Evaluation - Question 4

This is a Glog I made in response to question 4 of our coursework evaluation. It was made on www.glogster.com and should you find it difficult to view anything on this embedded version, here is the link to the original on glogster.com.

Past student evaluation

Although this is only the answer to one of the questions set in an evaluation, i feel he covers everything in a very collected, organised manor. He systematically goes through the technologies using screen grabs to relate to what he is saying as evidence.

Strengths of this video:

• He has clearly thought about what he is going to say before recording the video
• he includes screen grabs to back up what he's saying in time with when he's saying it
• introduces the question at the very beginning, so makes it clear what he's going to talk about
• explains all the technologies he used, how he used them and gives a little background info so anyone can understand what he's talking about
• Talks to the camera as if talking straight to the examiner

Weaknesses of this video:

• sometimes is not as concise as he probably could be
• could have spoken about technologies he tried but didn't use and why
• could have spoken about how technologies have changed over the years and how the current ones are better/worse

Audience feedback

Here is the audience feedback that helped make our thriller film. Please note: he first 7 minutes is footage of our respondents watching the opening. They're opinions are not shown until 7:14.

First draft

Project Update

Possible sound for opening titles...

Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

Making the titles: research and production

I made this post on wallwisher to show what we basically did in the past three lessons, in order to decide how to make our titles.

Sneek peak: Thriller filming day photos

This is just a quick video I made on iMovie using some shots I took on the day of filming just to show a little preview. The music I used for this is the Sin City opening titles.

Unattended lesson summary

Just a brief summary of what we did during our unattended lesson on Thursday, 29th November

Sin City title sequence

I really like the way the titles for Sin City comes across like a comic strip, with the cartoon images of the characters in black and white in the back ground and the name of the actors sliding across the screen in red. The way that the pictures are in black and white with the red writing reflects the effect used in the actual film.

I think the cartoon affect would be effective for our title sequence, however we wouldn't be able to do a complete cartoon strip for ours as we wont have enough time but we could use add an effect on some of our still pictures from the filming day to create a similar effect. Then add the titles over the top.

Film noir edit

Here is the first draft of our film in film noir. Enjoy and please feel free to leave a comment! :D

Sepia tone edit

Here is the first draft of our project in sepia tone. Enjoy and please feel free to leave a comment! :D

Filming day

On wednesday, we completed all the filming of footage needed for our film. The previous night, things started falling apart as we were all talking over Facebook, checking the things we needed. We discovered that all of our extras, and our main male character dropped out, leaving us with only one actor. Another quite large problem we realised, was that none of us had remembered to take a tripod from school. We all arrived at our location (Hazel's house), by 11:00am and were set up by 11:20. After some rushed reach-outs on Facebook the night before, we managed to get an actor for the main male role and Adain found a tripod he had.
- obviously it's clear from this, that we all need to improve on our organisational skills...

Generally speaking from there on out the filming went really well and we all cooperated with each other in a reasonably professional way. Haha. We managed to get all the filming done in one day and finished by half past four, really happy with our footage. Now all that's left is to start the editing process first lesson back!!

Shot List

AS Media Studies Preliminary exercise

This is the final edit for our preliminary exercise, set by OCR to show our progression in; editing, use of equipment, and our ability to apply theories and techniques such as shot variation.

Decision change - Equipment

Yesterday, we decided we would be using my brothers camera instead of the school's. I thought this would be a good idea, as we had a struggle working with some of the school camera's functions and i know this other camera quite well. A bonus from this decision is that i know the camera is of a high quality, so we are hoping to get some equal, if not better, results from it. The camera we will be using is a Panasonic Lumix HD GH1, pictured below.

The camera pictured above, would have been the camera we used from the school - a Sony HD Handycam.

Storyboard for Thriller opening

This is the final storyboard for our thriller opening, apologies for the noticeably large lack of artistic talent. We hope it still gets the right ideas across.

Classification of People!

Today in class, we looked at the different 'types of people' to help with our audience research. Nielsen Media Research developed eight groups that most people will fit into. These groups are based income, media consumption, life style and age :

• Liberal Sophisticates
• The Young Hopefuls
• The Affluent Acquirers
• Struggling Young Families
• The Comfortable Full Nesters
• The Settled Seniors
• The Lonely and Dissatisfied
• Next Generation

However there are different ways of grouping people. These groups are based on personal aspirations:

• Mainstreamers
• Aspirers/Social Climbers
• Succeeders
• Reformers
• Individuals

Knowing the ways in which people can be grouped can be helpful when doing research into our audience for the thriller opening. By knowing which groups our target audience falls into, can help us identify what kind of sub-genre, props, plots or characters they would want to see in the opening. For example, Liberal Sophisticates may enjoy a psychological thriller more than The Young Hopefuls.

We intend to use the grouping of people system to help us with our surveys and questionnaires. We will make our surveys more specific for the group of people we believe are most likely to enjoy our sub-genre of thriller

Director Study - Martin Scorsese

Final Thriller Plot - Outspoken

Thriller opening plot:

The plot for our opening comes under the psychological and crime sub-genre of thrillers. It consists of six actors, four of very little importance as they are just extras in a shot. The main character (and also the hero of the film) is male and the secondary character a woman fitting into the femme fetal category.

The film opens at a close up of a man's hand, holding a piece of paper with an address/name of place hand written across it. his feet defocused but still clear enough to distinguish. The camera then slowly pans up, to what can be seen as an old warehouse, the address/name written on a old rusty sign to confirm the relation between paper and place. Another close up reveals his hand moving towards the door to open it, and as it opens a little. The following scene opens on a wide shot, inside the warehouse, where we see five people sat around an oval table, much like in the above shot from the film Casino directed by Martin Scorsese. The primary change in our shot is that the boss in this scene, will be the secondary main character, a woman. The scene continues as we hear footsteps walk into the warehouse and the shoulders of our hero appear in the bottom left hand corner of the shot. Some dialogue is exchanged between the hero and the woman; shots changing between the mid table shot, and a close up of the woman's face, shadows covering her eyes so we only see her red lips moving and as she takes long drags of her cigarette. A low angle close up then depicts a gun being raised just above the edge of the table and is fired, cutting to the table mid shot again, left not knowing whether he has been shot or not.

There is a fade to black which last approximately three to four seconds, the sound of phone ringing in the background and a caption that reads "eight hours earlier". The scene opens up showing the man from the previous scene in bed asleep, next to an unidentified woman. He abruptly opens his eyes and frantically looks around, making it apparent he doesn't know where he is. The only clues given as to the identity of the woman is her red lips and and ash tray beside her. The man then answers the phone still confused, and he exchanges dialogue with a stranger, telling him to write down a location on a piece of paper. The location written on the piece of paper is the same as the one from the very first shot of the opening. The scene then fades to black, and the title of the film, 'Outspoken' appears.