THRILLER TITLE SEQUENCE FINAL EDIT

EVALUATION

6) What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing?

We used Final cut witch allows you to add texts, effects and objects, this program gives the titles a professional look. It also makes the film more eye catching depending on the sort of fonts, effects and fades you use. We used final cut pro which allows to to cut, add clips and insert transitions, you place it on to the timeline and when its done it becomes your edited film. Another program we used was Soundtrack pro, which allows you to layover additional sounds, add sound effects and create your own sounds .

We used a video drive to save our clips and pictures, the memory card was used to save all our clips, we used the Mac computers to do make our film, the camcorder was used to film also Usb drives were used to save our material. I have learnt a lot using these programs and i have a deeper understanding of how to play about with the different functions.

Q2) How does your media product present particular social groups?

My media product is aimed at both male and female groups, the age group is 16-21 and young adults may also be interested and the ethnicity is aimed at a range of races.

My group didn't stereotype the audience that we wanted aim our product at, but the key thing we had in our mind was to keep our product based around young people because we thought that young people would adapt more and be more interested in the topic and the genre.

Q8) Audience feedback and comment

We recieved feedback from people in our media class and other people studying media. This is our wordle of the feedback, it shows the different types of words that were used to describe our film. The comments were generally positive.

Q5) Who would be the main target audience for your media product?
Kimberley, 17, a student at Britt-music school enjoys singing, acting, dancing because she wants to be a famous singer one day. Her favourite singers are Beyonce, mariah carey, Mary J Blige, Duffy, Amy Winehouse and Mr Hudson. She has other interests such as going out with mates,cinema shopping, make up and spa's. She's bubbly, determined and very ambitious and loves her family to bits. In her spare time she usually goes to the cinema with her girls and the genre she really likes is thriller and horror alongside action and comedy.

Q3&4) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

I watched a opening thriller on youtube, it managed to get 2066 views even though it was a low budget film made by students. This shows that even if your film isn't on big screens it can still be successful. Our thriller is a low budget film aswell so the only places it could be distributed is on the internet Via Youtube and Vimeo, it can also be uploaded onto blogger were other student can give feedback on the film and if these students have youtube accounts theres a greater chance of getting more views, comments and ratings. By uploading our thriller we can gain global audience because youtube shows videos from all over, although there is an alternative to keep it within your own country but by doing that you may not get as much viewers to, if you were going to show it worldwide. There are also other networking sites such as facebook, twitter, myspace and bebo were you can promote your material by making groups, blogs and sending links.

The tagert audience for my thriller is aimed at 16 -21, both female and male. This is aimed to young british people who enjoy watching drama thrillers about relationships and heartache. These young peoples hobbies are drinking, smoking, partying and studying.

Evaluation

Q1) In what ways does media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The editing that was used was very steady, the length of our shots were quite short as we wanted to show the development of tension that was happening in each shot. Also we used one transition which was a fade from the girl (camilla) to the police officer, this showed how relaxed camilla was and how anxious i was. The program we used to edit was Final Cut Pro, each of our shots were the maximum of 5 seconds, the shot is slow paced because thats when we see camilla face staring right at the camera. Most of our shots were dragged too, so had to cut a lot of it down because we didnt want to loose the audience interest also we didnt want it to be boring.

We made sure that the soundtrack was mellow and serine at the beginning of the film so that to the audience it would look like nothing bad has happened, as the sound went on it got harder, deeper and the sound increased to the end because we wanted to give it a dangerous sort of sound because at that point camilla'a face is shown and she has a stern look. The program we used was soundtrack pro, We didn’t have any dialogue because we wanted our soundtrack to show the anticipation in our film, we used sound effects to emphasize certain things, for instance footstep effects are used to show that camilla is wearing heels and the penny effect is used to show that the ring has slipped off camilla's hand.

We used a range of camera shots to show different key moments, for example theres a close of me (Police Officer) were im looking very stressed out and anxious this is a key moment because to the audience they can see that i'm very determined to find this girl, it being shot in a close up makes it more effective. We used a birds eye view shot to show the edvidence that are on the table and theres medium shots used aswell.

We shot our film at london fields trainstation and a office at college. I (Police woman) was dressed in a white shirt, a gold black red stripy tie and black trousers. I wanted to make sure i looked serious with how i was dressed. The other charcter (Camilla) was dressed in heels, leggins, a vest top and a cardigan the colour of her clothing was all black, we wanted to give off a deathly sense.The props we used was a cigarette, telephone, ring and small plastic wallets.

The credits were made on LiveType. In our film we included title labels like directed by, written by, music composed by, starring and edited by these are credits that would be used in a real film.
We didn't particulary get any influences for our titles, we just went with what would suit the film.

We wanted our opening scene to be build up suspense while it went on, in the first couple of seconds of the opening scene it doesnt look suspenseful straight away until we hear the density of the soundtranck and the anxiety of the police woman. I think we did a good job building up the tension in our film, everything went well as planned.

Our film can be compared to the soundtrack of 'Sherlock Holmes' because there is upbeat orchestral music, even though our soundtrack isnt really orchestral it has an increase of sound.

SKILLS AUDIT: Creation of titles

SKILLS AUDIT: Creation of titles

We all helped in Putting the tiltles together. The program we used was LiveType it wasnt very difficult using it. We wanted to make our titles look suspenseful so in order to that we had to choose effects that would give the titles that edge.

We browsed through different types of effects, we then found one and it was called 'Scream' . We all thought that the effect gave it a thrilling and suspenseful look, so we used it. We kept our font simple (Arial), we made the size of our titles medium and the colour was white. For the title of our film we the colour was red, bold and it was in capitals.

We wanted to make our titles consistant until the title of the film, this was because we wanted the audience to be stunned once they saw the deep red, big title.

SKILLS AUDIT: Creation of soundtrack

SKILLS AUDIT: Creation of soundtrack

We decided that we were going to make the beginning of the soundtrack sound angel like and serine so that as the plot unfolded the music would get deeper, harder and the sound would increase, to give off a thriller and mysterious atmosphere to the audience.

We used the program Soundtrack Pro to create our instrumental, we played a lot of ambient sound and once we chose our sound we placed it on the timeline. We took a while to create our soundtrack because we all didnt think it had that suspenseful feel, so we decided to add sound effects to certain parts so it could be more thrilling, once we did this our soundtrack started coming together. The sound effects that we used were footsteps, telephone ring, penny drop and a thud. These effects made our film more dramatic.

SKILLS AUDIT: Editing

SKILLS AUDIT: Editing

We used a program called Final Cut Pro to edit our thriller film. Our film was slightly difficult to edit because we couldnt come to terms of what we should have kept and what we should have cut out however using the program was easy.

The editing process took a number of days to finish but the sequence was getting better as we proceeded, we cut a lot of our scenes becuase they all seemed to drag and we wanted to keep it our film short and snappy, i found editing enjoyable as we went on because my group started to agree on things more.

Final Cut Pro has two windows, this was helpful because we could spot out things that weren't working as we watched it and we could simply edit it out. I think we could have been more advanced in our editing if we had more time.

intro to camera & health and saftey tutorial

Intro to Cameras & Health and Saftety Tutorial

In our media lesson, we had a camera tutorial session. This included how to use basic functions of the camcorder and how to protect it.

We watched a PowerPoint presentation on the interactive board, this was very helpful because it showed us how to zoom in, how to put the camera in focus, how to insert memory cards and how top turn it off and on. Each group had a chance to use the camera by playing around with the features, After We were shown how to set up a tripod and how to put a camera on to it. We were shown that as we slid in the camera we had to turn a knob that would make the camera lock and once we made sure it was secured we could use it. To protect the camera if we were filming outside, we would have to use a big umbrella to cover it so it doesnt get damaged.

This tutorial gave me a deeper understanding of how to use a camcorder. We also got a chance to reinvent our own version of Collateral in our groups.

SKILLS AUDIT: Filming

SKILLS AUDIT: Filming

We decided to meet up on the 14th of March, the first location we shot at was the 'London Fields Railway'. We spent a reasonable amount of time there because we wanted to make sure we covered most of the shots needed for the scene, the type of shots used were establishing shots of the train station including our actor, close ups, medium shots and longs shots. These were not all used in our clip but we shot a variety of shots to see which one would fit well once the we edited. Our mise en scene included the train station, the steps, the cigarette, the ring and the nail, those three last items that are mentioned are significant in our clip.

Our second meeting was on the 18th of March at college, we decided to film the police officer scene and in order to do that we had to ask our media teacher Tony, if we could use his office he agreed to it and we started filming. We wanted the Mise en scene to look like a police department, so we brought down the blinds from the window, scattered papers around, increased the number of pens and pencils and we put the Metropolitan police sign on the computer screen. I was the actor playing the police investigator so i dressed very formal E.g. shirt, tie, black trousers, this was so the audience would understand the purpose of who my charcter was.

Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back the preliminary task, i have developed my skills i knew before also i've picked up some new skills on the way, i am more comforatble with shooting dfiferent angles and shots, also i've learnt so much about editing techniques such as cropping scenec, adding scenes, transisitions and how to use continuity. The preliminary exercise was a good way of getting me started with learning how to film an opening scene, seeing that i've never had experience in filming an opeining. I have also learnt how to use Live type very well even though that wasnt in our Preliminary exercise and i understand how to make soundtracks.

Below i have uploaded the preliminary film.

Final edit of live type and sound filming practice

Final edit of live type and sound filming practice

We were given a task to create a bag swaping scene, using ideas from what we saw in collateral. The location my group decided to use was around the corner from college, seeing as we didnt have much time. (40 Minutes)

We had to make our scene suspenseful, so we came up with the sort of camera shots we wanted to use, such as esablishing shots, close ups, long shots, over the shoulder shots and P.O.V shots.
It was our first time using the camera, so it was a bit hard shooting certain shots and recording however we pulled it together and used as much camera shots as we could.

We decided that we were going to shoot two of us entering from different directions, for instance i came from a building , looking busy aswel as being on a phone, whilst paris entered the scene by walking up these steps, as we walked we drew closer and this showed suspense, we then swapped the bag without making it obvious it was swapped.

Skills Audit: Livetype and Sound

Skills Audit: Livetype and Sound

Outline

Our objective was to film a short sequence of a briefcase swap, that we originally saw in collateral. Instead of using a briefcase my group decided to use a bag, after we shot our scene we used final cut pro to edit bits out, then we exported our clip to Livetype and Soundtrack pro.

Livetype

This is used to make your clip look effective,
for instance you can add effects for transitions,
font, colours and titles. Also this gives it a professional look
and an intriguing opening.











Soundtrack Pro

This allows you to add sounds to specific moments,
for instance you can add panting, something dropping,
footsteps and a car engine, these are all natraul sounds
that can be created using this software. Also instrumental
sounds are used to set a scene or create a suspenseful atmosphere.

LOCATIONS

This is London fields train station were we shot out opening scene, we chose this location because we didn't to film at a place that was very busy in the day time and this train station happened to be the one which was the most quietest of the ones we already knew, we didn't have to ask for permission but we just had to be aware of the camera and surroundings.

We also shot the other part of our scene in college, it was our teachers office. this was helpful because it made our scene come together, it was near enough to looking as a police department.

Premliminary match cut film

Premliminary match cut film

In lesson we were given a synopsis which was "a character opens a door walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue", with this we had to create a short scene including,

• An example of shot reverse shot
• At least one match cut
  
• An understanding of the 180 degree rule

This was more easier in filming because we used some techniques that we used from our bag swaping scene, also we were more familiar with the camera.

Bait Tutorial

Our media lesson was based on using final cut pro and the Bait tutorial. We had to learnn how to edit, cut and put soundtracks on clips. On final cut pro there were clips of a short sequence called "Bait", using these clips we edited and cut scenes to how many seconds we wanted also we had to choose important moments of the scene. We were told to use jump cuts and razor cuts this made our sequence more effective. I had to watch if i was satisfyed with my sequence and after i did that i added a backing track in the begginning of my clip.

The art of the title sequence

Analysis of Sherlock Holmes

The title sequence i chose was Sherlock Holmes. The style of the titles are in old Victorian writing. The titles show the name of the actors and actresses who are in the film aswell as the producers,directors, co-producers, production designers, editor and etc. The images in the sequence turns from drawings to actual images, the types of shots used are close and medium shots of the characters in the film. The way how they images turn from drawings to images appealed to me, i think that was very effective because it almost looked as camera shots.

The structure of thriller openings

Thriller Openings (The shining)

The thriller opening i chose to talk about was The Shining. The opening scene shows a landscape of mountains and the sea, the camera is moving at fast pace also there is suspenseful music playing under. The music more suspenseful as we see i car from a birds eye view shot, seeing the car driving through the mountains leave the audience feeling very anxious. The muisc gets very ghosty as we see a close up of the yellow car, there are long shots of the landscape and the titles running throughout the sequence.