Jess Norton's Media Studies

PAPILLON // AS Media Film Opening Coursework - Final Cut

02:57

This is the final cut of our coursework and there are quite a few things that changed after the rough cut. The most important thing we needed to change was to get the time down to just 2 minutes. Due to an inconvenience of deleting the rough cut from premiere pro, we had to start editing the video from the beginning which made it possible to be more restricted with the footage. We shortened the opening clips showing bits of the house from 29sec to 12sec and got rid of the black slides between the clips. We then tried to cut out unnecessary bits out of the conversation and soon got down to 2:08.

The video needed a bit of colour correction to make it look more airy and to fit the old house and the location. We put an effect of an old broken tv on top of the scene of the moving horse and looked for a fitting sound effect to create a mysterious vibe. The created distortion at the end of the opening scene is done by putting the same footage twice on top of each other with one of them slightly moved to the right, and a greenish filter on top, which makes it look more mysterious.

We then searched for some old music to cover the scenes that don't have any dialogue, used two different typewriter fonts for the credits and used the same font for the title at the end.

(PA)

Preliminary task - Video

02:13

How did it go?

I really enjoyed the preliminary exercise because it was a great start into the subject. I personally did not know the two boys who were kind enough to be part of our task, but as we got to the sauna and explained what they had to do, we were all laughing and enjoying the exercise. At first it was weird because there was someone else in the room and no one really knew how to start and what to say. We started with a match-on-action where Matt opened the door which was a good way to start because no one had to say anything and we all warmed up a bit. We did not think of a possible plot or conversation the lessons before and just wanted to get a normal conversation between two boys, so one of them started talking about dropping one of his subjects and this way we had a great and real plot. I brought my own camera, we got given a tripod and luckily I had some experience with filming so I took over the filming whilst Milly did the directing and told the boys what to do. It did take us a few shots until no one was laughing but in the end we had all we needed.

Using the editing program was a bit harder. At some point we had to restart our project because we cut some clips wrong and it was all just a mess. After leaving it for a few days I finished it really quick and it was a lot easier after getting used to the program.

What would I do better/change if I had the chance to do the task again:

If I had the chance to do the task again I would have thought of a better conversation. This way it would have been easier to convince the boys of participating in our task. Also we broke the 180-degree rule which I would take care of the next time.

Evaluation Question 1

02:16

Evaluation

EVALUATION QU. 1

FEBRUARY 06, 2017

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

The first frame represents the title of our opening scene which is shown at the end of the opening scene to separate the 2 opening minutes from the actual film which would be following.
The second frame shows the setting we chose to film at. Even though the story is set inside the building, we chose to give an overview of the building so the viewer has a better imagination of where the story is taking part.
The third frame shows the chosen costume and most of the used probs. We kept the costume very simple, partly because it fitted best with the characters and their role but also because it set the scene and did not distract too much from the happenings of the opening scene.
In the fourth frame we tried to represent the camerawork and editing we used, our video however has quite a range of camera shots and angles so we thought the shot of the young boy Jack is a good representation for our filming style. We mostly show close ups of the characters talking or filmed subjects from a closer view point instead of filming from a wider point of view to make the viewer feel like they were involved in the storyline. The editing focuses on shot-reverse-shot to make the scenes more interesting and again make the viewer feel like they are part of the plot, so that all shots are kept under a max. of 3 seconds.
The fifth frame is an example for the font we used. We were looking for a typewriter font to fit the plot which is about a journalist researching for one of her articles. Instead of looking for computer writing or a neat typewriter font, we wanted a washed out and older looking style to fit the setting of the old house and the mysterious atmosphere.
The genre and how the opening scene suggests it, is represented in the sixth frame. We tried to create a mystery drama so the chosen scene as the sixth frame seemed quite fitting.
The seventh frame represents the story which is the mystery of an old house and makes the viewer question what is going on, so the scene of the house owner holding back the journalist from entering a locked room felt like it best describes the mystery behind the old house.
The 8th frame shows how characters are introduced which is by letting the viewer observe their behaviour and letting them follow a conversation between the characters, slowly showing characteristics and personality.
Special effects occur in the last seconds of the opening scene and some of them are shown in the 9th frame. By overlapping the same footage and putting a green and grain filter on top we created a vintage looking scene which should look intriguing and mysterious.

(PA)

Evaluation Question 2

05:03

Evaluation Question 3

07:32

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

We believe that our media product can be used for most distributers as it has a wide age range for target audience and horror films are seen everywhere. However there are some distributers that are better than others based on our target audience and the day and age that we live in now.

From research, we have found that most teens and adults prefer to stream videos rather than watch them directly from the TV. This means our media product would be viewed more on sites like Netflix rather than be put on TV as our target audience prefers this. Netflix has had millions of new subscribers since 2011 reaching around 90 million overall subscribers with nearly all being our target audience.

The other distributer we believe will distribute our media product successfully is cinemas. Every year, cinemas show hundreds of horrors gaining lots of profits from them. We have found out that most of these viewers in cinemas are also teens and adults. Horrors are especially good in cinemas for adults and teens as they like going watch it with their friends and have the adrenaline/emotion running through their bodies from the film.

Both these distributers work really well together as it means that when our target audience gets home from work or school, they can watch our media product on Netflix. it then also means if they want to go out they can still see our media product as the cinema is an attractive place for teens and adults when going out and socialising.

Evaluation Question 4 and 5

05:08

(JN)(EH)

Evaluation Question 6

04:00

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

Since the beginning of year 12 when we started media our group has learnt a great deal about filming and editing. One of our group members, Paula was already very experienced in making and editing videos because she regularly keeps a video diary for her own personal blog. However the rest of us didn’t have any experience at all and therefore we were able to learn both from our lessons and our group member Paula.

The rest of the people in our class used the cameras which our school provided (Cannon HFM 306) we could’ve done this but given that Paula had her own and more advanced camera we chose to use that instead. The camera we ended up using was a Nikon D3200 with a 35 millimetre 1.8 lens. This lens had the advantage of enabling us to be able to focus on a certain subject and blur out the background. This was a benefit because it meant that it eliminated any other distractions, which could have altered the viewer’s attention.

We decided to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our video because it was more advanced than other options such as iMovie but was still simplistic enough for us to be able to use efficiently. Premiere Pro allowed us to use short clips of under 3 seconds which you aren't able to do on iMovie and we used a lot of in our film opening. We used short clips because it meant we were able to show a variety of different camera angles and skills within the two minutes. Paula had experience of editing videos but not in the software we decided to use so therefore we were all able to learn and help create our video.

We progressed a lot from our preliminary video which we did in the first few weeks of starting media. We did not know many people and this meant that filming was a bit awkward. We used two boys in our year and filmed one of them walking through a door and then sat down having a conversation about their subjects. There is lots of laughing in the background because the actors weren’t comfortable. In our final media product our actors were more comfortable being in front of the camera.

We did a number of practice tasks before completing our final film opening and one of these was the mise-en-scène task. We were given 5 features of mise-en-scene and told to cooperate them into a two-minute video. We used the young male actor who was also used in our final piece as he is one of our group member’s brothers. The video that we produced had a few areas that were not as professional looking as we would have liked so we aimed to and succeeded in changing that in our final piece. One of the main criticisms of our mise-en-scene task was that we had a clip in it which lasted 21 seconds which was way too long and got boring. Therefore in our final video we made sure to use short clips to ensure we avoided repeating this. We also learnt how to do special effects in our editing and this meant that we were able to incorporate them into final film opening.

We used both diegetic and non diegetic sounds in our video. The diegetic sounds were sounds that our actors could hear when filming such as the sounds of the gravel when Eve walked towards to the house in the first scene. The non diegetic sounds which we hear are the sounds that were put in after over the top such as the sound of the walking stick throughout the two minutes.

(JN)(EH)

Evaluation Question 7

03:47

PAPILLON // Audience Feedback

01:03

We got ten Year 12’s to come into our lesson and watch the finished cut of our video. We had written a set of 4 questions for them to answer based on their opinions of our video.

The questions we used were:

Do you understand the storyline?

8 people understood the storyline and 2 people said that they didn’t understand the storyline.

Would you want to continue watching if it were a whole film?

All ten respondents answered yes to this question.

What did you like about the film opening?

6 of our respondents said that they enjoyed our film opening because it was intriguing and made you want to find out more about what’s going to happen. A few also said that they enjoyed the mysterious feel that it has to it. 2 of our respondents also mentioned that they liked our use of different camera angles and the editing, especially at the end.

What did you dislike about the film opening?

The main thing that was said we could improve on was that our audio was quite quiet and they sometimes struggled to hear what the characters were saying. Five of our respondents said this was an issue for them and the other five said that they didn’t dislike anything.

PAPILLON // Images whilst filming

02:58