7) Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Through the making of my opening sequence I feel like I have learnt a lot. I have learnt about different shot types and editing techniques, and I have learnt how to operate a lot of technology and programmes on the computer. In our theory lessons we were taught about different types of camera shots, such as the long shot, close up and establishing shot. I used a lot of this knowledge in my opening sequence. Here are some shots I included:

I was also taught about editing techniques such as match on action. This is a shot where continuity of an action is shown. I included this into our opening sequence as well as using editing such as ‘fade to black’ on Adobe Premiere. Another editing technique we used was the 180 degree rule; this is a very important continuity technique that is to be used when two people are having a conversation at a table. When filming the conversation the camera is not allowed to go past a line through the two people having a conversation because it would make them look like they cross positions, that technique was used on the shot reverse shot that is shown above. Here is our match on action shot:

I feel like the making of our opening sequence has taught me a lot overall, I am confident at using the programmes such as Adobe Premiere and Windows Movie Maker and feel like I have learnt how to edit a sequence successfully. I also feel confident with being able to shoot a sequence using a different range of camera shots, and transitions further on. I am happy with my over all opening sequence.
Once I had finished the prelim video I looked back on it and made a note of everything I thought could be improved in the future. Making an opening sequence was my way of showing that I could improve. I noticed that in the filming of the prelim we didn't use a microphone, we only used the mic that was built into the camera and this picked up on a lot of the background noises like cars and wind. I improved on this in my opening sequence because I used a separate microphone that is designed to not pic up these background noises and it did work.
I also noticed in my prelim that when filming someone, they wore a different outfit as we filmed in the space of a few weeks. This showed really bad continuity because in the video it was meant to be the same day but the character was miraculously wearing a different outfit. In my opening sequence I took much extra care when filming that I was always wearing the same clothes so that we didn't have this problem again.

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

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

What production company would I use?

View more PowerPoint from HollieFowler_x

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation is the way something or someone is portrayed in the Media.The way film producers create representations is by decided what clothes a character is going to wear because the give the audience a certain impression of that character.
The character I have chosen from our opening sequence to compare is the character of Alice, who is played by me, Hollie Fowler. I have chosen this character because she is playing the role of a very typical teenager and I am able to compare it to teenage roles in other films. I have found an image of a girl who looks similar to my character, and she is from the film called 'Chat Room'. Here are the images I chose to compare:

As I have labelled, the image on the left has been taken from our opening sequence; and the image on the right has been taken from the film "Chat Room". You can see from these 2 images that they are very similar, however I have made it easier to notice by circling the similarities of the images:

The red circles show that both of the girls are using laptops. The laptop on the right looks like it is on myspace, and the laptop on the left is on facebook. This is a big similarity because they are both operating social networking sites which involves talking to strangers on the Internet. Another thing i have highlighted is the blue circles, which show that both girls have mobile phones next to them, which is very typical of a teenage girl. It is also another way to contact people you don't know, which is what our opening sequence is based on. The final aspect that i have circled are the mirrors; this is because you can quite clearly see that both girls are sat at their dressing tables, with their mirrors in front of them. This could possible be a sign of vanity, of the fact that they like to operate their laptops in their own personal area of their dressing table; this could possibly make them feel more comfortable with the fact that their are socialising with people they don't know.

There aren't many differences between the 2 images, the obvious thing that i have noticed is that the girl in "Chat Room" has her school books on her table, which suggests she is more intelligent and cares about her studies, which means she may use the Internet to talk to strangers in order to get away from her normal life. Yet the girl from "Have You Seen..." has more things such as perfume and jewellery which shows that she is more interested in self appearance other than her studies.

  The character I have represented in my opening sequence is a teenage girl. From what I have shown of her, the character appears to be rather easily led. There is nothing in particular that stands out in her appearance, so I wouldn't say she is a stereotypical 'chav' or 'emo', she is just an everyday youth. In the story line of my opening sequence she talks to someone that she met over the Internet, so she alone could be representing teenage girls in particular that are very easily led and deluded. This isn't a good way of representing teenage girls because it gets her in to a lot of trouble, but in terms of getting a message through to the audience, it is a good idea to show teenage girls what they shouldn't do and what is harmful on the Internet.

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

'Have You Seen...' - Final Draft

This is the final draft of our opening sequence. We took the audience feedback into consideration and made the changes to our video in order to make it better. We changed the music, cut some of the clips down that went on for too long, and we added some new videos in to make the storyline clearer to the audience.

By Hollie Fowler and Alice Hogan

New Audio Clip

After getting audience feedback, someone suggested that we find a different piece of music to be played at the beginning of the sequence as the one we used creates too much tension. Therefore we got another track off the same website that had given us permission. (www.freesfx.co.uk)

Editing - Adobe After Effects

After getting some audience feedback we decided to change one of the elements of our video, where we zoomed in on a phone in order show a message that had been received. The interference was being picked up by the camera and it was really hard to show what the message said because we could hold the phone or camera still enough and it didn't look professional at all. In order to get round this we decided to go on Adobe After Effects and create a speech bubble that comes out of the phone and shows the message. This was the process of creating the speech bubble:

It was all very complicated to figure out, as there were 3 different bubbles that all had to appear one after another to make it look like it was coming out of the phone, so I had to arrange the timing. We also found that when we uploaded the finished product into Adobe Premiere we hadn't chose the right size of the video, so there were black lines around it that made it look unprofessional. However after figuring it out and changing the size of the edit, the finished product turned out just as we wanted it:

Opening Sequence Audience Feedback

We showed a few people a first draft of our opening sequence and asked them what they thought was good about the video, and what they thought we could improve. Here were their answers:

'Have You Seen...' First Draft.

This is the first draft of our opening sequence called 'Have You Seen...'. We will show a few people this video and get some audience feedback so we know what it is we will need to improve on. We will then improve what we need to for the deadline of 14/03/2012

By Hollie Fowler and Alice Hogan

Editing

Once we had filmed all out footage for our opening sequence, we then had to import all of the footage into Adobe Premier and put it all together. Premier gave us many different ways to edit our video, first of all there was an 'Effects' bar at the side, which had a number of effects available for us to add to our video. One of the effects I used was a fading effect, there was 'dip to black' which made the end of the film fade out, giving it a sense of mysteriousness. The other fading effect was 'expositional fade' which we used to fade out the music so it didn't cut off immediately, it gave it a gradual stop. 

The other editing we used was the alteration of the speed of some of our clips. This was done by right clicking on the clip we needed to speed up, and changing the speed options from 100% which was the normal speed, to 150% which sped it up slightly. We used this for clips that dragged on for too long, so it wasn't weary to watch.

Research Into Institutions

I am hoping that research into the film industry will help me understand more about how films are produced and what company would most likely produce my film.
The film industry is the basic creation of film split into 6 parts, the Development, Production, Facilities, Distribution, Exhibition and Export. I have found some percentages of what is included more in the film industry of the companies existed today; 43% of the companies are production, 13% are distribution and the remaining 44% are the exhibition companies.


There are the main stages that a film will have to go through before getting shown at a cinema:

• Production - This is where the scenes are filmed and all put together to make the final movie.
• Distribution - This is when the film is shipped all over the world to where it is going to get shown in different countries.
• Marketing - This deals with the advertising of films, such as movie posters and trailers.
• Exhibition - This is the final stage where the film finally gets shown in the cinemas.

I found from a website that a company that fund films is the British Film Institute, which may be a big help for individual films. They get 15 million pounds a year that they can use to invest in the production of films. If a company is funded by the BFI they won't only receive money, but they will receive guidance along the way of the film making, and they will receive advice by members of the BFI.


A production company that I have done research into is Working Title, who are a production company that are based in London, England. Working Title are co-produced by Sarah Radclyff and Tim Bevan, however Sarah left after a while to be replaced by Eric Fellner. Working Title have teamed up with Universal Pictures who are responsible for their funding. Due to this merger, Working Title have a much higher budget making them able to produce more advanced movies with bigger A-List Hollywood Actors.
Working Title have produced these films:

• Love Actually
• Atonement
• Johnny English + Johnny English Reborn
• Notting Hill
• Sean of the Dead
• Hot Fuzz

Working Title have expanded massively thanks to their merger with Universal Pictures, and they have also been able to distribute their films world wide getting more recognition.

By carrying out this research into institutions it has become a lot clearer on how a film is produced and funded. I have established that working title would be a likely production company to produce my film as the opening sequence is British and based in Britain, and Working Title is also based in the UK. They are also funded by Universal who are an international conglomerate company. This would be good for my film as it would have a much higher budget, and the rest of the film would be Thriller/Action so it would include a lot of special effects. Working Title would also be able to give my film a lot of above the line advertising, therefore trailers would be played on the TV, and billboards could be shown around the country; therefore making the public aware of the film release.

Reference: http://industry.bfi.org.uk/

http://www.skillset.org/film/industry/article_6763_1.asp       

Opening Sequence Analysis

We were asked to analyse the titles of a film, and put it into a time line, explaining what is shown and said during the sequence. I have chosen the film Captain America, and got the video from www.artofthetitles.com.

Analysing this opening sequence has given me an idea on what to include in my opening sequence. It has shown me different ways of adding in Titles and given me ideas for a more creative opening sequence.

By Hollie Fowler

Filming

Filming is currently going well, we found that using professional microphone other than the one built in to the camera, makes a huge difference. The sound is much better quilty and we were able to fix our continuety issues. We are now on to editing out video.

Filming

We have started filming for our opening sequence, however there are problems with continuity throughout the video. This is what went wrong:

Another problem we found was to do with the filming of screens, as we have to film conversations over the Internet, and on the phone the interference is picked up -

 

In order to stop this from happening we will need to make sure that the screen is kept very still as we are filming, in order for the picture not to pixellate.

Apart from this issues which we are fixing tonight on the 25/01/12, the rest has gone well. The song fits in with the genre of the film well, especially with the effects of our titles.

Shot Log

This is a shot log of the videos we have filmed so far. I have commented on the majority of the videos, but not every single one as it wouldn't fit on one page, but this gives you an idea of how the filming is going so far.

Audio clip

This is a video of the sound we are going to be using in the background of our opening sequence video.
"The sound clip that we have chosen has been downloaded from www.freesfx.com. The file is called 'Spooky Film Theme - Scary yet tension building'. We have chose it for our video as it fits in with the
genre of our opening sequence. We emailed the owner of the website and got permission to use the sound file on a blog that is going to be viewed by the public."

By Hollie Fowler

Audio

We have found a sound track online that we will be using in our project. It is called ‘Spooky Film Theme - Scary yet tension building’, downloaded from www.freesfx.com. We looked on the terms and conditions of website, and found that we are able to use the soundtrack on a blog that is open to be viewed by anyone. As well as finding the conditions, we also emailed the owner of the website asking for permission, and got a reply saying that we have their permission to use the piece of music for our opening sequence.
Permitted Uses of the website:

Permission to use the soundtrack:

By Hollie Fowler

Test Camera Shots

I have taken some shots of around the location where we will be filming, in order to get an idea of what our opening sequence will look like. Whilst taking these shots, lighting was not taken into consideration as we are simply focusing on the rooms in which we will be filming. 

The shots I have taken, were roughly made to match some of the shots in the storyboard. Although they are not exactly the same, they are where they will be filmed.

Shot of someone logging into Facebook - Point Of View Shot

This shot consists of someone logging into the social networking site Facebook, however it is a point of view shot, and you can't see the character logging in. The username that is used is 'sectretss91' which is also a fairly mysterious username, therefore making the audience wonder who it is that is logging into the site.

The bedroom used to show the main character on her laptop - Long Shot

This shot is of the bedroom of the main character. It gives audience an idea of what sort of person she is, and judging the room, they would see her as someone fairly girly, with pink flowers on the wall, a dressing table and flowery bed sheets.


The kitchen where they go for dinner and the 2 sisters have a conversation - Long Shot

This is the room used when the 2 girls have a shot-reverse-shot conversation. It is fairly modern therefore showing the audience that the film is set in modern times. There are sets of lights on both sides of the kitchen therefore making it a good place to film as you can also see the characters clearly.


The main characters dressing table - Medium Shot

The is the setting used where the main character talks to someone on her laptop. She is sat at her dressing table on facebook. This gives the audience an insight on the girls life by showing them the items she has on her dressing table; these would be perfume, make-up, jewellery, photos and other little things. This may get the audience thinking that she a character who cares about her appearance, and cares a lot about her family.



The sofa where father and daughter have a conversation - Long Shot

The main characters sister and their dad have a conversation in the living room, on this sofa watching TV. It is a fairly average living room, showing the audience that they are a normal family.


By Hollie Fowler and Alice Hogan