A New (academic) Year!

This is my first blog of my A2 media career! 

This year we will be focusing on the music industry and how artists are affected by it.
For me music is major part of my life, in the form of singing. I am a singer and performer so I would like music to be a big part of my life. When it comes to music taste, I'm a bit indifferent. I'm not opposed to any genre of music, except crunk...I CAN'T STAND CRUNK. I don't tend to rule out and particular genre, and I'm quite open to new stuff.

Personally, I love people like Katy Perry. Although she is super mainstream and on the outside looks superficial, if you look behind the whole candy queen persona she is actually an amazing person.

Just watch this documentary on her life, it's insane! She is such a trooper!!

I also do love a bit of Bastille and tend to sing it in the car with my dad. A particular fave at the moment is "Pompeii", that is a stable car tune.

I'm not going to lie to you, I am very musical theatre. So, if you were to look at my itunes this what you would see:

As you can see, the variety of artists I listen to daily isn't vast. I'm not ashamed of passion!

I am hoping that maybe this course will help me broaden my musical taste! (For the sake of all those around me...)

Audience Feedback

 We asked the class to watch and give feedback on our thriller, Paragon. There seems to be a general consensus on what we need to do in order to make it more effective, and it’s to do with the sound.

Most say that what their main issue with our piece is that the voice over is too loud. This is simply down to us not judging the levels right, but is something that is easily fixable. Others say that the voice of the girl isn’t particularly clear, this is something that we hadn’t noticed before. This might be due to the fact that we know the script so well as we wrote it, that we don’t spot it because we know what she is supposed to be saying.

Funnily enough, most said our strength was also the sound, specifically the voiceover. We had a variety of reasons why it was well liked, some said that it was humorous making a slightly creepy piece slightly comic. Others said that it built tension effectively. It’s nice to have our hard work on the sound look like it’s paid off.

When it comes to the story line, almost everyone understood that he wanted to kill the girl. The reason he wanted to, however, was not clear to most people. No one picked up that he was a journalist, but then again that isn’t particularly clear in the first opening sequence. One viewer said that he thought this was the plot: “Murder looking for his next victim, like Dexter.” Although he might not be bang on target about the fact that he’s looking for his next victim, I am happy that the Dexter persona shone through as it really was a major inspiration.

This exercise showed me how our product is viewed honestly by others, not friends saying “Oh it was great!” even if it wasn’t. Although at times some of the criticisms sounded stupid to us, it really was a helpful learning experience. I think our film making skills will all have benefitted and hopefully next time our products will be better.

Evaluation Task 7: How has your filmmaking progressed since the preliminary task?

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Camerawork:

In the preliminary task the camera work is very basic, simply due to the fact that we had little knowledge on types of shot and different angles. We were also instructed which shots to do, in the storyboard given to us. We made various schoolboy errors, such as film a shot where the reflection of the cameraman and camera can be seen in the window. Since then our camerawork has improved greatly. We are much more aware of checking that only things that are needed in the shot are in it (no reflections) and the variety of shots we used was larger. For example, we tried a birds-eye view shot over the desks – something that we didn’t even know we could do at the time we were shooting our prelim. We also used a mini track so that the camera could smoothly pan across the office or move foreword effortlessly.

                       Over-head shot

 <- Camera reflection in window                                                                                                                          

 Mise en scene:

With the preliminary task there was barely any mise en scene. We were told to have a piece of costume or a prop so we could create some sort of character to fit into the storyboard, rather than just two people saying lines that meant nothing. We had the Star Wars costume and a light saber; both aided it in creating a plot that had slightly more depth. In the thriller we decided to use a real office because it gave us easy access to all  things office-like, such as: desks, chairs, monitor screens etc. To add more character to the office we added extra props. For example, on the woman’s desk there are multiple trashing magazines and post-it notes all over the rim of the monitor. The costume was of more importance too; both were dressed in traditional office attire making their setting more believable. We used light much more effectively as well. Desk lamps shone in different directions, while the main office lights were off to give the sense that it was dark and after hours. 

Editing:

In the prelim the editing process was quick. We just threw the shots in without really thinking too much about precision. The editing was reasonably choppy and jumped around a bit. In our thriller we are taking much more time on the editing, because especially in our piece it’s where it starts to make sense. We have started using more complex effects, such as slow motion to add extra dimensions to our film. We have also thought more about making sure the entire cut links together creating the most fluid run possible. We have included text in appropriate places in the appropriate order of role (lead actors, followed by smaller roles...). Our final title of 'Paragon' was quite complex. We used adobe after effects and photoshop to layer some colour over the text. We also took a picture of cracked glass in order to create the crack through the word, paired with sound effect of a slashing knife pulled from Youtube. This holistic approach made our ending quite impacting and I think quite professional looking.

Sound:

In the prelim the only sound we had was the voices spoken on camera, plus some background shuffles and noises. Sound in our thriller is incredibly important because it is what implies the weird and crazy. In the thriller we use a voice over to convey the thoughts of the male lead, we recorded this in the studio post-shoot. This was a integral part of our film. As well as this we have various noises, such as a pencil scribbling, that have been heightened to have attention placed on it. . Something that we payed attention too whilst editing the sound was making sure that we didn’t have unnecessary noises in the background, like muttering or shuffles. To do this we split the sound track from the footage and deleted any background noise. This process took time but was definitely necessary and made all the difference. We used an effect on Final Cut Pro to muffle the voice of the woman, we also tuned down the frequency so it was at a much lower pitch giving it a slight grumbling tone. Our hard work and dedication to the sound payed off as we won an internal award for 'Best Sound in an AS thriller', this we were very pleased with.

Organisation

Organisation is key to creating a good piece of film. This can be shown very clearly between our two pieces of work. In the prelim there was pretty much no planning done. The only thing that we had to do was decide what we wanted our characters to be, and even that was done reasonably last minute. We got the costume together about fifteen minutes before our shoot began and the light saber was used simply because it was in the media room. We didn’t have to write a script or storyboard because it was all given to us. As for location we used the edit suite because it was an empty room and it was convenient. The organisation for the thriller was much more advanced. We knew exactly what props and costume was needed way in advance and we made it clear by creating mini mood boards and tables. We confirmed the location of our film as soon as we knew we wanted an office setting. We spent months on planning the storyboard, creating multiple drafts before finally deciding on the order of shots. However, we were slightly unorganised when it came to scripting the inner thought monologue. This was written only a few days before it was recorded. This wasn’t due to the fact that we didn’t know what to write, it was because we wanted to make sure that the action would fit the voice over. With the thriller we spent a lot of time researching other films and other psychological thrillers to get ideas and inspiration.

Group Work

In the prelim we did actually work reasonably well as a group and we all did a little bit of everything, but we did mostly stick to one role (I was directing). Whereas in the thriller we really made sure that everyone did and had a go at everything. We all combined our ideas making sure that if we thought we had a concept that it was heard and acknowledged even if it wasn’t heard. I do however feel that at times there were certain members carrying the group more than others, but overall we all worked hard and it shows in our finished piece.

Evaluation Task 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Task 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

 

Evaluation Task 4: Target Audience

Our film is aimed at a target audience of mid-to-late teens and early twenties, in both genders.
I have interviewed brother and sister who are close in age but very different in tastes when it comes to music, past times and film preferences.


Name: Rose Swan
Age: 19
Employment: I currently am in university studying photography and media.
Favourite Films: I love things like Mean Girls and all those classic girly films, but that doesn't stop me loving a good horror film. My favourite is 'The Hills Have Eyes'
Favourite Music: I'm very into partying, being at university, so at the moment I'm big into house and club music.
Favourite TV Shows: I've just started watching 'Black Mirror' on Channel 4, and I am loving it. It has that political thriller vibe that I love. I also love all the classic girly things like, Made in Chelsea, TOWIE etc.
British or American Films?: 100% American films, they are just more out there and exciting, well of the ones I've seen.
British or American TV?: When it comes to TV I much prefer British as I think it's grittier...well not shows like TOWIE!
Favourite film genre: Don't care as long as I enjoy it. I won't restrict the films I watch because of the genre of it.
Describe yourself in 3 words: Outgoing, fun and creative.

I then interviewed Rose's Brother:


Name: Jack Swan
Age: 17
Subjects Studied: I am in my final year of A-Levels and I am studying Music Tech, English and Psychology.
Past Times: I am an avid skateboarder, I skate everywhere and anywhere. I also love DJ-ing and I often play at parties.
Favourite Music: Being into DJ-ing I have to broaden my knowledge of music. I like Dubstep and rap but I won't object to listening to someone like Ben Howard.
Favourite TV Shows:  I love South Park and The Office. They're both hilarious.
British or American Films?: I love British films, expecially This Is England, that's probably my favourite film ever. Or Kidulthood, that's another good one!
British or American TV? I really don't mind, I'll watch whatever as long as it's funny.
Favourite film genre?: The only things I will object to are chick-flicks and musicals. I'll watch everything else.
Describe yourself in 3 words: Cooler than you. (Am I allowed to say that?)





For our secondary target audience we are aiming towards males of about early 30's. These are the people that wouldn't necessarily be willing to go to the cinema and watch it, but would watch it on DVD, Sky, Netflix etc.
 Looking at the demographics of the film that majorly inspired and influenced us, American Psycho, we can see that there is a pretty even spread over the audience ratings. It would seem that the primary audience is males and female under 18, not too unlike ours. The secondary audience is between 18-29 in both genders, with only a very slight drop in ratings. The major drop occurs when we hit 45+, this could be due to the violent factors or language used. Having seen this, we would know not to target the old audiences and to target the marketing to viewers between 16 and 44. This is a very wide audience and covers a variety of demographics.

Evaluation Task 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

Our opening sequence is about a young journalist who is working after hours in his office. He believes that no woman is good enough for him so his aim is to chop up different women so he can put them back together to create the perfect woman. It just so happens that there is another beautiful office worker, working late that night. He takes this opportunity to take her out to dinner, but only after he's noticed that she has the perfect ear. Our opening features a lot of internal voice over, which tells the audience the true thoughts of this character.


Obviously the piece we have produced is only at A-Level standard, uses British actors and is set in a small office in Dorking. Having said that, we feel that we could target an American audience. To do this we would go knocking on the doors of Lions Gate Films. Not only do they produce films they also distribute films widely.

The film 'May' is an example of a small scale production that was distributed by Lion's Gate and coincidentally it has a very similar story line to our film. May is trying to find a best friend so in turn she chops up people to then sew them back together to create the perfect best friend\. Sounds a lot like our idea, right? It was produced by a very small company called '2 Loop Productions', they have only made one other film called 'The Elder Son' this gives the impression that they are not very experienced when it comes to producing, but with the help of larger distribution companies they can still get their film out there.

Another film that we have talked about a huge amount is 'American Psycho' which was produced by Lion's Gate. This gives us the indication that Lion's Gate are the best of both worlds. Not only can they produce massive films, like 'American Psycho', they can also widely distribute.

Another plus side to Lion's Gate is they aren't primarily high or low budget. They vary which is great because our film doesn't require a high budget. Using Lion's Gate would branch out to the American audiences. I think they would enjoy a film like this because it would seem that they like this sort of genre (they loved American Psycho and Dexter).