This work has now been marked.
Thank you!
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Sadie's Evaluation. Question 7
Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
-The sound levels are terrible with an odd reverb making the overall outcome seem tacky
Above is links for both my perliminary task, and our finished media product. I believe that there a substantial improvments in the second video, showing how my camera angles, camera shotss and concept have all progressed quite well.
In my perliminary task there are quite a few obvious problems for example;
-The sound levels are terrible with an odd reverb making the overall outcome seem tacky
-The camera isn't as high a quality to that of the SLR we used, and i think that again this decreases the professionalness
-The continuity isn't brilliant and i don't think runs as smoothly as our final product, however i have learnt from here and believe this perliminary was a good place to start and really helped me.
-This lack of any form of introduction ie. the dialouge was scripted badly, alongside the lack of typography or text.
-I think the colouring isn't as effective either, as its colours were plain and flat, where as on our final product we attemtped to get a different atmosphere and sense of something deeper, and this is by fare more effective.
Although i think that this wasn't a great attempt, i'm still happy as everyone has to start somewhere and it could have gone a lot worse.
I believe that this in-depth knowledge on camera angles and shots helped me greatly within our final outcome as i had great understanding and knew what we needed to do to make this professional.
However this didn't go entirely to plan, as two very artistic visual people, my partner Vicky and I had a vision, and even though i am relatively happy with our final result, in my mind things didn't go to plan or some out quite as well as i had anticipated.
This could be down to being a little bit to precocious. We had this plan to do something different and although we knew it would be a challege we thought we would have been able to handle it better than we did, because of actors dropping out and letting us down, out editing software taking such a long time and the fact that we didn't particularly always have the patience for this, retrospectively this was slightly disasterous. Looking on the bright side though, we finally have an end product, a lot of thought and time has gone into it and i believe it is a much better standard that that of our perliminary task, ever if it wasn't quite as amazing as our expectations.
Sadie's Evaluation. Question 6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Through doing this product i have discovered many things about technologies for example, how infuriating they can be!
APPLE MAC
Though-out the entire time of doing this producton i have had to used a mac, as opposed the the previous software i have used in the past which have been Microsoft windows. To begin with because i wasn't particularly used to this form of computer i found the process of finding things and saving things on these devices somewhat tedious, and because i was very unfamilar with everything, this appeared to be much harder than it needed to be. However even though this first obsticle was a bit of a hurdle to get over, eventually i did end up getting the hang of it, and managed to have a better knowledge and understanding on how things worked. Still i prefer windows to macs, but i feel as if my skills in macs have increased as well as confidence in using them.
SLR CAMERA
In order to shoot footage for our film, we used an SLR camera, the college offered video cameras, however we believed that this single lens reflex beat would have more of a profession outcome and help towards making our film look more realistic and exceed that on anyone elses. The only downside is that the files were substantially larger on SLRS as the detail was more pronounced and there were more pixels in the given shot then what there would have been if we had used a regular video camera. Because our footage was larger, in order to record the maximum amount we had to use an 8bg memory card (larger than what some of our peers were using, as it was necessary).
Although you do notice a substantial improvement in some of our shots, having a large file to import and edit proved to be difficult and again, we ended up making it harder than it really needed to be.
FINAL CUT PRO
We used Final cut pro in order to edit and successfully construct and present our media product. This program allowed us to cut, shorten, lengthen, replicate, temporaily delete and just generally edit our product accordingly. Again this proved to be a very long excersise as i had mentioned before in the previous paragraph that we encoutered more problems than that we should have because of the large sizing of our files. Rending took atleast 5 times as long as our peers doing similar projects, also final cut wasn't always the most reliable as it was unable to cope with this amount and froze quite regularly. Which was frustrating when we hadn't saved for a while, so much of our time was wasted on this. Also we chose to have more footage than most other groups, which now i regret as, with this problem adittion it does take a lot longer than it really should.
Through doing this product i have discovered many things about technologies for example, how infuriating they can be!
Though-out the entire time of doing this producton i have had to used a mac, as opposed the the previous software i have used in the past which have been Microsoft windows. To begin with because i wasn't particularly used to this form of computer i found the process of finding things and saving things on these devices somewhat tedious, and because i was very unfamilar with everything, this appeared to be much harder than it needed to be. However even though this first obsticle was a bit of a hurdle to get over, eventually i did end up getting the hang of it, and managed to have a better knowledge and understanding on how things worked. Still i prefer windows to macs, but i feel as if my skills in macs have increased as well as confidence in using them.
SLR CAMERA
In order to shoot footage for our film, we used an SLR camera, the college offered video cameras, however we believed that this single lens reflex beat would have more of a profession outcome and help towards making our film look more realistic and exceed that on anyone elses. The only downside is that the files were substantially larger on SLRS as the detail was more pronounced and there were more pixels in the given shot then what there would have been if we had used a regular video camera. Because our footage was larger, in order to record the maximum amount we had to use an 8bg memory card (larger than what some of our peers were using, as it was necessary). Although you do notice a substantial improvement in some of our shots, having a large file to import and edit proved to be difficult and again, we ended up making it harder than it really needed to be.
FINAL CUT PRO
We used Final cut pro in order to edit and successfully construct and present our media product. This program allowed us to cut, shorten, lengthen, replicate, temporaily delete and just generally edit our product accordingly. Again this proved to be a very long excersise as i had mentioned before in the previous paragraph that we encoutered more problems than that we should have because of the large sizing of our files. Rending took atleast 5 times as long as our peers doing similar projects, also final cut wasn't always the most reliable as it was unable to cope with this amount and froze quite regularly. Which was frustrating when we hadn't saved for a while, so much of our time was wasted on this. Also we chose to have more footage than most other groups, which now i regret as, with this problem adittion it does take a lot longer than it really should.
Sadie's Evaluation. Question 4
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Through much deliberation and research, and asking our typical audience what they would like, we have come to this conlcusion;
We have learnt that people expect to see copious amounts of gore in zombie films, whether it's severed heads, or blood from struggles. They expect to see weaponry, particularly melee weapons, as it ties in with the standard survival narrative. The target audience is expected to be 15-24 year olds, of a non specified gender. Participants expressed that high quality makeup and mise en scene would greatly encourage them to see a zombie film, as it adds to the realism and gore.
Firstly we have aimed our product of the ager ange audience of 15-24 year olds for number of reasons.Firstly we believe that the main characters in our film (the survivors) are of a similar age, this would then create a link between our audience and characters as they would share the same mode of behavious and could relate to what they would do in their situation, however whilst still being in the comfort of their own home and out of harms way, they would still be able to think and almost be in the characters head, understanding how and why they did the things they have been doing to stay alive, through this connection we believe that the audience would then creat an emotive bond with the character, making it seem more than just a film and become more attatch sympathythising for that character. Which is always successful when creating films like this.
Although we are making our audience as wide based as possible (to have an more open market, thus consuming more viewers, meaning more income) i think if we had to really generalise our target audience i think we would both agree that it is ideally more males, as again stereotypically, through-out movie history, males have statistically always seemed to enjoy the genres with gore, violence and mindless killing more so than females. This is why we decided on a female character as opposed to a male, we believed this aspect added "sex appeal". Having a typically conventionally attractive female again we believe that the males would be more so into that, than that of it if it was a man, also perhaps females watching might aspire to be like this female hero that their boyfriends seem to be "drueling over".
I think that our adudience is most likely to be the social class D/E.This is mainly because because of the age range they are in - they are likely to be students and their occuppation might nto be stable or welly paid. Not only this but also our adueince are more likely able to relate to them, as the characters of of a similar age to them, which as i said earlier creates more of an connection and makes this more enjoyable for the audience.
Lastly the aspect that we believe to draw our audience in is the relatability factor. The film is based in the UK. Meaniung those in this location would be much more likely to go and see it because again, in ways they can relate to it. Our typical audience would be a fearless bunch, be into gaming- most specifically with blood, more and the thrill factor, like left 4 dead for example. They would also be into comics that involve fantasys and heroes, perhaps aspiring to just like their favourite characters-saving the day.
We asked our typical audience what their favourite genres were , and below are the responses we were given;
Thriller
Horror
Action
Action-Adventure
This is the the response that we expected.
Once we had recived this, we decided to narrow it down even more and concluded to ask them in particular what their favourite films were, these were those results;
- Zombieland
- Nightmare on Elm street
- Saw
- 28 Days Later
- Paranormal Activity
Again this was the feedback that we suspected and supports our previous assumtion, because we have followed very similar conventions from each of these titles. Because they were a success, i believe our film would be also.
Through much deliberation and research, and asking our typical audience what they would like, we have come to this conlcusion;
We have learnt that people expect to see copious amounts of gore in zombie films, whether it's severed heads, or blood from struggles. They expect to see weaponry, particularly melee weapons, as it ties in with the standard survival narrative. The target audience is expected to be 15-24 year olds, of a non specified gender. Participants expressed that high quality makeup and mise en scene would greatly encourage them to see a zombie film, as it adds to the realism and gore.
Firstly we have aimed our product of the ager ange audience of 15-24 year olds for number of reasons.Firstly we believe that the main characters in our film (the survivors) are of a similar age, this would then create a link between our audience and characters as they would share the same mode of behavious and could relate to what they would do in their situation, however whilst still being in the comfort of their own home and out of harms way, they would still be able to think and almost be in the characters head, understanding how and why they did the things they have been doing to stay alive, through this connection we believe that the audience would then creat an emotive bond with the character, making it seem more than just a film and become more attatch sympathythising for that character. Which is always successful when creating films like this.
Although we are making our audience as wide based as possible (to have an more open market, thus consuming more viewers, meaning more income) i think if we had to really generalise our target audience i think we would both agree that it is ideally more males, as again stereotypically, through-out movie history, males have statistically always seemed to enjoy the genres with gore, violence and mindless killing more so than females. This is why we decided on a female character as opposed to a male, we believed this aspect added "sex appeal". Having a typically conventionally attractive female again we believe that the males would be more so into that, than that of it if it was a man, also perhaps females watching might aspire to be like this female hero that their boyfriends seem to be "drueling over".
I think that our adudience is most likely to be the social class D/E.This is mainly because because of the age range they are in - they are likely to be students and their occuppation might nto be stable or welly paid. Not only this but also our adueince are more likely able to relate to them, as the characters of of a similar age to them, which as i said earlier creates more of an connection and makes this more enjoyable for the audience.
Lastly the aspect that we believe to draw our audience in is the relatability factor. The film is based in the UK. Meaniung those in this location would be much more likely to go and see it because again, in ways they can relate to it. Our typical audience would be a fearless bunch, be into gaming- most specifically with blood, more and the thrill factor, like left 4 dead for example. They would also be into comics that involve fantasys and heroes, perhaps aspiring to just like their favourite characters-saving the day.
We asked our typical audience what their favourite genres were , and below are the responses we were given;
Thriller
Horror
Action
Action-Adventure
This is the the response that we expected.
Once we had recived this, we decided to narrow it down even more and concluded to ask them in particular what their favourite films were, these were those results;
- Zombieland
- Nightmare on Elm street
- Saw
- 28 Days Later
- Paranormal Activity
Again this was the feedback that we suspected and supports our previous assumtion, because we have followed very similar conventions from each of these titles. Because they were a success, i believe our film would be also.
Hiro is a 19 year old, able bodies, male asian, residing in the UK. He is a customer assistant in a comic book store, and spends his spare time engrossed with gaming and graphic novels such as 'The Walking Dead'. He is a student and is studying illustration. Hiro is particularly interesting in the zombie genre due to both his hobbies, and his artistic interest in the use of prosthetics and sylistic representation.
Sadie's Evaluation. Question 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
A closer view of our character.
I believe that this contrast of stereotypes, shows that she could be represented in two ways.
Firstly because of the way she is dressed and the fact that she is a female being chased, normally in adventure, horror and thriller films the general sterotype is that the female is always inferior to the male, and in almost all cases the female had to rely on him to save her, thus creating the role of a typical "Damsel in distress". This would be the most obvious portrayal to us, seeing as she looks like the victim, being chased by 3 much larger, agressive male-zombies. However, like i briefly noted on the first image, she did manage not to get caught, but find slight refuge behind the door. Whereas typical inferior female characters are strongly known to have always been caught.
Showing that although she is behind a door, shown by how her expression, how her weapon is positioned and her body language is she still looks as if she will fight if zombies were to knock down the door. Another thing that shows she might be able to independently handle this situation is the blood stained bat she it holding. This could show that she has very recently fought off more zombies, succeding in killing them, and perhaps capeable of doing it again, despite the overpowering circumstances.
Another strong female i would like to compare her to is "Selena" from "28 weeks later"
In many ways Selena is very similar to the unconvential side of our character, she is rutheless and violent, living to keep herself alive and is a brutal zombile killing hero.
Much like how we partly intended our main character to be like.
In both of the image of our main female character, and this one, she is shown to be holding a weapon. Proving she is not to go down easily, without a fight and is ready for anything that gets thrown at her.
This kind of representation of an indipendent female character appeals to our female audience as i believe not all girls like to be represented as weak, as times have changed, so how female roles & i think the majority of them prefer them to be represented a stronger character, almost equal to male roles in films.
A closer view of our character.
I believe that this contrast of stereotypes, shows that she could be represented in two ways.
Firstly because of the way she is dressed and the fact that she is a female being chased, normally in adventure, horror and thriller films the general sterotype is that the female is always inferior to the male, and in almost all cases the female had to rely on him to save her, thus creating the role of a typical "Damsel in distress". This would be the most obvious portrayal to us, seeing as she looks like the victim, being chased by 3 much larger, agressive male-zombies. However, like i briefly noted on the first image, she did manage not to get caught, but find slight refuge behind the door. Whereas typical inferior female characters are strongly known to have always been caught.
Showing that although she is behind a door, shown by how her expression, how her weapon is positioned and her body language is she still looks as if she will fight if zombies were to knock down the door. Another thing that shows she might be able to independently handle this situation is the blood stained bat she it holding. This could show that she has very recently fought off more zombies, succeding in killing them, and perhaps capeable of doing it again, despite the overpowering circumstances.
Another strong female i would like to compare her to is "Selena" from "28 weeks later"
Much like how we partly intended our main character to be like.
In both of the image of our main female character, and this one, she is shown to be holding a weapon. Proving she is not to go down easily, without a fight and is ready for anything that gets thrown at her.
This kind of representation of an indipendent female character appeals to our female audience as i believe not all girls like to be represented as weak, as times have changed, so how female roles & i think the majority of them prefer them to be represented a stronger character, almost equal to male roles in films.
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Sadie Evaluation. Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I believe that our media product successfully matches the conventions of our chosen genre. Not only does it match them but also develop and challeges them also. In this i shall be exploring how we did this, comparing it to the more professional existing media products and that of our own, whilst analysing why.
Firstly i would like to mention that, i will not be analysing just one existing product, but a veriety from the genre of "zombie films" as we were broadly inspired differently by most of them. Concluding that seeing as these films were popular in particular, surely if we were to replicate extracts from each of these then our film too would also be a succsess.
Titles-Title font and style
The image shown on the left is a screen shot from an exsisting zombie film called "Dawn of the dead", and the image shown left is a screenshot taken from ours. After hours of research into titles, the opening that seemed to appeal mostly to us was from "Dawn of the dead". We got the inspiration from these titles as it included jumpy unclear shots and we believed it to fit in with our fast jumpy footage, hopefully seeming as efective. We also thought this was appealing for this genre, as it makes the audience unclear and on edge as to what was happening, giving the first feelings of fear.
With the name of our media product we believe this challenges the typical conventions as it doesn't state the obvious much like other zombie films for example "Zombieland" and "Dawn Of The Dead". These titles are blatant to the audience, as it associates itself with the zombies seen in the film. However our title "Genesis" isn't the typical name for a zombie film, indicating that perhaps this might not be a typical zombie film, but a zombie film with a twist. The definition of "Genesis" meaning - The first book of the bible and another word for creation; Seemingly innocent, could link nicely with our narrative however without telling the audience too much, when the thought of the beggining of a new creation is juxtpositioned with our villian, we believe this creates an exciting sadistic twist, which the audience will love alongside the original conventions of violence, gore and lots of zombies.
You will probably also notice how the colouring between the two shots it also very similar. We did this for a few reasons. The main one being, it's the colour of blood. Showing that in the left image, the typography is bold and shapeless, we chose to devolp this even more, still it being the colour of blood however in bloody fingerprints and splatters. We decided that as the name "Genesis" wasn't blatent enough, and interpretted incorrectly it could seem much more angelic than we had anticipated. So to ensure there was to be no confusion we chose to create it in "distressed blood", giving the overal impression of the title to be much more entiriging than what first meets the eye.
Location
The location for this was much extreamly important in our case, as it was to make or break the realisticness of our film. Although the images above are purely fousing on "28 Days Later" we have drawn out different ideas from a variety of different zombie films, these ones just happened to match our chosen setting the most.
We were very selective with our location because inorder to re-inforce a believable zombie apocolpse setting, we needed out surroundings to be dead. No moving cars, no alive people(apart from our main character). No obvious form of life.
Also our inside setting needed to be abandoned, showing that perhaps there was people there before, but they have either been killed or fled in fear. Through having a "blank setting" this also draws attention purely to the zombies chasing the our survivor, making it to be more of a dramatic scene, contrasting the silence with the abruption of the zombies' wrath.
Again we have matched and exceeded the conventions of the real media products. Using more than one location, giving out film more of a sense of adventure and action. A great example of another film that does something similar to this, again is "28 Days later". Where the main character is outside, but goes inside seeking refuge however ends up being chased by zombies.
Costume and Props
The costume and props that we used in our zombie film are normally in other zombie films
I believe that our media product successfully matches the conventions of our chosen genre. Not only does it match them but also develop and challeges them also. In this i shall be exploring how we did this, comparing it to the more professional existing media products and that of our own, whilst analysing why.
Firstly i would like to mention that, i will not be analysing just one existing product, but a veriety from the genre of "zombie films" as we were broadly inspired differently by most of them. Concluding that seeing as these films were popular in particular, surely if we were to replicate extracts from each of these then our film too would also be a succsess.
Titles-Title font and style
The image shown on the left is a screen shot from an exsisting zombie film called "Dawn of the dead", and the image shown left is a screenshot taken from ours. After hours of research into titles, the opening that seemed to appeal mostly to us was from "Dawn of the dead". We got the inspiration from these titles as it included jumpy unclear shots and we believed it to fit in with our fast jumpy footage, hopefully seeming as efective. We also thought this was appealing for this genre, as it makes the audience unclear and on edge as to what was happening, giving the first feelings of fear.
With the name of our media product we believe this challenges the typical conventions as it doesn't state the obvious much like other zombie films for example "Zombieland" and "Dawn Of The Dead". These titles are blatant to the audience, as it associates itself with the zombies seen in the film. However our title "Genesis" isn't the typical name for a zombie film, indicating that perhaps this might not be a typical zombie film, but a zombie film with a twist. The definition of "Genesis" meaning - The first book of the bible and another word for creation; Seemingly innocent, could link nicely with our narrative however without telling the audience too much, when the thought of the beggining of a new creation is juxtpositioned with our villian, we believe this creates an exciting sadistic twist, which the audience will love alongside the original conventions of violence, gore and lots of zombies.
You will probably also notice how the colouring between the two shots it also very similar. We did this for a few reasons. The main one being, it's the colour of blood. Showing that in the left image, the typography is bold and shapeless, we chose to devolp this even more, still it being the colour of blood however in bloody fingerprints and splatters. We decided that as the name "Genesis" wasn't blatent enough, and interpretted incorrectly it could seem much more angelic than we had anticipated. So to ensure there was to be no confusion we chose to create it in "distressed blood", giving the overal impression of the title to be much more entiriging than what first meets the eye.
Location
The location for this was much extreamly important in our case, as it was to make or break the realisticness of our film. Although the images above are purely fousing on "28 Days Later" we have drawn out different ideas from a variety of different zombie films, these ones just happened to match our chosen setting the most.
We were very selective with our location because inorder to re-inforce a believable zombie apocolpse setting, we needed out surroundings to be dead. No moving cars, no alive people(apart from our main character). No obvious form of life.
Also our inside setting needed to be abandoned, showing that perhaps there was people there before, but they have either been killed or fled in fear. Through having a "blank setting" this also draws attention purely to the zombies chasing the our survivor, making it to be more of a dramatic scene, contrasting the silence with the abruption of the zombies' wrath.
Again we have matched and exceeded the conventions of the real media products. Using more than one location, giving out film more of a sense of adventure and action. A great example of another film that does something similar to this, again is "28 Days later". Where the main character is outside, but goes inside seeking refuge however ends up being chased by zombies.
Costume and Props
The costume and props that we used in our zombie film are normally in other zombie films
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