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Note To Moderator

Dear Moderator,

Thank you for taking your time to look around my blogs. It's been a long process, but i have enjoyed it fully and really hope its worth it. My group blog is linked to my individual blog, so you will be able to navigate around from one to the other. The link to the group blog is on the left hand side, with the other members of my group's blogs also there (Lewis, James and Sam). Another main link you can find there is the Main Class Blog which is our teacher's central blog , which has links to all the other student and group blogs.

On my individual blog you can find some of my individual research in theorys of opening sequences anf films, initial ideas to the brief, the final sequence evaluation questions and some reflections on the production of our final piece after i had been put into Group 4. There is also work from the preliminary task, which includes the video clip and answers to the evaluation questions.

I have also linked my finished film opening sequence and preliminary sequence at the top of my individual blog.

I hope you navigate around my blogs easily and enjoy looking all the work. I've organised all my work chronilogiaclly on my blog . I have used labels to identify my Research, Planning, Production and Evaluation that I have completed on my individual blog. We have done the same on our group blog and also labelled the posts we were individually responsible for, so for example posts that I have done say 'Philippa.'

Thank you for your time,
Philippa Dodi
Candidate Number 3205

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

The opening sequence of a film serves a number of purposes: engaging the audience, establishing characters and triggering the series of events in the narrative. Often the themes, genres and issues in the film are also established from the outset. The opening sequence, therefore takes on a particular importance in the overall narrrative structure of the film. In our opening sequence i feel we have managed to achieve all these things.

ENGAGING THE AUDIENCE:
We engage our 16-25 firstly with the ambience of our young lone character (to which they can relate) 

and then secondly with our fast action element nearing the end. Much like this clip from shank has done near the start of the film, with again the lone young male character.

 

ESTABLISHING MAIN CHARACTER:

We tried to establish our character as best we could by giving him a big build up and allowing time for the audience to take in his ordinary clothing, the fact he is fairly young and that he is clearly up to no good.

The start of the build up 
of our main character.

Our main character being 
followed to him sitting down.

At the end of the build up
 when we start to see what 
he's up to, the emphasis is 
not not on him but what he's doing.

TRIGGERING THE SERIES OF EVENTS:

We also trigger the series of events for the rest of our narrative by instantly disrupting the equilibrium (with Jack seeing the two antagonists and the body), to then allow the outcome, immersion and resolution of this in the rest of the film. This is used in alot of action/thriller movies such as Eden Lake, see clip below.

Equilibrium

Disruption of equilibrium- seeing 
the men with the dead body.

MUSIC:

We embraced the music in our opening sequence in order to portray the genre to our audience. The Witness is an Action Thriller, and so with our running sequence we used heavy beated, exciting music, to show it is action based and also to portray the adrenaline of the chase through to the audience and made sure it had an upbeat pace.For this we used 'out on a limb' .

 We also get a clear sense of the action element at the end with the simple use of the siren, as this shows the film will involve a lot of chasing/running and also signify an almost ‘street’ and ‘gangster’ element, to engage our younger audience, as this song 'Sirens- by Dizzee Rascal' does in order to put across the street and crime portrayal which is also aimed at a young British audience to which it is very popular.

BINARY OPPOSITES:
We have also used Binary opposites with the men/boys in our sequence wearing fairly dull clothes and the only female wearing a bright red top, making her stand out as the main source of the disrupted equilibrium. 

Very dull clothing 
compared to girl.

Very bright clothing 
compared to men.

Again, our antagonists are wearing dark clothes and our protagonist is wearing lighter clothes clearly apposing the two and making it clear to the audience which ones are more villainous.

Ligher clothing
 representing 
him as the 
protagonist.

Again, dark clothing to 
hide their identity and 
make it clear they are 
the evil antagonists.

TODOROVS THEORY OF EQUILIBRIUM:

We ultimately followed Todorovs theory of equilibrium as a narrative pattern, as in this clip of ‘Lucky Number Slevin’,
by introducing our main character and protagonist Jack, in his equilibrium, although in this case pretty bleak as he is a loner, this is then disrupted by our to two antagonists who end up chasing Jack through the forest and capture him. Through the rest of the film we get to see this resolved and Jack to reach his equilibrium, if not an even better one, once again. 

Our main character in his equilibrium, smoking.

The equilibrium is disrupted.

The disruption triggers the
series of events that follows.

ENIGMA AND ACTION CODES:

We have also used hints of enigma and action codes to help our narrative, for instance our main action code is our main character Jack entering the forest as this then allows the narrative to move forward with him seeing the antagonists etc. 

Right at the very start when we first see our protagonist we are graced with many enigma codes, why is he going into the forest? Why does he look so shifty? Why is he alone? And all of these are answered later on in the sequence but keep the audience gripped until they find them out. 

Our main action and enigma code:
the main character entering the forest.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening sequence and film mainly represent gender and age. 

Question 3: What kind of media institution may distribute you media product and why?

We created a production company called 'Bite The Bullet Productions', and we agreed to specialize in (mainly) British action/thriller films targeting national and international audiences, anyone who is a fan of the genre, with a backlog of relatively low budget and gritty/unusual films. 

Therefore I feel that a distributor like Revolver Entertainment would be good for us as it has a UK and USA base, to give us the international reach.

I chose Revolver Entertainment for 4 reasons: 

1.  Revolver Entertainment is also one of the UK & Eire’s leading ‘All Rights’ distribution companies, 
2. It has a unique approach to managing an edgy slate of Film and DVD releases 
3.  It specializes in delivering maximum media coverage and awareness via multi-platforms- something which our youthful audience will benefit from greatly. 
4. It has had great success with marketing and distributing/exhibiting other edgy action thrillers e.g.‘Dead Man Running’ (also an action/thriller). So we feel they would be specialized in marketing our gritty and edgy british action/thriller to an overseas audience, as it did with dead man running in 2010 being their highest ever Week 1 sales of DVD and Bluray, smashing into the new release chart at number 2 and an overall chart position of number 5.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our primary target audience was originally quite broad aimed at young men (16-25) who are fans of action/thriller genres but it could also include young women too (possibly as a secondary audience) who would go along with their boyfriends and even for just the tomboy who also enjoys the genre. 

We would expect it to appeal not only nationally but internationally, but because of the wide genre and the fact our target audience isn’t very niche. 

We consider our target audience to be thrill seekers looking for suspense, who like hanging out with their friends and who can relate to our young protagonist by what clothes he wears, the problems he faces in life and the way he talks etc. 

We chose this audience within planning and production as we thought it would be an exciting to create action sequences and make our film appeal to them, despite being very similar to other films of the genre. 

AUDIENCE PROFILE:

Name: James

Age: 21

How often he goes to the cinema: Once a month

Interests: 

-Competitive and extreme sports,

-Hanging out with friends,

-Girls, 

-Playing video games such as COD, 

-Watching action movies

- Media technologies such as the iphone

What he looks for in a film: 

-Suspense,

-Action, 

-Violence,

- A small element of romance 

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our target audience in 6 different ways:

1)By appealing to their pleasures such as thrill seeking and adrenaline pumping activities such as sports and we tried to portray this through the chase sequences and music etc. 

2) Engaging the audience in the realism of our film, that this could potentially be happening, as it involves gang culture- like films like Kidulthood did, engaging and addressing real issues. 

3) The use of a male protagonist could also potentially attract our audience by allowing them to relate to him, and recognise his fashion styles, manner of speech etc. 

4)The overall genre appeals greatly to our target audience and by conforming to the usual expectations of the genre it will attract them, however we feel by having a slightly unconventional young protagonist it will appeal to our young target audience even more as they will be able to not only obtain the action and adrenaline but be able to relate. 

%of people who enjoy action/thriller films, under and over 25

5)Having an unlikely, almost anti-hero protagonist will keep the audience on the edge of their seats to see whether he will actually have the skill necessary to escape the clearly more experienced stronger, tougher gang members. 

6) Keeping the audience intrigued with the build up of enigma codes in our opening sequence e.g. why is he alone? why is he looking shifty? why is he entering the forest?

After seeing our audience feedback it was reassuring to see that our film had successfully appealed to young men between the ages of 15-18 this was a fraction lower then the age we had originally intended to market the film towards, however, it is still  above the age limit to what we had based the film, 15. Along with this we also noticed that some females had also enjoyed the film rating it with an average of 7/10 where as the males within the audience averaged it out at at 9/10.

IMG_0017 THE WITNESS QUESTIONAIRE


IMG_0015 THE WITNESS QUESTIONAIRE

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

ALL OF THE EQUIPMENT USED:
Production Hardware:

• Sony Camera
• Sony Mini DV tape
• Tripod
• Shot gun microphone
• Headphones
• Still camera- for location reccie

Post Production Hardware:

• Edit suite HP z600 workstation
• Dell computer
• Microphone for voiceover dubbing
• Mac computer

Post production software:

• Adobe Premier Pro cS3
• Live titles (on mac)
• Adobe sound booth cs3

The main thing I learnt about technology from this product was that the manual settings on a camera are very sensitive and easy to change accidentally.

On one of our shoots, as shooting outside and having to constantly hold the camera, we somehow managed to alter the white contrast on our shoot, and this became very problematic in the editing process which ended up needing a complete re-shoot as the colour correction on Adobe Premier Pro could not fix it.

I also improved my skill on matching contrast and lighting from one shot to another, and as our shoot was an outdoor shoot this was necessary as we could not always predict the weather of that day.

Lastly, for the first time i was able to work on the mac and learn from scratch how to use LiveType to create the titles for our sequence, this was a lot easier then expected and i learnt how to change fonts and add textures and effects to the font.

Through the post and pre production and production generally i have also learnt how to utilise the blog a lot more confidently, and overall my confidence with the technology has increased greatly. 

In hindsight I would have the camera on automatic settings always when working outdoors, to prevent any mishaps happening again. I also now know how to work and adjust the manual settings on a camera after being shown by the media technician. When trying to create unusual shots through trees etc it was very hard to balance the tripod and often needed someone holding it whilst another person pressed record, therefore in the future I would invest in a gorilla pod which allows you to attach the camera to any surface, and this would give us more hands to direct the actors. 

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to the full product?

I feel that from the preliminary task I have become a lot more confident and good at editing continuity sequences such as match on action. 

Lewis's match on action wit his
running. His Right foot goes up..

Here his right foot lands

And here his left foot is being brought up to run on.

I also feel that progressing from this I have learnt on shoots to always automatically check continuity such as the 180 degree rule. 

I definitely feel the reccie done by Sam was very beneficial, as it meant we could get a feel of where we were shooting before actually going there and we could picture it easier in our minds to then portray onto the storyboard. 


I also learnt that it is much better to get too much footage than too little, and as well as using a shot list, be spontaneous as well -as a lot of the best footage comes from this. 

In the editing process I learnt that having a timeline for each group member was good, as it allowed us to experiment and then come together and put all the things we unanimously liked together to create the final piece. 

Working as a team can get frustrating at times, but in hindsight I think we delegated jobs efficiently, working to everyone strengths but also allowing them to improve on their weaknesses. 


Me and Sam unfortunately had to miss the last week of editing and so had to trust Lewis and James to finish it for us, we made sure we stayed in contact throughout the week and was so was there to give any advice if they ever needed it. 

Editing Schedule

IMG_0014 THE WITNESS EDITING TIMETABLEThis is an example of the editing schedules we drew up for the editing process. As you can see we made sure we were all editing as much as possible, not only as individuals but as a group too, as this meant we could make group decisions, then carry on perfecting these alone if necessary. 

Overall i think our schedules were very efficient, as they gave other group members insight into who they'd be working with and allowed the teachers to stay up to grips with what we were continuing to do. Not only this but they allowed us to set targets for each week to hopefully keep.

My responsibilities with equipment and on shoot

For our first shoot i took home the tripod, to remember to bring to the location the next day. On the shoot i was in charge of fixing the camera onto the tripod shoe.

On our second shoot my responsibility was the camera, which i took home the afternoon before. In the evening before the shoot i checked the camera batteries were fully charged and that we had the right tape in the camera, stopped at the right point (so as not to go over any footage previously).

On the shoots overall i was in charge of looking after bags, and when all three boys were in the running/chasing shots, i was the designated filmer.

I also had a small part to play in the film, as the dead girl being dragged, this meant i had to be responsible for finding the outfit and doing as what i was told by the director to ensure we got the correct footage.

Our Final Idea- Treatment

treatment

Overall i am very happy with our group proposal, as i think it is a very strong concept, and as it has a broad target audience we can aim to attract them in many different ways. We have also chosen a genre that all of our group members enjoy watching, so when editing i believe this will come in very handy to get the right pace and music for the desired effect on the audience. As all the characters in the opening sequence are male i believe i will have to be doing more shooting, which i enjoy so i will take on the challenge head on.

My Initial Idea To The Brief

Obsessed
Obsessed is the story of a male secondary school teacher who becomes fixated and obsessed with one of his young female pupils, to the extent that he kidnaps her and holds her hostage in his home. The film will follow the events of the stalking to the kidnapping, the attempted escapes and holding at his house and then the resolution of the police finding her and shooting the man.

My opening sequence will be:
There is an opening pan through the quiet working classroom right up to the teacher at the front, everything seems normal, he is marking books. The bell rings, all the children leave the room, but we focus a lot on the girl who is the object of desire, how she outs away her pens and her shoes etc. We then follow the teachers journey home walking, everything seems natural and normal, he enters his house, puts down his bag. The final scene will be of him walking into a dark room and switching the light on, as he does this we get a POV shot of his eyes tilt panning up his wall. On the wall are thousands of pictures of the one pupil, her yearbook picture, ones of her with her friends secretly taken. The last shot we get is a master shot of the man standing in awe of his collection as the music rises and then the screen goes to black.