Evaluation.

Evaluation ‘commitment’

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Feedback for our final film.

'The use of different angles really put me on edge'
'It's pretty good. You could of put some effects onto the titles though'
'The music was really eerie and the dim lighting fitted well into the theme of the film'
'I like that you've used a good quality camera, it makes it seem more realistic'


I was happy with the feedback we received from our audience as this is what we were trying to achieve with re-shooting and using different angles during the opening. I was also happy as we did have difficulty finding a piece of music which we believed fitted the opening well as so I was happy to see that people also thought that the music went well with our media product. Overall I was happy with the feedback however I don't believe that we would of got the same positive feedback on our rough cut and therefore I'm glad that we re-shoot at the end in order to incorporate the different use of camera angles. I agree with the comment that we could have put some effects onto the titles however, I think that due to the genre of the film it didn't necessarily need fancy titles and that the simple titles work well for the thriller/horror genre as they are straightforward and not too fancy. I would like to see what the film would of looked like with different titles though and I believe that it was a good point to raise. 

Final product - 'Commitment'

Editing for the final time.

Today we decided to edit the footage we had shot on Saturday and incorporate it into our opening. We managed to finish editing within our double media period and I was surprised with the amount of work that we had completed. We not only completed the work but I believe that we completed it well as our opening still smooth and flows well without, this was an issue that I was slightly worried about before adding our additional shots as I wasn't sure if the piece would flow as well as before but actually using the extra shots in order to break up the sequence actually made it appear more of a thriller genre, as instead of being narrative the whole way through and simply following the character down the opening was slightly broken up and therefore left an element of mystery I believe that this goes well with our thriller horror as by breaking up shots is more likely to leave the audience wondering what is going to happen next rather than being able to see where exactly our character is walking to.


I am proud with what we have achieved and I believe that we have now completed our opening for good. I am pleased with this as our final deadline is Thursday. Now I am able to focus on making sure my blog is completely up to date and I am able to find out our audience feed back in order to evaluate our work properly. There is much I would do different if given the chance again however I am happy that it is now over as it was much harder than we anticipated despite being told numerous times.

Deadline

As a group we were unsure if we were able to hand in our coursework on our deadline however we were able to complete this dead line to our surprise. We felt good about this however our teacher gave us our feedback and it wasn't as good as expected, as this was a chance for him to see our work he gave us the chance to add a few shots.


We decided to change a few shots and re-shoot on Saturday. We decided after talking to our teacher that in order to push our coursework into a level three - level four we would need to add in different shots from various angles instead of having the camera on the floor for a large number of shots and instead incorporate some mid level and high level shots. We found it difficult in parts to use the camera for shots like high angles as we didn't know what looked the best and what didn't as it was the first time we had taken many of our new shot ideas but actually once we tried it a few times and watched it back we were able to see quickly where we were going wrong and what we needed to change in order to improve the shot. I believe that we were able to come to this conclusion much faster than if this was our first time using the equipment at all as we now have a great knowledge and therefore we were able to think of different ways in which to go about each of the shots and were able to come to a conclusion about what would look good and what wouldn't.


We also had to change the parts we already had my breaking some of them up so that instead of constantly panning along the ground in order to follow the characters movements we were shooting from one side of the room and moving to the other to show that he was walking towards are certain direction or was walking past certain points. By doing this we are adding more and more variety of shots and our teacher has told us that by doing this we have the potential to push our grade up further.


I believe that with the shots we have taken this weekend that our coursework should go up another level as we know use a variety of different shots rather than staying safe with the shots we knew how to do rather than thinking what would look better and trying different things. I also believe that our work in now deserving to go up a lot higher in marks as we have done what we have been told to do in order to improve it and I believe that we have carried it out well.

Rough cut

Filming establishing shots.

The filming of our establishing shots for our sequence went well today. It took us much longer than anticipated just like our other attempts at filming. This was mainly due to the fact that we hadn't tried these shots before so we took various from different angles in order to have various shots to work with and to include within our footage. We realised as we went along also how certain shots which we had planned on using wouldn't work and instead we needed to do other shots from different angles, our advantage this time was that we had used the equipment previously and were now a lot more confident with using it and were able to try different shots as we now had more experience with the camera and we're starting to learn what does and doesn't work and how to make the shots look better.


I am now beginning to add the footage to what we have already edited in order to see what it looks like with our new shots in between to establish the changes in the rooms. I have added in the shots and now need to cut them down so that they fit properly but I am already very happy with the establishing shots and I am glad that our teacher pointed it out to us because now our opening already looks so much better and now that we have changed it I can see how previously it actually made very little sense unlike now where the footage flows more and is easier for an audience to understand. I am leaving the titles for our group to edit though although I am changing the way in which they are laid out on a black screen and instead putting them over our shots which allows us with more time during the footage so we are able to lay down the new shots. I am leaving the font to the other two members of my group as firstly that is one of  Sareenas job to find different fonts and choose them according to our genre and also because I believer the font is something the whole group should have a say on. Whilst editing I have also listened to our choice in music over and over as it plays whilst I edit the clips and I have decided that it needs to be changed straight away as when listening to it the music has a very oriental sound and I don't believe that it goes with the opening and I know that the others agree that the music isn't a perfect match so we now also have to find some new music to include. Overall I am happy with the progress we have made in such a short space of time however I would change the way we have gone about this if I was able to as I don't believe our time at the start was organised very productively due to several reasons and now that has had a larger impact than we had imaged on the amount we needed to do so quickly despite the teachers reminders.

Teachers feed back on what we have done so far.

Alexandra, Sareena and I sat down with Mr Michie and showed him our footage edited so far. The feedback we received was fairly positive and was not negative towards the way in which film or the shots them self but instead the feedback was more towards the sequence in general and the way in which it flowed. He pointed out to use that the sequence didn't make a lot of sense in some areas with our character walking in and out of rooms. Me and Alexandra were glad that our teacher had pointed this out when he did because during filming the lack of entrances and exits within our film did worry us as we weren't to sure if the entrances and exits in to different rooms were established enough. Our teacher told us that it would be a good idea to go away and film again and this time to film the establishing shots so that the sequenced flowed more and for us to make it easier for the audience to understand. 
He were also told that we should change the font style as our teacher didn't feel it fitted in with the thriller/horror genre. I do agree with him that it didn't fit the genre correctly, although there was reason behind our font choice as we thought it would match the wedding which was being prepared for in our opening. However it does make a lot more sense to change the font as it makes it easier for an audience to establish the genre of the film and also now with the font matches the codes and conventions of our genre more efficiently. Our teacher also made us consider changing the font on black background and putting it over the sequence instead to allow for more footage to be laid . As a group we agreed that doing all of the following things that our teacher suggested will make our film a lot better. I am glad that we have finally sat down with a teacher and discussed the footage because as a group this was a large problem of ours and I do believe that until now that has held the footage back slightly and that is our fault entirely. 

Editing after our second attempt.

The problem which we had faced with the Mac and the conversion of files was not able to be resolved over the half term for several reasons, firstly, the teacher did not get the email which was sent to him during the half term to inform him about the situation with the mac. Secondly the problem on the Mac was unable to be resolved and we instead learnt that we needed a newer Mac in order to convert the files. The editing which wasn't done during the half term because of this issue did in fact set us back massively in terms of being able to re shoot any thing else that needed further changes. At the time however it did not feel like a massive set back however if I look back in terms of what could of been changed during this time there was a lot more that we could have accomplished I believe in terms of different shots. 

Editing the footage took a lot more time than I thought it was going to take as well, as editor for the group I found that it was often very hard to match different shots and it was also very hard to always keep the timing correct. Other problems I encountered were to do with the different transitions between shots and the lack of knowledge in terms of what transitions to use. Now I know I should of gone to the teacher in order to have gotten help with these such problems, however, I do believe that by doing it alone and figuring out how to use Premier Pro alone did help me in terms of learning how to edit footage and I believe that it will help greatly next time I need to edit footage. 

The footage I had edited I believe was good compared to the previous footage we had laid out and once I really started to edit the film begun to take shape and it was really great to watch the footage we had filmed come together into a film. I did get help on the footage from the other two members of school when taking the Mac in, in order to receive my groups opinion on what I had edited so far and if they wished to have anything changed like the speed, transitions, music and titles. 

I believe that my editing was good for a first proper attempt at it, I learnt a lot and am now able to edit even further. I do however think that there is still stuff which needs changing and we will be looking at this with the teacher in order to see what we need to do in order to change the footage as currently it seems as we are missing something.

Filming - second attempt.

Today we've filmed all of our footage again at Alexandra's house and this time we are much more positive about the footage. As this was our second attempt we were able to learn from previous mistakes and were able to make sure things such as continuity, was correct in each shot. We also were able to learn on the technical side of things how to use the equipment more efficiently so things such as the wonky camera angel were resolved using a different tri-pod and learning how to make sure it was at equal footing so the shot wasn't wonky.


After spending almost seven to eight hours filming this time I believe that we have taken much more care and consideration over what we were doing and hopefully it will mean that the outcome will be of much better quality than before. We have however come into an issue with the Mac we have taken out from the school in order to edit as we thought that to have a better quality of film we would use Alexandra's camera instead of the schools as this is exactly what another group have done with the same camera and we have seen how much the quality of their final footage improved. The problem however is that the Mac won't allow us to import the footage into quick time so that we are able to use it on premier pro and edit. This is due to the file format which on Alexandra's camera is AVI but for the mac we need MOV. Alexandra has emailed the teacher in hope that we are able to get a reply and hopefully we will be able to sort it out and edit before we get back to school otherwise this sets us back even further and will mean the amount we work will have to be double as we are wasting a lot of editing time during the week.

Re-shoot

Me and Alexandra sat down in order to look at the footage in order to see what needed to stay and what needed to go from the footage we had taken, this was mainly because Alexandra had previously looked at the footage on her own and was not completely happy. When we sat down and watched it I agreed with Alexandra that there was much that could be changed in order to produce a better quality of work. We realised that several things were wrong with the shots such as the movement of hands and feet which didn't match in each shot and therefore looked strange when laid out next to each other but also we realised that the shots were wonky and there was no way to change that other than to re-shoot. We have therefore decided that we are going to re-shoot all of the footage again on the 18th of February and hopefully by taking a mac home over half term will be able to get at least a good half if not all of the editing done over the week.

Filming - first attempt.

Filming for the first time was much harder than both Alexandra and I anticipated. First of all we had issues with where about in the room we wanted to shoot and this took us along time to figure out as we had to base it all around lights so that even if it got dark outside the lighting would stay the same in the footage in order to maintain a good quality. Secondly the setting up of the props took a lot longer than we thought as well as we assumed it would be easy to just put the props in place however we found that we didn't always agree with the positioning but also that when it came to filming certain things didn't look right and therefore we would have to change things around. The filming itself seems good so far on the camera but we have yet to put it onto a mac in order to see it laid out together. If we do have to film again then I believe that this first attempt has been positive as it will allow us to have more of an idea about what exactly we want from each shot as this time we were very unsure in places and had to take several shots from different angels rather than having one solid idea and this cost us a lot of time.

Planning - Animatic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CyzPlnAHQ&feature=player_embedded


Our anaimatic was made in order for us to be able to see what our final opening would look like whilst in sequence rather than just looking at the pictures on the page. I don't believe that our animatic gave us a great in site into our final project as the pictures didn't move as we want them to, however, it did allow us to see how areas of the footage may not work and how perhaps certain things will need to be changed during our filming.

Planning - Costumes

I have been trying to find information on different costumes for us to use in our opening however I found it very difficult to find different information about costumes without a story line.
We now know what we are doing and so now we have an idea for our costumes.


The male - Killer - The mise-en-scene of our two minute opening requires our characters to dress as if they're attending a wedding and therefore we have to dress the male character in a smart black and white suit in order to fit the wedding theme.


The female - Girls - We decided that we are going to shoot the girl in separate parts like the leg, arm and head. Because of this we only need to find a ring, vial and a shoe which will fit in with the idea of a wedding.


We hope that the items of clothing we have picked will match the mise-en-scene and therefore depict a wedding. Through research I discovered that there is not one specific style of outfits which is usually seen in a thriller but that isn't the outfits usually depict the story line and the roles the characters are meant to be playing within it. Therefore I believe that the costumes chosen will work well for our opening.

Planning - Our idea change.

After discussing with our teacher what we are planning on doing as our plot for our opening we discovered how it can be seen as very cliché and whilst we want to keep up the thriller conventions as well as the horror conventions throughout our opening we decided that we wanted to do this in a way which is less cliché as there has already been things like this which have been done. 


Our new idea is still going to be a young girl however we have now decided to go along with the idea of a wedding day. We are yet to complete the story board and understand fully what it is we wish to do exactly however so far we know that we are going to have the young girl dead and in different parts with her body kept in different places around the house. We decided that we are also going to keep the main character a male, we decided that we would stick with the usual idea of a male killer and a young girl, this has been done many times before however we decided that if we are wanting to do something which is less cliché we still have to keep up out conventions of a thriller in different aspects and I believe it is probably expected from the audience for the male to be killer as this is what they are use to seeing. 


We understand that it may be hard to shows only parts of the body around different areas of the house but this is something which we are going to tackle when it comes to shooting and we will start deciding how to hide different body parts whilst we create our story board for our new idea.

Planning - Our tasks:

Each member of our group has had tasks designated for them so that we each have an equal amount to do and we can each focus on something and this way our tasks will all get done sooner.


I am doing the story board for our group and that will be put up soon so that we can see how our opening will flow that will be done by the 10th of decemeber we have decided.


I believe that I will finish before then but once we have done that and are happy with the story board we are going to start with the animatic so that we can actually watch our opening; the good thing about the animatic is it will give us a good oppotunity to decide if anything needs changing within our story board as we will be able to watch how it goes.


I have also got the role of costumes and so I have to choose what to dress the characters in, I am finding this a challenge as we have yet to fully decide on how the male and female characters are going to be presented but I will dress them accordingly making sure they fit with the image we are trying to portay of the characters.

Planning - Our ideas:

We are going to go with the horror thrillier genre of film; we decided that we would go with this as we can fit the typical thriller conventions but also put in elements of horror so that we can add gore into the opening to make it seem scary as well as thrilling.


Our idea is to start with a typical opening of a thrillier with pictures of a girl all over a wall - we decided that we would go with this as the starting frame as it is expected of a thrillier to have a stalker/a phyco kind of character.
We then decided that to fit in with the horror genre the majority of our opening will go to a girl lying dead on the floor simply showing different parts of her body this will keep the opening ery and will leave the audience wanting to know what happened to her. Even though there will not be more to the film it will be a good opening and will leave the audience geussing and also by keeping an opening like this we wont have to have much of a story line which I believe works best within a thriller opening because it leaves room for anticipation and suspence.


We have decided on the setting of our opening: we are going to use a kitchen as the setting for our opening, by using a setting like a kitchen it will hopefully add a little to the suspence as a kitchen is not somehwere were you usally expect murder to take place. We have also decided on the gender of the murder and the victim, we have decided to stick to the original style of have the male as the stronger character whilst the female is the weaker character. We decided on have this as we believe that this will fit the conventions of both a thriller and a horror. We may however change the idea about gender and the way in which we represent the characters depending on how we wish to portry them.

Evaluating other groups continuity task.

When marking the other groups continuity task we had to use the brief we were first given with the directions for the task which informed us of the different things we needed to include as well as using the marking criteria.


For
Heather, Laura, Brogan and Sam: We gave them a level three. We thought that they were to good to be a high level two and therefore should be in the threes. There use of different shots and angles was good and they varied them throughout. They also followed the brief and did everything asked of them. There audio was also very clear and easy to understand. http://heathercaseymediacoursework.blogspot.com/2010/11/continuity-task_3657.html


Luke, Jess, Serenna and Hannah: For this group we gave them a low level two. This was mainly because there footage wasn't finished and therefore they had not even completed what they were told to. The audio was okay on there piece and they tired to use a different variety of camera angles within there shots which takes them off a level one.
http://imsocoolibakecakes.blogspot.com/2010/11/continuity-task-end-product.html


Callum, Tom and Ellie: For this we gave them a level two-three. This was because they did what they were told to do and followed the instructions. They also used different camera angles and the audio was good I thought on this piece.
http://elliebiddle.blogspot.com/2010/11/continuity-editing-task_15.html

Continuity task.

We were given the task of creating a continuity task which focused on producing a short clip of one minute which showed the ability to use the camera along with a range of different angles.

We were given a short of list of things which we would need to include like having a person walk in to a room through a door and exit from the same door, as well as having two people having a conversation. 

My group found it hard at first to think of an idea which would be easy to shoot in the day we were given to use the equipment provided. After some discussions about who would be needed to act in the task the ideas came to us and we were able to think of a simple idea which was able to include all the things asked from us. 

When filming our task we found it okay as we had the tri-pod to keep the camera still and we were able to develop techniques when using the camera which I believe will be very useful when filming our main coursework.  

Editing the film wasn't as hard as I had first anticipated and actually once you are able to learn the basics, editing the short piece is simple.
I think that for my group the role that we took when making the continuity task worked for us and we were able to get the task completed a few days before it was due which left us with more time to make sure it was the best we could make it with the footage we had taken.

I believe after studying the marking criteria and focusing on the video section that I would give our group a high level 2 to a low level 3 as I think we managed to do what fell under the level.
As for the audio this is something my group struggled with when having it on the mac. This was because of the sound of the music which we had chosen to accompany the sense, as I nor anyone else in the group was sure how to make one sound louder than an other and save it there so it wouldn't change the next time it was viewed and this was something that I think my group should of worked on. Because of the loudness of the music in some senses it was hard to hear what was being said. For this I would give our group a level 1 as I personally didn't think it was as clear as it should have been.
Overall I think our video probably scored a level two from the teacher.


From doing this task my group were able to under how the camera and mac worked and the different ways of using them. We also learnt the different things that need to be done when editing a piece of film. There are still things that need to be learnt but I believe that from what we have already learnt it will help us in our main production  of our film. We have also been able to learn the different strengths within the group and this therefore will help us in deciding who will do what when doing our final AS piece so we can be organised.

Research - What have I learnt from all of my research?

By researching different ways in which thrillers and presented and the different opinions and options there are when it comes to making a thriller I have been able to understand what makes a good thriller and the kind of things I will need to include in my thriller in order to make it the best it can be. I have learnt these things through gaining an understanding of codes and conventions, camera, sound, editing and mise-en-scene and then applying that in order to analyse not only real thriller films in order to understand how these things are used on a greater scale but also through analysing other students work I was able to understand how it is possible for students to apply these elements to the openings of their films and the different ways in which my group can do this too. 


Along with all of the good things I have learnt I have equally learnt how to avoid doing things which loose you marks when producing your final opening; for example the steadiness of the camera, the quality of sound, the use of mise-en-scene and the pace and style of editing. Because I have been able to learn both positive and negative points of openings I can make sure that the rest of my group also understands what we should be doing and then later apply this to our opening. 


Overall my research on a whole has allowed me to understand the importance of the different aspects of film and from gaining peoples opinions I now know what people expect from this genre of a film and through analysing others have started to gain knowledge on how to address these areas. Now my group needs to go and start brainstorming different ideas starting with genre and decide what type of film we are going to choose - hybrid or sub-genre - and then decide on the story line and then move on to taking into consideration everything that we have learnt through past students work and real thrillers and bring all of our knowledge together in order to try and come up with the best opening we can possibly produce.