Friday, 24 April 2015
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Evaluation - Kieran Owens
Evaluation - Kieran Owens
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The example of a media product I will be using is one of my inspirational movies, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Based on a book by George Orwell with the same name. Much like our own film it follows a person living in an autocratic dystopia known as Airstrip One(formerly known as Great Britain). We have followed many of the conventions that were used in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
1. Our film starts with the logo of our created company, 'good feelings' - We used the laser type style to give off a science fiction feel as it matches the genre of our created film. We tried to use a professional using, but somewhat scientific looking font as well. Whilst not quite as attention grabbing as the lion roaring at me, the subtly fits the tone of our movie well.
2. Starting with a blank screen, with nothing but the sounds of seagulls and waves crashing was meant to give a dream like feel, as the character was meant to be sleeping. Many films of the genre use this chance to give exposition (Star Wars and Nineteen Eighty-Four both do this.) to set a scene. But we intended to give very little information from the start, leaving the nature of the autocrasy and the world we have created subtle and enigmatic as this allows the audience to create their own image of what it must be like.
3. We then began to show off the bedroom that would be our main set, using the widest shot we could to show off how plain and colorless the surroundings were. This allows for the audience to think up a world where very little creative expression is allowed, as is rather typical of movies with similar premises (Nineteen Eighty-Four and Children of Men are both examples of this, where Government Censorship is prominent in the created society.)
4. The first on-screen command is shown and a mysterious voice speaks out, telling our unnamed protagonist to wake up and get ready. Nineteen Eighty-Four gives this 'big brother' character a face, whilst we chose not to do so. The reason we do this is so that we can add further enigma to the autocracy that rules over our character. We did take inspiration from Nineteen Eighty-Four in the form of the television giving orders / speaking to somebody. Using the screen as a way for the hidden rulers to speak to the people.
5,6 7 and 8.We decided it would be best to show our character getting ready for the day, it allowed us to show some other subtle details about the world around him, his colorless bathroom, his black and white attire that leaves very little to look at. By using very little color we allowed the world to seem very boring and dull, as was the intention. We wanted people to see the world as boring as that's how our character perceived it. This is very different to Nineteen Eighty-Four, which doesn't even introduce its main character in the first scene, it has a nameless group of people in overalls, presumably workers. It still makes sure to avoid the bright colors or much if at all expression, as this allows the people to seem almost brain-dead in their performance. Completely at the will of Big Brother.
9. The scene is transitioning into the news show of the screen used, the protagonist didn't have to use a remote or anything for it to happen, allowing the audience to think about how it may have happened (has their been an advance in technology that allowed it? Was it set like that? Do the government control what he watches?) and allows us to show some 'propaganda' to help build the 'big brother' atmosphere that is prominent throughout the film.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As our character only actually has a single character, the only 'social group' it has to represent is that of your typical young man. But with his world being so different to that of the real world it would be hard to do so in a conventional sense, we don't give him any dialogue and only give him a simple motivation of 'freedom' - The reason being that it allows the audience to essentially project themselves into our protagonists shoes, similar to a silent protagonist in a video game.
The only other 'character' we have is the faceless big brother, who as mentioned doesn't have a face. We chose to do this to create an enigma surrounding him, It allows the audience to create their own mental projetion of what he or she might look like.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The production/distribution company we created is called 'Good Feelings' and it's theme was to be that of a science-fiction based company similar to that of LucasArts. But if I were to have a larger company distribute my movie it would be Icon Film Distribution, a UK based company that specializes in small independent movies, but has met mainstream success with movies such as Paranormal Activity and Transporter 3. I chose this because it's a UK based company that specialises in independent movies, and mine is a UK based independent movie. But thanks to it's box office successes it's clear that the company has a knack for what it does, and choosing the right titles. It also has more than 200 titles under its belt, so the company has experience in dealing with smaller studios such as ours.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Through researching the typical audience for sci-fi movies and other similar media products, I discovered that the main target audience tends to be young adult males and middle aged men. We decided it would be best to target an audience we better understand, and so we decided to target young adult males as we both in fact are exactly that. It made it easier for us to find ways to appeal to our target audience and make a product that we thought would be better suited for them.
Through researching the typical audience for sci-fi movies and other similar media products, I discovered that the main target audience tends to be young adult males and middle aged men. We decided it would be best to target an audience we better understand, and so we decided to target young adult males as we both in fact are exactly that. It made it easier for us to find ways to appeal to our target audience and make a product that we thought would be better suited for them.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
With the premise of our product being a society overwhelmed by rules we believe it would appeal to them as they find themselves joining the adult world, many starting full time employment and having to adapt to a completely new ruleset to that of school, many learning to drive and having to learn the rules of the road and so they can feel very overwhelmed having so many rules thrown at them. The aim of our film is to appeal to this mindset by making a world with so many laws and rules that the audience can relate to our protagonist. It also helped that we made our protagonist silent, it better allowed the audience to project themselves into the world created and try to imagine what it must feel like to be so alone. By not allowing him to say his emotions, the audience can instead let their own feelings paint the picture and allow for them to perhaps experience the protagonists isolation.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
A basic computer with unspecified parts was used, as it contained all of the necessary software we needed, as well as access to the internet for particular parts of the editing and distribution process. This is a list of the websites and software we used.
Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Edition 11.0 : This was the tool we used for pretty much all editing, It's a professional tool used even by proper film studio's and is well known for it's relatively easy to use layout whilst more complex techniques are still possible using it.
HD LE Writer 1.0 : Software that comes bundled with the camera that allows us to extract our recorded film clips from the Camera's SD card whilst maintaining the HD quality. Allowing you to specifically select which clips you need.
Blogger.co.uk : A blogging website that allows you to make your own personal blog(s) that link directly to your google+ account (which means it also links to your gmail and youtube profile.)
Youtube.com : Youtube is a video-sharing website that allows anybody with a google+ account to make a profile and upload video clips at particular qualities. It adds the clip to a public sharing platform (unless the video is made specifically private) and allows anybody who stumbles across it to watch it. Also allowing for comments, likes and dislikes and subscriptions so people can continue to follow your work if they enjoyed it.
FreeSFX.co.uk : FreeSFX is a website that provides royalty free music and sound-clips to be used by anybody. This is where I obtained all music and sound-clips used in both my preliminary and my final product.
There was also the physical tools and equipment needed for filming, which without we would have been unable to do pretty much anything!
Camera: The Camera we used was the Panasonic HC-X900 HD model, which is capable of filming at 1080p HD quality, Thanks to this ability to film in such high quality the film overall looked better. We used this camera to shoot everything we had.
Tripod: A simple tool used to prop a camera up and keep it still, We used the tripod for most of the filming so that our shots could be steady and more precise, further increasing the quality of the finished product.
SD Card: The SD card is simply the memory card that saves all the filmed footage when it's being recorded, using HD LE Writer 1.0 we extracted the filmed footage we needed off of the SD card so we could go onto editing it all.
USB Flash Drive: A USB Flash Drive(16GB) was used to store any SFX we obtained from FreeSFX, Any footage we had extracted from the Camera's SD Card as well as the unfinished project files so we could continue to edit them at a later date. Allowing for quick access to the things we needed no matter what computer we were on.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at my preliminary task, the biggest issue that I personally as part of the group faced involved my job as the editor, I had never used Sony Vegas before and so knew very little on how to use the program when push came to shove. So one of the most prominent problems with the preliminary is the editing, an over-use of fade, some issues with ambient sound jumping in between cuts and audio being too loud in comparison with the rest of the audio .
Now that I've had some experience with the program I believe I've gotten much better at using it, watching a few basic tutorials on youtube in preparation for my job as editor meant I could use a bit more variety and avoid the rookie mistakes that I had made the first time around. I could also get the editing done a lot quicker since I didn't have to waste time familiarizing myself with the software layout or how to do things in the program.
Looking back at my preliminary task, the biggest issue that I personally as part of the group faced involved my job as the editor, I had never used Sony Vegas before and so knew very little on how to use the program when push came to shove. So one of the most prominent problems with the preliminary is the editing, an over-use of fade, some issues with ambient sound jumping in between cuts and audio being too loud in comparison with the rest of the audio .
Now that I've had some experience with the program I believe I've gotten much better at using it, watching a few basic tutorials on youtube in preparation for my job as editor meant I could use a bit more variety and avoid the rookie mistakes that I had made the first time around. I could also get the editing done a lot quicker since I didn't have to waste time familiarizing myself with the software layout or how to do things in the program.
Another issue that I experienced involved the overall organisation of my group, With their only being two members in it, we had to spread the work out a lot more and we often found ourselves confused or overwhelmed by the workload, which lead to a degradation in quality over the course of our preliminary, especially during the planning and filming phases, where if just one of us was not available there was literally nothing we could do about it.
When it came to the main task, we made sure to prioritize organisation and give ourselves similar if not the same roles in the group as last time, whilst there was still only two of us, we had experience in the jobs that we had done during the preliminary so it made much more sense for us to assign ourselves to those roles once again so we could get the work done a lot quicker, a lot more efficiently and to a better quality than the first time around.
When it came to the main task, we made sure to prioritize organisation and give ourselves similar if not the same roles in the group as last time, whilst there was still only two of us, we had experience in the jobs that we had done during the preliminary so it made much more sense for us to assign ourselves to those roles once again so we could get the work done a lot quicker, a lot more efficiently and to a better quality than the first time around.
Tuesday, 7 April 2015
Evaluation (Connor Mitchell)
Question One:
what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products (film openings)?
Frame One: My film opens with the 'Good Feelings' Logo which I tried to make link closely to the genre of the film it is presenting; Science Fiction. It has a futuristic looking font similar to films like 'The Hunger Games' and uses a convention in the genre of Science Fiction; lasers, exemplifying the genre. We also had the logo fade in then out instead of hard cutting as to not be to harsh when coming into frame, I made this editing decision based on the title reveal in Brazil.
Frame Two: In my second frame I had a totally black screen for ten seconds, I had the screen to emphasize the noises in the protagonists dream, the idea here was to show that every night he has a dream of a different interpretation of freedom. Here it is meant to represent the beach, whereas the closing dream shows him in a field. This is used to create intrigue in the beginning of the film by making an enigma, just like the beginning of Brazil, it ambiguously opens with a set time, drawing attention to it's importance, and making people guess 'What happens at this particular time?'.
Frame Three: I tried to keep the colour palette for the film very unsaturated, had the character always in Blacks/grey. I had the camera shake here whilst he dreamed to represent the instability of the character. Keeping the camera far away for a long shot I hoped for this to be the establishing shot of the character. Just like in Brazil the colour palette was very monochrome, to depict a sterile and very controlled future, and exemplify the dullness of it.
Frame Four: Frame Four is an extreme close up on the graphic we made, 'Wake up', which we placed onto the television, accompanied by the disembodied voice of a man saying 'It's time for you to wake up'. We did this to represent the anonymous and distant villain, which is a force larger than a single dictator. We took this inspiration specifically from 1984, with the television screens across the city that told the citizens what to do and what was going on.
Frame Five: I used a shot reverse shot back to frame three to represent that time hadn't passed since then . It then shows him waking and sitting up. The beginning of our film was fairly slow just like Brazil's, holding a shot for quite a while, where Brazil had a slow pulling out shot of a television store, our movie had a still shot of the character awaking, this was used to represent that time hadn't passed and how tired how the character is, suggesting this treatment has been on-going for a long time.
Frame Six: Frame Six was a low angle shot of the character choosing his clothes. This was meant to represent the organised routine nature of the protagonist, with his clothes neatly laid out ready for him. We tried to depict this very neatly controlled and watched universe just like in our inspirational films 1984 and Brazil.
Frame Seven: The seventh frame into the film mirrors the previous shot of a high angle of the characters hands, before this it was him taking his clothes and here it is him washing his hands, I did this to continue the theme of routine and control on the characters life, as so far in the film he has took no time to relax or have fun, he has just woke up to his set alarm, chose his set clothes and washed. I made these decisions based on the concepts in Brazil of this very organized and closely examined world, so I used this shot and the previous to express this.
Frame Eight: Frame eight is a medium shot of the character putting on a black sweatshirt. I firstly took this from one of my inspirational movies, Antiviral (2012), the design in this shot was inspired by the main character of Antiviral, Syd March, who is always dressed in monochrome clothes. This is also shown in the movie 1984, where the characters are all dressed in dark blue jumpsuits. I think these movies did this to express that the government made this dystopia with a lack of imagination, and a control of expression or individuality, which is why I implemented this design into my film, to depict the governments control on the character's dress and sense of free expression. I also had the character face ninety degrees away from the camera as to create an enigma, I wanted to create an enigma as to give the audience a mystery to help fuel their desire to watch the film. I helped to accentuate this enigma by giving the characters room dim lighting so the television light is clearly on his face, creating the question of "What is on the television".
Frame Nine: Frame Nine is a medium shot of the television inside the boys room, we used the television here to show the moving graphic of the 'Utopia News' logo. Me and my partner wanted to have a news broadcast within the film to give more back story to the film, we wanted to depict the government showing the riots on television as to make an incentive for the people to want to stay at home. We made the moving graphic to try and give continuity to the news broadcast within the film, instead of just say a still image logo, which we thought would damage the continuity and ruin the suspension of disbelief for the film. We also took inspiration from the film Brazil here, which opens with a news broadcast very specifically discussing riots, but in particular the opening to the film 1984. Which shows a huge crowd watching a giant screen of a man talking of the war outside their country and how great their country is, expressing this propaganda and lies to the people to brainwash them, I wanted to express like in 1984 how the government is trying to control everybody, but the protagonist in our film and 1984, is mentally free from the governments influence. I wrote the character very specifically with Brazil and 1984's protagonist in mind, where the person doesn't believe what the government tells them.
Question Two: How does you media product represent particular social groups?
Brazil (1985)
Antiviral (2012)
1984 (1984)
Our movie - Utopia (2015)
Our movie protagonist was heavily inspired, design wise by the looks of the movie Antiviral and 1984. As costume designer I tried to keep the costume and surroudings pallet very dulled, having this monochrome design was key in expressing the control the government had on it's civilians, showing that they control expression. I wanted the main character not to talk to show the metaphor and one of the heavy ideas of the film, that the character is totally isolated, he is not allowed to leave his house at all and has no interaction with anyone. He notes his dreams down in his journal but beside that he had no key personality features due to his total isolation from contact, so I wouldn't say he represents a particular social group.
Question Three: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I believe a company like DNA Films would hypothetically produce our movie, 'Utopia', DNA Films is a small British production company, making other small independent British Science Fiction movies, e.g: Ex Machina. In terms of funding I believe the BFI (British Film Institute) would play a large role, helping small British Productions with Lottery funding like The King's Speech to be produced. I think the distribution may be carried out by Fox Searchlight Pictures, involved with British productions like Sunshine, The Last King of Scotland and 28 Days Later, helping to distribute these movies succesfully is evident of their ability to correctly release a small British film, like our own.
Question Four: Who would be the audience for your media product?
Age - 18 Gender - Male Ethnicity - Black, British Education - College
Economic status - Middle class Employment - Part time Sexual Orientation - Interested in Women Family Background - British
Interests and hobbies - Movies, gaming,
Personality - Friendly, intelligent
From studying and online sources I realized that the majority of sci-fi fans were males between 16-40 (roughly). This was prominent in the research of the films Brazil featuring a middle aged man, and Black Mirror, which featured a young boy. I made the main character of my story a young teenager as to try and relate to some of the audience. I made the boy's costume always monochrome to keep with the dystopian theme, and have the character silent, since he is not only alone but possibly representing the silencing of the nation on him.
Question Five: How did you attract/address your audience?
I tried to use sci-fi conventions to attract the target audience into enjoying the movie. I used the dystopian future which appears in multiple movies from The Terminator, The Matrix, Brazil and a film I studied; Children of Men. I tried to keep the concept unique, as to draw in people to see the movie. I also tried to have a well directed story to work thematically as a film. Using cuts to separate the shots, match on actions to connect them, and hopefully with the directing a fully functioning narrative became present.
Question Six: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this media product?
This is a picture I have created showing the six pieces of technology I used during the Media project and were essential to it's completion.
what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products (film openings)?
Frame One: My film opens with the 'Good Feelings' Logo which I tried to make link closely to the genre of the film it is presenting; Science Fiction. It has a futuristic looking font similar to films like 'The Hunger Games' and uses a convention in the genre of Science Fiction; lasers, exemplifying the genre. We also had the logo fade in then out instead of hard cutting as to not be to harsh when coming into frame, I made this editing decision based on the title reveal in Brazil.
Frame Two: In my second frame I had a totally black screen for ten seconds, I had the screen to emphasize the noises in the protagonists dream, the idea here was to show that every night he has a dream of a different interpretation of freedom. Here it is meant to represent the beach, whereas the closing dream shows him in a field. This is used to create intrigue in the beginning of the film by making an enigma, just like the beginning of Brazil, it ambiguously opens with a set time, drawing attention to it's importance, and making people guess 'What happens at this particular time?'.
Frame Three: I tried to keep the colour palette for the film very unsaturated, had the character always in Blacks/grey. I had the camera shake here whilst he dreamed to represent the instability of the character. Keeping the camera far away for a long shot I hoped for this to be the establishing shot of the character. Just like in Brazil the colour palette was very monochrome, to depict a sterile and very controlled future, and exemplify the dullness of it.
Frame Four: Frame Four is an extreme close up on the graphic we made, 'Wake up', which we placed onto the television, accompanied by the disembodied voice of a man saying 'It's time for you to wake up'. We did this to represent the anonymous and distant villain, which is a force larger than a single dictator. We took this inspiration specifically from 1984, with the television screens across the city that told the citizens what to do and what was going on.
Frame Five: I used a shot reverse shot back to frame three to represent that time hadn't passed since then . It then shows him waking and sitting up. The beginning of our film was fairly slow just like Brazil's, holding a shot for quite a while, where Brazil had a slow pulling out shot of a television store, our movie had a still shot of the character awaking, this was used to represent that time hadn't passed and how tired how the character is, suggesting this treatment has been on-going for a long time.
Frame Six: Frame Six was a low angle shot of the character choosing his clothes. This was meant to represent the organised routine nature of the protagonist, with his clothes neatly laid out ready for him. We tried to depict this very neatly controlled and watched universe just like in our inspirational films 1984 and Brazil.
Frame Seven: The seventh frame into the film mirrors the previous shot of a high angle of the characters hands, before this it was him taking his clothes and here it is him washing his hands, I did this to continue the theme of routine and control on the characters life, as so far in the film he has took no time to relax or have fun, he has just woke up to his set alarm, chose his set clothes and washed. I made these decisions based on the concepts in Brazil of this very organized and closely examined world, so I used this shot and the previous to express this.
Frame Eight: Frame eight is a medium shot of the character putting on a black sweatshirt. I firstly took this from one of my inspirational movies, Antiviral (2012), the design in this shot was inspired by the main character of Antiviral, Syd March, who is always dressed in monochrome clothes. This is also shown in the movie 1984, where the characters are all dressed in dark blue jumpsuits. I think these movies did this to express that the government made this dystopia with a lack of imagination, and a control of expression or individuality, which is why I implemented this design into my film, to depict the governments control on the character's dress and sense of free expression. I also had the character face ninety degrees away from the camera as to create an enigma, I wanted to create an enigma as to give the audience a mystery to help fuel their desire to watch the film. I helped to accentuate this enigma by giving the characters room dim lighting so the television light is clearly on his face, creating the question of "What is on the television".
Frame Nine: Frame Nine is a medium shot of the television inside the boys room, we used the television here to show the moving graphic of the 'Utopia News' logo. Me and my partner wanted to have a news broadcast within the film to give more back story to the film, we wanted to depict the government showing the riots on television as to make an incentive for the people to want to stay at home. We made the moving graphic to try and give continuity to the news broadcast within the film, instead of just say a still image logo, which we thought would damage the continuity and ruin the suspension of disbelief for the film. We also took inspiration from the film Brazil here, which opens with a news broadcast very specifically discussing riots, but in particular the opening to the film 1984. Which shows a huge crowd watching a giant screen of a man talking of the war outside their country and how great their country is, expressing this propaganda and lies to the people to brainwash them, I wanted to express like in 1984 how the government is trying to control everybody, but the protagonist in our film and 1984, is mentally free from the governments influence. I wrote the character very specifically with Brazil and 1984's protagonist in mind, where the person doesn't believe what the government tells them.
Question Two: How does you media product represent particular social groups?
Brazil (1985)Antiviral (2012)1984 (1984) Our movie - Utopia (2015)Question Three: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Question Four: Who would be the audience for your media product?
Age - 18 Gender - Male Ethnicity - Black, British Education - College
Economic status - Middle class Employment - Part time Sexual Orientation - Interested in Women Family Background - British
Interests and hobbies - Movies, gaming,
Personality - Friendly, intelligent
From studying and online sources I realized that the majority of sci-fi fans were males between 16-40 (roughly). This was prominent in the research of the films Brazil featuring a middle aged man, and Black Mirror, which featured a young boy. I made the main character of my story a young teenager as to try and relate to some of the audience. I made the boy's costume always monochrome to keep with the dystopian theme, and have the character silent, since he is not only alone but possibly representing the silencing of the nation on him.
Question Five: How did you attract/address your audience?
I tried to use sci-fi conventions to attract the target audience into enjoying the movie. I used the dystopian future which appears in multiple movies from The Terminator, The Matrix, Brazil and a film I studied; Children of Men. I tried to keep the concept unique, as to draw in people to see the movie. I also tried to have a well directed story to work thematically as a film. Using cuts to separate the shots, match on actions to connect them, and hopefully with the directing a fully functioning narrative became present.
Question Six: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this media product?
This is a picture I have created showing the six pieces of technology I used during the Media project and were essential to it's completion.
Friday, 3 April 2015
Shot list
Shot list -
- Good feelings Logo
- Black screen with beach sounds to represent dream
- Wide shot of character in bed
- Extreme close up of television showing the 'Wake up' graphic
- Wide shot of character in bed, then getting up
- High angle close up of character selecting clothes
- Close up of character washing hands in a sink
- Medium close up of character putting on sweatshirt
- Medium shot of television showing news broadcast
- Fade in to a Extreme close up of television showing the news broadcast
- High angle close up of sugar being put into a coffee
- Over shoulder shot of character watching tv
- Extreme close up of television showing riots
- High angle close up of dream journal
- Fade into a (slightly closer) close up of writing in dream journal
- Fade into extreme close up of writing in dream journal
- Extreme close up of riots on television
- Medium shot of character drinking
- Medium shot of television show
- Fade into extreme close up of show on television
- Extreme close up of woman singing
- Wide shot of character laying down and falling asleep
- High angle medium close up of character in a field (dream sequence)
- Fade into medium shot of character waking up
- Wide shot of trees
- Close up from behind of character walking
- Big close up of 'Utopia' on screen
- Fades to Title 'Utopia'
- Credits
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