget was something we had to take into account. They had all equipment we required from the JVC Camera to an Umbrella for rainy days. 

They are also very good as reaching to an audience as they hold cinema screenings to each film, which would help generate a large range of audience for our film viewings and could bring in a wide range of audience. They also have a Vimeo account which our thriller opening has been uploaded onto. This helps to increase the range of audience and helped to distribute our film even further. 

The production and distribution was very important in determining the success of our film. Whilst looking for a cheaper independent company, we also had to take into account how well they were in previous situations with distributing thriller films. We noticed that they had handled them very well and were successful in reaching a large audience. Once we were assured that CandiStudios would be the best company to produce and distribute our thriller opening, we went along and contacted them, booking the equipment we needed to carry out this project. 

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I went out interviewing our target audience and speaking to people who we wish to aim our thriller opening towards. The video below shows how we did this and presents our findings. This was a very important part of the project as we had to aim to find the audience that would be best suited to our thriller opening and use their advice to create a very effective opening.

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation - Question 5

In the following video, I will be talking about the different ways I used in order to attract/address my audience. I will also be interviewing Edvadas Navikas, the star of 'Devil's Playground' and will be interviewing some of my target audience for feedback.

How did we attract/address our audience?

Interview with Target Audience

Evaluation Question 6

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

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation - Question 7 

Within this video, we will be explaining out progress form the prelim to the final media product and what we have learned. We also showed both videos in order to compare it. 

We've Done It! Time for some Drake. Cash Money Ting Dun'noe

Editing - Rough Cut Feedback

Rough Cut Feedback

This is the feedback that we got from our teacher. He advised us to improve the titles because he though they were quite small. Also, he advised us how the scene structure could also be improved. Furthermore, his advice gave us more ideas which could also be added to the final title sequence. 

Editing - Rough Cut

Rough Cut

We were asked to create a rough cut of our thriller opening so that our teacher could get an idea of how it looks and so that we could get some feedback of what to add if we decide to change anything. This rough cut also gave us an idea of where we are at the moment and it also allowed us to organise our files in a way that would let us find the shots easily.

Reaction to the Final Film Opening

Reaction

We asked one of our fellow peers to watch what's meant to be the final title sequence that we created and we asked a few questions for feedback. We will take this feedback into consideration if we wish to make an improvement.

Editing Over!

Editing Completed!

After weeks of hard work and many workshops and Saturdays we, group 14, can proudly say that we have completed our Thriller Opening! Today was the 3pm deadline which we met very well. David cancelled his other commitments to come and edit as the rest of us were in lesson in the morning. He worked on the soundtrack which we were uncertain about and managed to record and input a narrative and backing track by 12:15, when me and Edvardas arrived from lesson to help. By 12:15 David had put in the sound to our title sequence and we listened to his narrative, helping him to choose which one we believe is the best and where cutting and cropping is necessary. We worked through lunch, with our rumbling bellies, making sure our opening was perfect in every aspect. After re-watching the opening several times, we noticed a tiny inconsistency during the title sequence. We then went on to fix this up and within minutes it was back to perfect. 

Edvardas left around 1pm and me and David began getting other students and Mary to watch our thriller opening to give their verdict. Mary said that she it was very good, which gave us relief that we had done well. We also took on students feedback, as they would be our target audience. The student gave us positive feedback and we had finished our editing and thriller opening. 

However despite this, we still went on to watching our opening several times looking for anything that we missed the previous viewing, that could be fixed. Thankfully no mistakes were visible and we were happy with our final piece. We saved it onto our hard drive by 1:15pm and then looked to what blogs were left to do. I had a lesson at 1:15pm however had asked my English teacher whether it would be fine for me to be excused a 2:15pm, leaving me 45 mins to help David and work on my own and the groups blogposts. We set off to work, blogging away, watching the time but time seemed to be on our side today. Around 2:30pm we had finished all our group and individual blogs. We were proud that we were able to meet the deadline and not let problems which we faced before, set us back. It feels really pleasing to have seen our hard work come out and get good feedback. As a group I think we can all say that we have produced one amazing thriller opening. I hope you all enjoy viewing it, we sure did enjoy making it.  And watching the final product, was even more pleasing. 

Editing - Deadline Day

Editing - Deadline Day

12 hours remaining...till the deadline for our Media coursework eek! Today was our last lesson in Media working on our Thriller opening. Personally I was very very pleased with the effort put in the past few lessons by everyone in the group and I hope that our thriller opening reflects this. Today we did a LOT of editing. David and myself were in at Workshop editing a few clips, matching them up and in the lesson we all worked on different aspects of the film. I focused on the sound, Alin took pictures and recorded what we were doing (which you will see on the blog soon) whilst David & Edvardas worked on the final touches to the editing. Tomorrow is the deadline and we have decided to spend our last few hours working on the thriller opening, few tweaks here and there, making it the best possible opening. We are all free up until 1:15pm, so will be working till we sweat all morning for this project. Hopefully the final product is to our best and we can be proud of our efforts. 

Looking back I think time went pretty fast. When it came to editing, we realized how lessons were over in a flash and we had to start making use of workshops and other free lesson periods. I think overall we have put in enough work. 

Editing - Sound

Editing - Sound

I was put in charge of the sound whilst David and Edvardas began editing our title sequence and other clips last lesson. When we read over the narrative and tried it with our opening, we felt it seemed a bit cheesy and didn't match as well as we first presumed. Since adding sound would be done right at the end, we found ourselves wondering what alternatives we can take or whether to go ahead with the narrative. I began searching through SoundTrack Pro and found a couple of sound clips which I thought fitted in well with our thriller opening. Finally we decided that we would have some narrative and some soundtrack. I produced a soundtrack rather quickly but made sure that it fitted well with the shots and our entire opening as sound is a very important aspect. Beforehand I spent a while at home and workshops going through the soundtracks and noting down a select few that could be used. This made it much quicker and easier to find the perfect music when coming to putting it into our thriller opening.

Editing - The Final Touches

Editing - Final Touches

Today we worked on finishing off the final touches of our thriller opening to hand in. We played around with some effects and found one called 'Non-Additive' very useful for our opening title sequence. It worked very well with what we originally planned on doing. We were also going through all of our clips again, looking at shots making sure that they were consistent and matching. On Wednesday, we also experimented on an extra scene and took the camera out after college to record the scene. We then put that scene into our thriller opening the next day and it was very successful. Whilst editing we went through many effects and styles we could have used and having already practiced with Final Cut Pro through our prelim and other activities we found this exercise much easier.

Filming - Titles

Filming - Titles

Since our titles are going to be written and filmed rather than edited onto the clip, we have used a diary in our opening which will present the Title sequence. We discussed the size of the font, must be big, and the type of font, something scary and messy.  We chose to make our titles like this as we think this is a much more interesting way to present the titles. It was also very unique and can be used to add a twist to the opening that not many other groups could use. We used the common order that we learnt about previously when writing up the title sequence. Below is a video of the title sequence which you will see in our thriller opening. 

Filming - The hospital Scene

The Hospital Scene

The video underneath will explain why we didn't film the hospital scene and what happened to the footage recorded. It would have been good to have at least just a few seconds of that scene to build up the plot even more but unfortunately the shots that we had weren't recorded properly and it was really time consuming to re-film them, so we had to leave it.

Planning - Introducing the Characters

Introducing the Characters

Edvardas Navikas as 'The Psychotic Man'

Edvadas volunteered to act as the psychotic man. We thought that we would be good for the character because he is tall and quite pale. Although his face won't be shown throughout the film opening, he fits good with the character's background. He plays the part of a man who is suffering from 'Psychosis' and is not conscious that he is killing people, although he is able to plan his victims at random. He has a double personality, which is a symptom of psychosis. He has a romance with the posh girl but then his other personality decides to murder her. 

Patricia Shango as 'The Posh/Stuck up Girl'

Patricia is Alin's friend. She does drama A-level in a different college and she was more than happy to help out and be a part of our thriller opening. She plays the part of a woman who is really stuck up but tries to act classy at the same time. She is attacked by the psychotic man, but then they have a 'romance'. Then she dies murdered by the psychotic man. 

Filming - Found Scene!

Found Scene!

The scene that we though we lost was found in one of the folders inside the video drive. Perhaps it ended there by mistake, but we were lucky that it was there so we don't have to re-film the entire scene again. The only unfortunate thing is that that specific scene is too dark, but we will be able to brighten it up slightly because the shot itself is not that bad. THANK GOD! 

Editing - Starting Editing with what we have

Starting editing

The video will explain what we decided to do with the shots that we have so time is not wasted.

We used time in workshop to edit and put together clips. With help from the media teachers we were able to do what we needed to do and any problems were easily resolved.