Thursday 10 March 2011

Evaluation

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Our film 'The Reprisal' is most likely to be distributed by a small institution such as Film4 or Warp Films.
One reason for this is that our film is low budgeted and is therefore a small independant art-house production and even though Film4 and Warp Films have distributed big successful films, for example Film4 distributed 'Slumdog Millionaire', they both have experience in dealing with and distributing smaller independant films that are aimed at niche audiences, such as 'Four Lions' .
Also our film is fully british. We use British location, british actors and british writers. As Film4 and Warp Films are british, this may encourage them to support and distribute a film like ours.
The themes mainly involved in our film are adult themes such as violence therefore the films would be mostly aimed at older people, most likely students and would be showing in cinemas in student areas such as cambridge. The film would probably be shown on student nights.
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Jack is 22 an currently goes to Bournemouth university of media and studies media journalism and cinematography, he boards at the university with his girlfriend julia who he has been with for 18 months. His favourite hobby hobbies are playing competitive chess and going to art houses to watch low budget local films. jack would prefer so spend his money on a good book or a dvd than on designer clothes and nights out with the lads. His favourite film of all time is avatar as he appreciates well made and graphically advanced films.
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Thursday 17 February 2011

Evaluation

1. 
We used the forms and conventions of real media products by using darker lighting which is usual of a thriller and we also used typical music of a thriller getting faster and building tension. The music we used was from a website called www.freeplaymusic.com. the website allows you to choose the style and feel of the music you want and we chose to get music from the 'tension' genre. We have two different pieces of music for the two sections in our film, the first piece of music stops as he stops running as a sort of second start to the film. We then changed the music to another piece from the 'tension' genre, but it is of a slower beat and we are trying to build tension slowly as he packs his bag. The music then gets louder as he leaves the room, to show that the action is about to begin.  We didn't put the music on a loop as we are using 2 different songs and they last the duration of the opening of the film.


This is a frame from our opening scene of a thriller. We used color corrector in final cut to make the lighting dark and dingy. We done this because we believed that it would 'set the scene' and hopefully build more tension. We also done this because in our research we found that the opening scenes of thrillers often use very dark and dingy lighting.

The frame on the left is from the thriller film 'The Usual Suspects'. The lighting is very dark, which is similiar to our film, and is an example of how thriller films use dark lighting. 



We developed the forms and conventions of real media products using running to create suspense and we also featured a car getaway which is also usual in thrillers.


On the left is two frames taken from our film 'The Reprisal'.
The first frame directly to the left is of our actor whilst he is running. We decided to start off with our actor running because we felt that it would build tension and suspicion which are good qualities that a thriller film should have.


We finished our thriller film with a 'getaway' car scene. This is widely thought to be very typical within films especially action thrillers which is what genre our film would probably come under. This is why we thought it would be effective to include.


The frame on the right is taken from the film 'Case 39'. We chose to add this frame because it is a good example of a running scene within a thriller film which shows how we developed the conventions and forms of a thriller. also because they have used dark lighting which is similar to the lighting used in our film.

The frame to the right is a frame of a 'getaway ' car scene taken from the movie 'Bullitt'. Getaway car scenes are very typical of thriller movies which is why we included one in our film as we wanted it to feel authentic.


These frames show where we have challenged the forms and conventions of real media products. Firstly is a frame of us using a young actor which is unusual of a thriller film and we also don't show the murder so we are challenging the usual conventions of a typical thriller film.

This is the only shot of our actors face, you can not see alot of his face but you do see enough to see that we have a young person acting.






It is not very common in thriller films to have a very young person acting, the actors are usually middle aged or older. In contrast to the frame of our young actor we have taken a frame from the 'Se7en' trailer as the one of the films main character is Morgan Freeman and he is an example of the age group of actors that are more frequently used in thriller films.                                                                


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Our film 'The Reprisal' is most likely to be distributed by a small institution such as Film4 or Warp Films.
One reason for this is that our film is low budgeted and is therefore a small independant art-house production and even though Film4 and Warp Films have distributed big successful films, for example Film4 distributed 'Slumdog Millionaire', they both have experience in dealing with and distributing smaller independant films that are aimed at niche audiences, such as 'Four Lions' .
Also our film is fully british. We use British location, british actors and british writers. As Film4 and Warp Films are british, this may encourage them to support and distribute a film like ours.
The themes mainly  involved in our film are adult themes such as violence therefore the films would be mostly aimed at older people, most likely students and would be showing in cinemas in student areas such as cambridge. The film would probably be shown on student nights.


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Emma is 22 and is currently doing a course at Birmingham university  in media. when she leaves uni she hopes to get a job in press and PR specialising in horror and thriller films. Before university she went to sixth form studying Media, English Language and English Literature. After sixth form emma took a gap year and travelled around the world with her best friend. Her favourite author is Gary A. Braunbeck and she collects his books. she adores reading and watching thriller films, she would rather stay in and read or watch a film than go out clubbing. she prefers going down the pub with a few of her close friends rather than go out clubbing. Emma has been with her boyfriend Ryan for 8 months and they met at university. They have the same interests and regularly go and watch small art-house films. She is into old school music from the late 70's early 80's such as meat loaf and madness.














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during our filming we had to use various new equipment and technologies that we was not familiar with. this includes;
  • Mac Computers
  • Final Cut Express
  • Camera, Tripod
  • Prezi
  • blogger.com
the first piece of equipment that we had to familiarise ourselves with was the Mac computers. After using Microsoft Windows computers for years i found it quite hard to adjust to the new computer. I had to use all new programs and learn how to use them properly in order to do my school work effectively.

Above is a picture of me using Final Cut Express on the Mac computer.


Final Cut Express was the main program that we use in our media course. Therefore we needed to ensure that we knew how to use it properly, for example in our film we wanted to use colour correction to make the first part of our film look like it was filmed in the dark. Before editing our film we watched a youtube video explaining how to use the colour correction tool, we also practised on pictures.
Above is a picture from when i was practising changing the lighting of our video.

The camera and tripod was probably the easiest equipment to learn how to use. Once we knew the basics of how to use the camera, for example record, take picture, and then review your videos and pictures, it was very easy.
Above is a picture of me recording on the camera whilst it is on a tripod to ensure that the shot isnt shaky.
Our blogs is another technology that we had to get used to as neither of us had ever used anything like this before. The website is laid out and labelled clearly which helped a lot when learning how to blog.
Above is a picture of our blogger dashboard.

When posting on our blogs we was told to use different ways to present our work. One way that we was told was an effective way to present work was using Prezi's. Thankfully on the website there is tutorials to help you get started and show you how to make an effective Prezi.

Above is a picture of a video featured on the website that helps you get started

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Wednesday 16 February 2011

Name of our opening scene of a thriller

we found that coming up with a name for our thriller film was particularly hard. There fore we decided to think about the main themes of our thriller, the main theme we thought of was revenge. We did not think that 'revenge' would be a good or effective name for the film, so we decided to use an online thesaurus to see if there were any words that had the same meaning but sounded more effective. This is when we came across the word 'Reprisal' and decided on this name for our film

Sound

when we had filmed both parts of our thriller opening scene, put them into a sequence and had effectively edited them we then realised that we had to put music to it. Neither of us felt confident enough to create our own music, therefore we used the website http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ to get our music. the website allows you to choose what kind of music you want and the feel of the music. this was helpful as we know that the music needed to create tension.

Report on second filming session

we did not properly organise our second filming session and ended up filming late compared to the other groups. There fore we was not properly prepared with the location or props that we originally was going to use. We had to do our filming at school. we used a medical room as the characters bedroom and we used things around school that we could find for the props. for example gloves, a craft knife, wire and a laptop.
Despite all this i believe that the filming went well and even though it was not properly planned i believe it turned out to be very effective.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Risk Assessment

our second filming session was in school, therefore the risks were immediatley reduced. However there were still some risks because of the props that were used.
firstly we were using dangerous things such as knives and razors. we needed to ensure that the actor was especially careful when it came to these as we didnt want him to hurt or cut himself.
Also at the end of our film we wanted the character to drive away, however as he does not have a driving license we got some help from a driver who offered to let our actor get into the car and then he would drive him away safely.

Tuesday 1 February 2011



editing

we could use this effect in our film possibley in some scenes to make it look weird and spooky to add effect to our filming.