Evaluation Question

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

Our film represents young people and older adults. Our main character Conner (the killer) is an older man who is seeking revenge on an ex partner, his clothes are dark and cover most of his body, he keeps himself covered in order to keep him self unseen, this is a typicall representation of a killer. 

The victim is a younger adult who is represented by the clothes she is wearing and the way she is listening to music which is a typical teenage thing to do.  

Liam (Chav) also represents teens in his body language which is very forward and aggressive. He wears hoodie and jeans along with trainers; this is a typical representation. 

Evaluation Question

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

Our media product uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions.  The genre of our film is a thriller. The conventions to do with thrillers are often mostly to do with sound and editing. Quick cuts, use of camera angles and lighting, especially the use of shadows, are used in order to create tension and suspense.  In most thrillers we see the story from the killer’s point of view. Our media product uses a mixture of both Extreme close ups to highlight certain objects, e.g. the knife. And Medium and long shots to show more of the setting arround the incident.

Our production is set around night time, so very dim lighting is used; this is a typical convention of the typical thriller genre. The first part of our production is filmed in first person; this is at the same time as the killer is shown getting ready (Hat, Coat, and Weapon). This creates tension to the audience.  The music in our product is slow in order to create tension our titles are kept very simple in order to fit in with the codes and conventions of a typical thriller.

This picture of Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13^th and our character carry similar traits, such as no dialogue which create a more misterious and tense scene.  Jason Voorhees is a masked charecter in order to not show his facial features, the same way our charecter is wearing a hat.  Both charecters wear dark clothes in order to prevent themselfs being seen. Both charecters also have weapons which are intended to kill.

Another  way codes and conventions are challenged is through the costumes of the actors. Conner (killer) is shown above wearing a dark coat along with black trousers and black shoes. The hat is also dark as this covers most of the characters’ facial features, this could have been improved if the hat was also black. The dark clothes are used so the character is disguised in the night. This shows a typical representation of a killer; the dark colours Represent danger , mystery, fear, evil and unhappiness and create a threatening image to the audience.  The victim is shown also wearing dark clothes; she has a red bag as this makes her stand out. The colour red also symbolises danger Excitement, energy, passion, desire, speed, strength, power, aggression, fire, blood, war and violence, so informs the audience that something bad is going to happen from the start.

Unfortunately our group has had some problems with our completed film, and our final edited version was lost due to technical failure. Luckily Connor had backed up our rough cut and we will soon have our completed product.

Connor has been helping Ryan, by teaching him how to edit titles; and from a previous post you can see that he managed to get to grips with it. However,Ryan didnt how to change the comp size to fit our movie; resulting in more work correcting this error. Although, this was an easy job and didn’t require much knowhow. Simply expanding the comp size then re adjusting the text in the titles to fit the new dimensions (as this was a simple task that could get complicated if unfamiliar with the program, I took over).

Once Ryan had finished with the titles I made the main title this was done by gathering inspiration from a videocopilot tutorial I saw and adding my own twist to it. I have taken some screen shots of the processes to go along with a description of what I have done.

One of the first steps in creating the main title was, to create the comp area (ensuring it was the same as the rest of our project). Following this I created the text which was “Relentless Possibility”, the name of our film, this was using the same font as the rest of the titles. Some of the specifications are:

• Font - Chaparral Pro 
• Font size- 190
• Font style- Bold
• Colour- White

Once I have created the text and positioned it how I want it to be laid out, I set some key frames. These key frames can control opacity, position, scale, etc. By setting a key frame at the beginning of time line, it will control what the text looks like at the beginning of the clip. For example, at the beginning of this clip I have a key frame set in opacity, to zero percent; this mean that the text will not appear, until I add a second key frame with a higher percent.

This will mean that the text will gradually increase it's opacity percent until it hits the key frame with the maximum in it. This same technique can be applied to other fields such as scale, this means you can create the illusion of the text coming towards you.

Once I have the text lined up, the hand made effect perfected and the length of the clip corrected, I can start adding some cool effects. To do this I downloaded the evolution pack from videocopilot. Videocopilot is an online group that record and produce special FX for purchase; using these I added some vines that will appear as though they are growing out of the title.

Once I completed the title, I exported it as a .mov file (quick time movie) I used this format instead of a .wmv (windows Media Video) as I am using a apple Macintosh to edit my clips.

Codes and Conventions of Horror.

This type of genre strives to educe fear and apprehension from their viewers by colliding supernatural into reality situations. Everything a normal society values is systematically destroyed throughout the film. It often can be completely paranormal without any reality whatsoever and are based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre. They can also incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction (sci-fi), fantasy, black comedies or thriller. Modernized horrors usually contain graphic violence or bloody gore. Horror films differentiate due to the years and so it is much harder to compare or group them largely and so contrasts between them become very clear.


  o Preliminary introduction into ordinary lifestyleo Type of bizarre murder/death – killer maybe known or unknowno Credits follow horror theme – creepy font, title movement, image eg pumpkin, weapon, etc
o Main characters introduced – young/ youthful
o Teenage kids – easy target also vulnerable – home alone
o Teenagers usually a couple – football jock boyfriend and cheerleader blonde bimbo girlfriend.
o Mysterious phone calls – dubbed sinister voice “Who’s There…?”
o Family ties broken
o Sisters killed by brothers e.g: Halloweeno Sometimes unsuccessful acts of heroism
o Victim unprotected
o Superhuman killer – doesn’t die successfully = sequels
-Source; http://smay-fuller-suttonmediaas.blogspot.com/2008/12/codes-and-conventions-of-horror-film.html

Foley art

Liam, Scott and Connor set about recording some sound effects for our media piece “Relentless Possibility”; we researched into Foley art, a technique used by film industries to add sound effects. We found a video onlineshowing sound technicians for a popular video game, recording sound effects and then demonstrating how they use them.

This video gave us a lot of inspiration for our video’s audio. We arranged a date where we would go round to Scotts house to record our vegetable genocide; Liam and Connor went to town to collect equipment and fruit and veg, we considered health and safety by buying some overalls, glasses and some other protective clothing. They did this while me and Ryan continued with editing and Research. They also bought some Tarpaulin, Duck Tape, Bamboo, Tights, Hair Gel, CDs, a Hammer and lots of Fruit and Veg. 

Connor and Liam constructed a Pop Shield out of some tights stretched over and embroidery ring, this was to help reduce any hiss sounds the microphone may pick up, it also protects it from any foreign projectiles (banana juice/goo) once made these we duck taped them on to some bamboo and tapped that to the tripod, positioning it in front of the microphone. They then started on destroying some fruit, setting up a stand made out of cardboard and wooden beams, using our array of tools to dismembered the fruit; recording the result with Scotts audio equipment and Liam’s D90 for visual. Once Liam and Connor returned we listened to the results, find some things worked really well and others were a dismal.

Scott and Connor went over the recordings at a latter date to compose them to fit our film segments; we did this using Cubase sound recording and editing software we layered the sounds up on top of each other to create a stabbing sound. Once we created the ideal sound we exported it and Scott uploaded it to soundcloud for us to download and use when we needed it.

It was then a simple case of downloading it and adding it to our media film, this combined with the editing has helped tointensify the genera of our film. 

Filming went pretty smoothly, with no problems really arising allowing us to flow through it quickly. It was done over the course of about 3-4 Weeks taking place at around 7/8-10+ O'Clock. The issue we have noticed though is that we haven't included an estalbishing shot. However, this will only take a quick session to get completed so it's no real problem. We plan to get this done ASAP, maybe even later on today (25/03/11).



Filming Location (In day light)

 In our rough cut which we have put together, we've noticed an issue with one of the shots. Unfortunatly, in one of the shots of Heather (Dead character), you can see her take a breath. It's only minor and not too noticeable, however it is an annoyance. We don't have time to correct this now so we've got to stick with it.

Over the course of our filming, we encounted that things were different to how we had planned they would go. Whilst it still went fine, it was challenging. We experimented with many different shots and, in the end, changed quite a few of the shots on our storyboard.

We had to improvise for some of the shots, at some point Liam had to lay down and shoot without the tripod to get the right angle which the tripod wouldn't allow. Quite a few shots were challenging, for example, the panning was more difficult than we thought, when I had to pan both right and down, trying to keep the pace of the character whilst also framing another thing of interest in the shot.

Also, the cameras metering system could not be controlled manual whilst filming, so we experienced some lighting problems. In one of the shots, where the car is started, when the headlights come on the camera auto-adjusts to meter for the bright point of light, which darkened everything else in the shot. Thankfully, however, it wasn't really a problem because we felt that the effect was pretty cool and suited the dark, sinister feel of the film. Another issue with the camera, was that in some shots there appears to be large black bars scrolling down across the shot. We think was due to metering issues aswell, and unfortutantly, we can't fix it now.

We did try to pre-plan the lighting, where Liam, Connor and Scott made a visit to olympus house (Where we filmed) to check out the lighting and to find out, based on the lighting, how we would shoot. The large flood light above the main entrance to the building provided excelent lighting which was very helpful. However, it did turn off sometimes and since we had no control of this we had to pause/cancel filming sometimes.



Running through the storyboard with the DV



We filming using my own Nikon D90 camera but one of the shots we using an iPod. The advantage of using my camera over the DV Cameras provided by the school was that we could film in higher quality and resolution. Also, the ability to change lenses helped. For most of it, we used a 50mm Prime F/1.8 lenses; this allowed us to take good advantage of focus and depth of field. However, the D90, is a photographic camera mainly, with just the side option to record, so unfortuatnly the settings were limited in video mode. Liam filmed on the standard video mode with the ISO set to 400-600.

Since none of us hold a lisence yet to drive, in the shot where we had to car speeding off we had to use a 'stunt double'. We filmed Connor (Protanganist) climbing into the car, then switched the shot to a different angle where we switched him with his Dad (The 'stunt double'). This allowed us to film the shot of the car speeding off.

The filmimg has now all been completed, and was very succesfull. Connor and Liam have been making sound effects using fuit and vegtables, These will be added into our opening to create better sound effects.
Me and ryan have been working on the effects for the titles which are going to be quite basic, so it doesnt take attention away from the opening.
We have now began revising for the exams.

Our filming did not take place on the date we had intended to start, this is due to actors not being able to make it, All our filming took place over arround 4 weeks and was filmed at night between the hours of 6-10pm. Becaue of health and safety we had to had a adult avaliable to drive the car, this was Connors dad, who was present at all filming.
I beleive the filming has gone well overall, the lighting is good and the continuity is mostly corect. Final touches are now being added to the film, e.g. slight continuity errors. The sound is good, but we are aware that some slight changes are needed to be done for example, on the ipod scene the sound of the ipod hitting the floor is slighty to loud. I think that our film has some very good points. e.g. some of the close up shots like of the boot, and the girl crying. These are here to create more emotion and to make the audince feel more involved.
Here is the rough cut of our film, shown below: